They were a formidable duo. Tomas the Rabid Dwarf: a very short man – although not truly dwarfish – with bad teeth and an impressive mustache, so called for his temper and predilection for explosions and unprovoked violence. And Yelm the Iron Giant: single-armed and Cyclopean after the final engagements of the War, so named because he stood eight feet tall and consistently survived what broke other men. Together, they ranged the European lands once ravaged by the armies and the creations of the New Scientists and the Madboy Kings, hunting down the Haunts which had survived the Second Thirty Years War. Those peasants and burghers who had likewise survived the conflicts, and who now found themselves piecing back together the old nations in spite of the vestigial aristocracies, paid well for proof that yet another of the monsters and machines created by the Madboys had been destroyed, and so Tomas and Yelm were able to stitch together a living in the midst of the ruins and the fear.

Ten years after the end of the Second Thirty Years War the Dwarf and the Giant came to Terriero on the Mougan coast to collect the bounty on the latest Haunt to fall to their partnership. The city of Terriero lay somewhere in the valley below the pair, obscured by a dense layer of smoke and the shadows cast by the surrounding mountains. A swift, ancient river had spent the long ages of its life carving a notch into the mountains on its way to the sea, creating a sudden harbor in the otherwise rugged coastline.

an early story of the Bounty Hunters

 

 

The argument had started four towns ago.

The pair had already been walking for two months, leaving behind them the newly formed District of Cunning in search of work. Their funds had held for a time and they’d not looked very hard. But lately, as those funds noticeably dwindled, they found that no one seemed to need a pair of highly trained and skilled, armed and armored mercenaries.

Yelm, known professionally as the Iron Giant because he stood eight feet tall and consistently survived what broke other men, held that the War might truly be over. His partner of the last seven campaigns was called the Rabid Dwarf – not because he was a true dwarf, but because he was very short in stature and temper, and long in viciousness. And Tomas, that Rabid Dwarf, believed that that War could not possibly be over. Too often, he argued, they’d watched the lust for power burn itself out in the fires of the New Science, only to see it flare up again in some simple laboratory assistant.

They were a formidable duo. Tomas the Rabid Dwarf: a very short man – although not truly dwarfish – so called for his temper and predilection for explosions and unprovoked violence. And Yelm the Iron Giant: so named because he stood eight feet tall and consistently survived what broke other men. Together, they ranged the European lands once ravaged by the armies and the creations of the New Scientists and the Madboy Kings, hunting down the Haunts which had survived the Second Thirty Years War. Those peasants and burghers who had likewise survived the conflicts, and who now found themselves piecing back together the old nations in spite of the vestigial aristocracies, paid well for proof that yet another of the monsters and machines created by the Madboys had been destroyed, and so Tomas and Yelm were able to stitch together a living in the midst of the ruins and the fear.

Eleven years after their first meeting, seven years after the last, soft sigh of the Second Thirty Years War, Yelm the Iron Giant and Tomas the Rabid Dwarf stumbled through the wide-open gates of Chantique. The Dwarf staggered because he was exhausted from pulling a cart laden with flintlocks and wheellocks and explosives and the physical remains of the Haunt of Duke Regen’s Fen High Way. The Giant, because he was dying.

 

Yelm’s father had often said, “The bitter lesson is best-learned,” usually just before delivering a corrective beating. But Yelm had swiftly outgrown his father, and discovered that teachers, too, can be taught. He’d been conscripted not long after.

Three years later, Yelm found himself in the presence of a teacher greater than his father.