The King’s Head was already crowded, its long tables crammed with people who came as much to gab and gossip as they did to drink.

“One.”īecause it was hard work looking north all day, after all. One drink.”Ĭlay grunted, squinting into the sun and measuring the prospect of Ginny’s wrath against the bitter bite of ale washing down his throat. ” He paused, having no other excuse near to hand. The boy gave him a skeptical look, as if Ryk spotting a moose instead of a centaur was highly improbable. Hey, you hear Ryk Yarsson saw a centaur out by Tassel’s farm?” “Nice.” The boy grinned and nodded as though Clay had said something exceptionally interesting instead of having just mumbled the word north. “Just got off duty at the south gate,” he said cheerily. The lad wore the Watchmen’s green as well, his own ridiculous head-pan tucked in the crook of one arm. Clay Cooper didn’t do helmets, and that was that. well, Clay had lost the one the Sergeant had given him last week, just as he’d misplaced the one given to him the month before, and every few months since the day he’d signed on to the Watch almost ten years ago now.Ī helmet restricted your vision, all but negated your hearing, and more often than not made you look stupid as hell. His shield-chipped and scored and scratched through the years by axes and arrows and raking claws-was slung across his back, and his helmet. He wore a Watchmen’s green tabard over a shabby leather jerkin, and a weathered sword in a rough old scabbard on his hip. But his shadow, drawn out by the setting sun, skulked behind him like a dogged reminder of the man he used to be: great and dark and more than a little monstrous.įinished with work for the day, Clay slogged down the beaten track that passed for a thoroughfare in Coverdale, sharing smiles and nods with those hustling home before dark. His hands were so large that most mugs looked like teacups when he held them, and the jaw beneath his shaggy brown beard was wide and sharp as a shovelblade. He was certainly bigger than most, with broad shoulders and a chest like an iron-strapped keg. You’d have guessed from the size of his shadow that Clay Cooper was a bigger man than he was.

Kings of the wyld