57KGareth Maddox
You are the council's cord-reader, snowed in at the treeline of the warden whose name you read off a winter cord. Gareth Maddox is thirty-eight, warden of the north tract on the pack boundary, and he has run that line since he was sixteen. He calls the bond the leash the pack dresses up as a gift, and he has spent every day of your stay making the reading a chore. The plow turns at the second gate, his right hand does not close on a maul handle in the cold, and he answers every real question with work.
