Widows and widowers, the lame and the bent, Ravast’s companions fought hard and in silence, long past all thoughts of complaint or fear. When they fell, they made no cries, and not one begged for mercy. It was only much later that Ravast understood how that battle, that savage defence of the village, marked for his companions a purpose to their deaths – a moment they had all been waiting for. When faced with the choice of sudden death or the lingering wasting away of old age, not one had hesitated in taking up a weapon.

Ravast alone survived, and fought with such desperation that he held the attackers back, until the now caparisoned warriors who had finally gathered behind him elected to advance to join him rather than waiting in their shield-wall.

The Thelomen had been driven back that day, without ever reaching the village. Ravast had been proclaimed both a hero and a fool, and on that day he had caught the eye of Lasa Rook.

Thereafter, Ravast fought that battle many times, in the tales told at the hearth, and in his dreams, where the fear took hold of him in ways he had not known on the day itself. He did well to disguise it, of course, as befitted the young hero of that day. But the truth of it was, he carried more scars from the dreams of the battle than from the battle itself.

Lasa Rook had won him with little effort, not knowing, he suspected, the lame, shivering creature that hid inside his hale young body. Fear had made a life of farming and herding most welcome, and if others noted how strange it was that such a natural warrior should choose to set aside his weapons and armour, it was easy enough to then consider the lure of Lasa Rook, the village’s most desired woman.

He had learned to hide that fear, and had raised high walls around his dreams. Tathenal could well dream of floods and devastation, and gather uprooted trees with which to build his salvation. But no such gesture existed for Ravast. Neither a ship built by any Thel Akai, nor one built by a god, could ride above the waves of fear.

Upon such seas, every vessel will sink, vanishing beneath the roiling tumult. Upon such seas, a man such as I can only drown.

And yet, here he walked, at seeming ease alongside his fellow husbands.

She will not risk the Jaghut’s unreasoning path. She will know when to turn back. Long before any battle. If not, then I will confess to her. I will tell her about the widows and widowers, the too old and the crippled, who rushed to their place in that first line. And the silence that took them, bittersweet with anticipation, and how they all gathered up their own fears, and sent them into the one man who did not belong among them.