Chapter 13: Bryndis and the Body in the Ravine

We hired Osset at the Mirewood's eastern edge, where a lean-to of lashed branches served as both the local guide's office and, from the smell of it, his primary residence. He was a compact, weathered man of approximately fifty, with the particular stillness of someone who has spent decades in country that punishes movement for its own sake. He knew the approach to the Ashpeaks' lower passes, which was what Caelen required, and he named a reasonable price, which was what Aldrath required, and he looked at each of us in turn with the measured assessment of a man accustomed to evaluating which of his clients were likely to survive, and said, with professional neutrality, that he would take us as far as the Grevath Hollow turning.

I had noted him carefully on that first morning: the calloused grip on his walking staff, the distribution of his pack weight set low and centred, the way his eyes moved to the treeline at intervals of roughly four minutes whether or not there was anything there. A man with a very long habit of coming home alive.

He had been dead approximately four hours when Bryndis found him.