Jezal stared vacantly after him. A few weeks ago he would have been left fuming silently by such a lecture. Now he sat limp and absorbed it meekly. He hardly knew who he was any more. It was difficult to maintain any sense of superiority in the face of his utter dependence on other people. And people of whom, until recently, he had held such a very low opinion. He was no longer under any illusions. Without Ferro's savage doctoring, and Ninefingers' clumsy nursing, he would most likely have been dead.

The Northman was walking over, boots crunching in the shingle. Time to go back in the cart. Time for more squeaking and jolting. Time for more pain. Jezal gave a long, ragged, self-pitying sigh, but stopped himself halfway through. Self-pity was for children and halfwits.

'Alright, you know the drill.' Jezal leaned forward and Ninefingers hooked his arm behind his back, the other under his knees, lifted him up over the side of the cart without even breathing hard and dumped him unceremoniously among the supplies. Jezal caught his big, dirty, three-fingered hand as he was moving away, and the Northman turned to look at him, one heavy brow lifted. Jezal swallowed. 'Thank you,' he muttered.

'What, for this?'

'For everything.'

Ninefingers looked at him for a long moment, then shrugged. 'Nothing to it. You treat folk the way you'd want to be treated, and you can't go far wrong. That's what my father told me. Forgot that advice, for a long time, and I done things I can never make up for.' He gave a long sigh. 'Still, it doesn't hurt to try. My experience? You get what you give, in the end.'

Jezal blinked at Ninefingers' broad back as he walked over to his horse. You treat folk the way you'd want to be treated. Could Jezal honestly say that he had ever done that much? He thought about it as the cart set off, axles shrieking, carelessly at first, and then with deepening worry.

He had bullied his juniors, pandered to his seniors. He had often screwed money from friends who could not afford it, had taken advantage of girls, then brushed them off. He had never once thanked his friend West for any of his help, and would happily have bedded his sister behind his back if she had let him. He realised, with increasing horror, that he could scarcely think of a single selfless thing that he had ever done.