This large village is the center of the Two-Pine clan. Some think that the settlement gets its name for being a stopping point for travelers going from Jonstown to Jarolar Keep, but the village actually gets its name from being where the Two-Pine mercenaries rest over the winter.
Horse Rest is home to 400 members of the Two-Pine clan; 220 are adults and 180 children. There are thirty-six elders of the clan here (60+). There are 60 thanes here, including the chieftain, his ring, and the priest and priestess of the clan.
Most of the other thanes and ‘carls’ are full time soldiers who earn their living as sell-swords — possession of sword, spear, cuirass, mail, or linothorax is more important to the status of ‘carl’ than a plough team or oxen. The thanes also own horses, and the cottars who don’t yet have the kit to count as full-time warriors can serve as auxiliaries, hoping to win their own equipment on a successful campaign.
The thanes here vie against each other to win men to their service — the more spears a man can command, the better he can negotiate a price from potential employers.
Horse Rest is often half-empty in Fire Season, with most of the mercenaries away and only their families and the old and infirm present. Most of them drift back in Earth Season; there is little harvest here, but as war slows elsewhere so do the offers of employment. In Dark Season, the village is packed with returned soldiers wintering with their families. By Storm Season, Horse Rest can seem a little crowded and drunken brawls are not uncommon. In Sea Season, the soldiers often ‘warm up their skills’ with cattle raids on their neighbors, and the thanes begin traveling away to Jonstown or Boldhome to look for contracts for the forthcoming campaigning season.
Like most settlements that border on Stagland, Horse Rest has a palisade wall to keep the inhabitants safe from the Telmori, and the settlement often swells with travelers
on the trail from Greenhaft who need to stop for the night. A single watchtower in the center of the village provides early warning of attack.