Chapter 77: A Brotherhood of Thieves

Inside the foundry, the bandits feasted. They sat at a long table eating from the same pot.

Since its conquest, Brooke’s domain had become something halfway between a fortress and a den.

In places the furnaces still worked, not as they once had, but enough to keep portions of the structure warm.

Enough to make the men inside forget, for an hour or two at a time, that beyond those walls the world was frozen, starving, and slowly dying.

Each was given a serving of what they had managed to cook from the supplies they scavenged…

Or what their hostages had managed to cook. After all, it was a brave new world, and feeding those who did not work, even if they were hostages was a fool’s errand.

Most of the hostages had learned not to look directly at the food for too long. Hunger could make people stupid, and stupidity got punished quickly here.

They had seen it happen often enough. A hand that lingered too long near a ladle. A pair of eyes that looked too angry. A whispered complaint.

The collars had corrected all of that.

At first, people had screamed when the red light flashed and the punishment followed. Later they had only cried.

Now most had learned to endure it in silence, shoulders hunched and eyes lowered, moving from bowl to bowl like ghosts condemned to feed the living while starving alongside them.

The leader of the bandits was an older man, or at least older than many of those who swore their rifles to him.

He sat at a separate table laid horizontally from those below where the bulk of the men sat, drank, and ate their fill.

By his side were the leaders of each gang that had sworn themselves to this federation of raiders.

They varied in age and appearance. But one thing was the same among them all, they cared not for any rules but those could be compelled through force.

And in the aftermath of the long winter, few could stand against them. Let alone challenge their might.

Each gang, or crew, as one might have it, had its own charter, and its own rules, and its own captain.

Some voted on leadership, others fought for it, but they had all come together for the simple need of survival. Here every captain was equal, but Aidan was the first among equals.

That was the truth of their arrangement. They spoke of mutual benefit, of brotherhood, of shared spoils and common cause, but none of it meant anything without force behind it.

The men at his table were not allies in the old sense. They were predators who had chosen, for now, not to bite one another.

Aidan understood that better than any of them. He knew exactly what held the Federation together. No trust, no respect, and most certainly no ideals.

It was fear and blood.

Fear of the cold. Fear of the settlements they had already broken rising behind them. Fear of losing access to food, women, fuel, ammunition, and shelter.

Most of all, fear that if their little alliance shattered, they would go back to being just another scavenger gang waiting to be swallowed by winter or rivals.

It was never said outright, but Aidan commanded the most men, with the best guns. And that made his words carry far more weight than anyone else sitting at his side.

But lately… there had been concerns… Men weren’t coming back from patrols. At first, some thought it was guys getting caught out too late. Taking a little bit too much advantage of the “hospitality” their subjects showed them.

However, the leader’s eyes drifted towards the empty seat at his table. One of the captains had not returned today.

And he could not stay silent about it anymore. He looked over at the man to his left and posed the question as delicately as he could.

“Where is Marcus? Don’t tell me he’s still breaking in that latest slave of his?”

The man turned to Aidan. Stripping the meat from the bone he was gnawing on without ceremony or cordiality, and swallowing its succulent roasted flesh before washing it down with a cup of beer. He acted like a stereotypical barbarian, and looked the part.

The man chuckled and shook his head, laughing at Aidan’s comments while denying his ’theory’ altogether.

“No, that bitch is lucky she has a day off. Marcus hasn’t come back yet, neither have his men. Word is we may have one less captain sitting at our table from now on. But I’m not one to speculate about such matters until there is some evidence to back the claim. But if Marcus and his men did decide to roll off into the snow in search of greener pastures, how would you handle it boss man?”

Aidan’s eyes narrowed at the information. It was as he thought: Marcus and his men were missing.

Some men had not returned from their daily collections before, but they were few and far between, and nobody of real significance.

But now a captain was gone, and that information would spread like wildfire, affecting the morale of the men.

If people began to think that one of their own had been killed while out there in the snow, it would affect the stability of their little alliance more than if he had simply run off with his tail between his legs.

He couldn’t let this possibility run wild in the heads of his men. He leaned over to the other captain and whispered something in his ear.

“I need you to send some of your scouts out on his route, quietly after the sun has gone down. If they find any evidence of foul play, they need to clean it up before one of the others can find out. We wouldn’t want this being used to cause internal strife among the brotherhood now would we?”

The captain continued to gnaw on the meat he was eating, but his eyes told Aidan all that he needed to know. After wiping the chunks out of his ragged beard, the captain finally responded.

“I’ll have it done, and I expect proper compensation at the next moot. If Marcus really was stupid enough to get himself killed, ill make sure there’s no trail to follow.”

Aidan nodded his head and returned to his meal. He couldn’t fathom one of the settlements they extracted tribute from to have mounted an ambush against Marcus.

And if that were the case, it meant they were dealing with a third party. An unknown player in the region. Or… God forbid…. The monsters hiding in Paradise Falls had finally decided to bare their fangs and reveal themselves.

He shook his head, they had kept to themselves ever since Lorenzo and his gang had been foolish enough to challenge them. It couldn’t be them… It just couldn’t be….

The man paid no more attention to the thought. After all, before anything could be decided, he first needed to find out what had actually happened to Marcus and his crew.

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