By the next day he had a home of sorts—a bed in a lean-to at the back of the woodworker’s shop and a line strung to help him find the jacks pit out back and the way to the front of the house. From there, someone’s child was always ready to guide him where he needed to go. He learned their names quickly, having mastered that art training recruits.

Soon he needed neither guide nor twine to find his way around. Many simple chores were still within his ability; as he learned the routes from home to home, to and from water, he found ways to make himself useful. He sharpened the woodworker’s tools, carried anything that needed carrying, put out his hands for one of the women to wind yarn, held up one end of a board while someone else lashed it in place, helped with whatever crop was being harvested. He ate what food was offered him—always enough and always cheerfully offered.

And for a time each day, in the freshness before the day’s heat, he practiced the exercises he had practiced his entire adult life. He was not a soldier any longer, but he could not give up that habit. He told himself it kept him fit for the work he did now. Soon he knew by the sound that he had a gaggle of children trying out the same exercises. Then the heavier footsteps of adults.

“Why?” he asked them.

“Sometimes there are pirates.”

“I am done with war,” Stammel said. But he knew as he said it that war might not be done with him. He hated the thought. For so many years, he had gone to war almost every campaign season; he had endured what that meant. Blindness had freed him from war, as it caged him in darkness, and he had finally come to treasure that freedom. And these people, hardworking all of them, and most of them kind … he had seen more than enough of war and what war did to lands and people. He did not want that here.

“There are rumors from the mainland,” Cadlin said one day, his plane hissing along the wood. “Trouble there. Maybe it’s why the wizard brought you here, because we need a soldier.”

“There are always rumors,” said Rort from the doorway. “And the wizard would have brought us a soldier, not a blind man.” He spat; Stammel heard the gobbet hit the stone beside the workshop door. “No offense to you, Matthis, but you’re not a soldier now.”

“True,” Stammel said. He was sharpening Cadlin’s tools, his thumb as good a guide to angle and sharpness as his eyes had been. For a moment he was tempted to throw the best-balanced knife so it would stick quivering in the door frame next to Rort’s head, but that was foolish. He knew Rort to be honest and kind, though rough in speech.