CHAPTER 5: LEECH WARDEN
The board called it Contract 17-E-51.
Everyone else called it "the leech run."
A merchant caravan needed escort from Crow's Fork to the trade ford at Duskmire—three days along a muddy track that skirted the Black Fen. Pay was 28 silver for four bodies, E-rank, hazard bonus if you kept all the wagons upright.
The hazard was stirges—blood-drinking bat-things the size of housecats with a needle that could drain a man in six heartbeats if it found the big vein.
The guild had lost two parties to the fen already this season. The posting stayed up because the pay kept climbing.
Torven took one look at the board and laughed until he coughed.
"Stirge alley? Again? They'll run out of idiots before winter."
Kael read the sheet twice, then tore the tag off the board.
"We're taking it."
Torven stopped laughing. "We?"
"You, me, Lysa, Dren. Same split as last time. I'll take the double share again if you're scared."
Torven stared at him like he'd grown a second head. "You're cracked."
Kael just folded the tag and tucked it into his belt. He'd already bought the gambeson (thick quilted linen, second-hand but clean) and a proper short sword with a guard that didn't wobble. The boots were new. Everything fit like it had been waiting for him.
They left at dawn with four wagons, six nervous merchants, and sixteen oxen that smelled like they knew what was coming.
Day one was quiet. Day two, the fen started breathing.
The first wave came at dusk—twenty, maybe thirty stirges peeling off the black water like thrown knives. The merchants screamed. Oxen bolted. Torven locked shields with the drover and roared for formation.
Kael stepped out in front.
The first stirge hit him center chest, needle punching through gambeson and shirt and skin. He felt the cold burn as it started to drink.
He let it.
Three full heartbeats. Four. Enough to feel the pull, the way the proboscis flexed, the exact pressure it used to keep the wound open.
Then he crushed its skull with his off-hand and ripped the needle free.
The second one went for his neck. He turned his head just enough that the needle slid along the tendon instead of into it. Same burn, same cold suction. He counted to five this time.
By the tenth stirge, the pain was a memory. The puncture wounds closed almost as fast as they opened. Blood loss slowed to a lazy seep.
He started moving.
He learned their wingbeats—how the left wing dipped half a finger earlier when they dove from the right. Learned the tiny hiss they made when the proboscis extended. Learned the exact moment the body went hollow as it filled.
He killed twenty-three.
The last one tried to flee. Kael threw his hatchet thirty paces and split its spine mid-air. The blade came back to his hand like it belonged there.
When the screaming stopped, the caravan master was on his knees vomiting. Two oxen were down, pale and swaying. One merchant had a stirge still latched to his thigh; Lysa had to cut its head off to get it to let go.
Torven's shield was shredded. Lysa's quiver was empty. Dren's left arm hung swollen and purple.
Kael's gambeson was soaked red, but when he peeled it off at camp that night the skin underneath was unmarked. Not scarred—unmarked. Like the needles had kissed him and changed their minds.
Torven watched him strip to the waist and wash in the cold stream.
"You're not human anymore," he said quietly.
Kael wrung out his shirt. "Still bleed. Just not for long."
Night two was worse. Fifty stirges came in two waves. The merchants refused to move until Kael promised to stand watch alone.
He did.
He stood in the moonlight with his sword bare and let them come.
He learned how they hunted in packs, how the leaders hung back and tasted the wind for blood-smell, how they adjusted dive angle when the target moved. He learned the exact tensile strength of their wings (thin enough to slice with a sharp edge, thick enough to turn a dull one).
He killed forty-one. Lost count after that.
By the time the third dawn bled across the fen, the stirges had learned something too: the tall one in the middle didn't fall down anymore. Some of the younger ones still tried. The older ones circled high and waited for easier meat.
They never got it.
The caravan reached the ford intact. The master paid fifty-six silver instead of twenty-eight and tried to kiss Kael's boots. Kael took the coins and walked away.
Back at Branch 17, the clerk counted the contract complete and stamped it without comment. Torven handed in his shredded shield for repair and told the common room the fen had been "mostly quiet." Nobody believed him, but nobody asked questions either.
Three nights later the guild evaluator—an old woman named Maris with a face like cracked leather—called Kael into the back office.
She closed the door, set a single candle on the table, and stared at him for a long time.
"Two parties died on that route last month," she said. "You brought four wagons through without losing a single man. Merchants are calling you the Leech Warden now. That true?"
Kael shrugged. "Stirges didn't like me much."
Maris tapped the table. "I've got reports from three different sources saying you stood in the open and let the things drink you like a tavern pump. That you pulled needles out of your own neck and kept swinging. That accurate?"
"More or less."
She leaned forward. "Show me your neck."
Kael tilted his head. The skin was smooth, unmarked, not even the faint white lines you get from old scratches.
Maris sat back. "Captain Rhen put you E— after the trial. I'm supposed to review for promotion. Normally a body needs twenty stamped E contracts and a field evaluation to move to E. You've done five contracts total. All successful. All… irregular."
She paused, choosing words the way a miser chooses coins.
"I can push you to E(solid). Green stripe turns solid. Pay doubles. But people are starting to talk, and talk draws eyes. Higher eyes than mine. You understand?"
Kael met her stare. "I'm not hiding, if that's what you're asking."
"Didn't think you were." She sighed, scratched something on a slate. "Solid E it is. Effective today. Don't make me regret it."
She slid a new armband across the table—darker green, single silver thread running through it.
Kael tied it on over the place where stirges had tried and failed to kill him.
Outside, the common room had gone quiet when he walked through. Conversations restarted a beat late.
Torven raised a mug from the corner table. "Leech Warden," he toasted, half proud, half scared.
Kael lifted two fingers in salute and kept walking.
That night he bought a small oil lamp and a stack of cheap paper. He sat on the dormitory roof again and started a new page in the notebook he still kept wrapped in oiled cloth.
Under the heading STIRGES he wrote:
- Dive angle adjusts 4° left when target shifts weight right
- Wing membrane tears easiest along third vein from body
- Proboscis locks open at 7 heartbeats—break skull before 8
- Blood smell draws them from 200 paces upwind
- Older ones hesitate when pack loses >60%
He stared at the list until the lamp burned low.
Next time they meet,
It will be an absolute calamity from the start.
He was counting on it.