The Rime-Skinners

Frostbitten outcasts who den deeper in Frostmaw Cave than the rime-stalkers themselves, surviving by skinning beasts for pelts and frost-glands and — in lean winters — robbing anyone weaker on the Karth road. Half the reason House Vandahl keeps a watch on the ford.

Nobody chooses the ice-throat. The Skinners are people the Vale spat out — debt-jumpers, a deserter or two, a thief on the run — who learned that past the stalkers' den the cave goes deeper and warmer, and that a rime-stalker pelt and the cold-gland under its jaw fetch real coin from outfitters who don't ask questions. They take the beasts the watch won't go in after and live off the skins; when the snow comes down and the trapping thins, they take the road too, falling on travellers too weak to fight back, which is the half of the watch House Vandahl will admit to. They fence the pelts, the glands, and anything they strip off a victim through the Finders, who move it without naming the source. The deepest gallery holds an old shard buried in the rock — the oldest Skinner reckons an outfitter or a collector would pay handsomely for it, if anyone could ever be bothered to chip the thing loose. Mostly they just survive: eat, skin, rob, and don't freeze.