Grimsdell

Grimsdell is the wider stretch of hanger country around the burners' hearths: steep beech slopes hung over dry combes, wooded to the very lip, shadowed even at midday. It is worked for charcoal rather than timber, and its rides are walked every day by the woodwards of the Woodmote, who number the trees, mark what may be cut and ride the bounds every third year.

By the reckoning of the hanger country, a wood that is walked is a wood that is known, and a known wood gathers nothing to fear. The verderers like to say that if the woodwards were taken away for seven years the hangers would become as dreadful as the forests of the north, and not because something would come in but because people would forget what was there. Grimsdell is walked and known, and still there are two named places in it that the woodwards route around. The rides turn aside before them. No reason is given on any roll, and nobody in the wood villages will offer one.

The burners know those places better than anyone, for they are in the wood at three in the morning when nobody else is. A burner who has worked Grimsdell for thirty years knows the sound of each of the two places at a quarter of a mile, and can tell when something has passed through a combe where nothing should have been. What exactly he hears he keeps to himself.

The Woodmote writes into its rolls each man the hangers take, since compensation must be paid and a widow must have an entry to point to, and Grimsdell has its share of those entries. A company may find steady, unglamorous work here, chasing timber thieves and unlicensed burning. It will be told, early and without explanation, which ways not to take.