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stopped
and all watched as the condemned man worked his way out, eighteen feet above
the ground. The toes on his feet curled up, and his legs flailed instinctively,
looking for something solid. Elward stopped and twisted one foot around the
opposite ankle. His body stopped swaying and he tightened his grip on the
branch.
    “All the way!” somebody in the
crowd yelled. “All the way to the end and not an inch short.”
    Elward shut his eyes and took a few
quick breaths. He started out again. Someone rushed into the empty circle—a
child with less hair than Trot—and stepped on the loose end of rope now
dragging along the ground below Elward. The rope went tight as Elward reached
for more branch. His fingers slipped but caught in time. The crowd erupted into
fresh laughter and the old woman swatted the boy away. “Off with you, brat. We
all didn’t come out this early in the morning to see ‘im drop so soon.”
    Trot was still looking at the
lawman. He could stop this. He had the power. Lawson was no longer watching just
him. His gray eyes were taking it all in. The crowd. The tree. The condemned. Up in his wooden tower—another twenty
feet, or more, above the struggling Elward—the lawman saw everything. He would
sit up there for hours, day after depressing day, watching the town and flatlands
encircling Burn. When he wasn’t in his law office with the twisted cages that
held bad people before they swung or bled, Lawson, the lawman, sat in his tower
and watched.
    Trot was terrified of the big man
but fascinated at the same. He was old and smart and strong. He was everything
Trot was not. But there was something between them—the lawman had actually spoken to Trot more than once. And it
hadn’t been to kick him out of the way or make fun of his appearance and silly
walk. Once he had even asked Trot how he was, as if he was a normal citizen. He
wouldn’t call it respect—Trot had no clue what that was—but the man had given
him the time of day, and for that, Trot revered the ground the man walked on.
    But there was one bigger and stronger
than the lawman.
    The people of Burn fell away as Lode
made his way through the crowd. Those that didn’t move fast enough were thrown
or kicked and, worse yet, threatened by the three-foot blade held in his rock-hard
fist. He stopped below the struggling Elward and looked up. Lode wore no
clothing, save for a loincloth and leather boots he’d made from the hide of a
roller. Some claimed he’d killed the beast with his bare hands. The rest of his
eight-foot tall frame was covered in red tattoos depicting countless slaughters
in neighboring villages he’d either taken part in as a child or led as an
adult. And there was a lot of body to cover. Lode was one of those rare giants,
with brains to match his abnormally large physique. He was a writhing mass of
muscle, over four feet wide at the shoulders, and standing on legs that looked
more like tree trunks. His rusted sword could cut a man in two—the people of
Burn had seen it done—but it appeared more like a knife in his hand. He reached
up and jabbed at Elward’s feet with its tip.
    “How long, Elward?” the giant
asked. Elward had made it all the way to the end of the branch. His eyes were
forced shut again as sweat trickled in. “How long will you struggle?”
    Elward made no reply. He’d begun to
pull the loose end of the rope—the end not tied around his straining neck—up
towards him. To do this he had to first wrap one arm around the branch. The
hard bark bit and tore at the skin on his inner forearm; the sweat and blood
made him slip further. After a full minute of agonizing struggle, he felt the
frayed end in his fingers. He looped it over the branch and started tying the
knot.
    “Make sure it’s good and tight,” Lode
said. The giant reached up with his blade again and hacked off one of the man’s
big toes. Elward screamed but his arm remained locked around the tree branch. “That’s
just a taste of