He kept his mouth firmly shut.

“How old are you, soldier?” The farmer asked.

“Thirty five. I will retire in seven years.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Kormak regretted his words immediately. Less than one in ten of his order lived through the long years of their term, and most of those were the crippled veterans who taught the next generation. The odds against his own survival were long and grew longer every year. Most likely he would never see the cloisters of Mount Aethelas again. So many of his oath year were already gone. Maera with her golden hair and lovely smile. Grim Solian. Snub nosed Rurik who had wanted so hard to be brave and had been right till the end…

And those were just the ones he knew about, for he had been sent to reclaim their swords, to take up their burdens, to kill the things that had killed them.

“You must be good with that blade.”

“I am.” And why should he not be? He had paid with his whole life to be good with it.

“Could you defeat a troll?” Kormak considered the matter. Trolls were among the toughest of the Moon’s Children. Some were tall as a house and could kill a bull with a single blow of their fist. Their skin was as hard as stone.

“I don’t know.”

“Most men would simply say no.”

“I am not most men.” The farmer looked thoughtful.

“I heard a tale once- of an order of knights sworn to oppose the Shadow. It was the mark of their order that they carried a dwarf-forged blade- on their backs to symbolise the burden of their oaths. They were supposed to have the Dragon tattooed over their hearts as well.”

So he had seen the tattoo when he was looking at the wound. Kormak cursed the fact he had adjusted his sword belt so that the scabbard hung from his shoulder, but then, after all these years he never felt comfortably carrying it in any other way. An unspoken question hung in the air but did not hang for long.

“Do you carry a dwarf-forged blade, warrior?”

Kormak knew he could simply say no. The moment would pass. These people would most likely be safe anyway behind the Elder Signs on their walls. They would never give up their daughter to make the thing in the darkness go away, would they?

And he was tired, weary from the wound. More than that. If truth be told he was tired of fighting, of killing. Mortally tired. If he said nothing, he could stay here by the fire for the night, and quietly slip away in the morning. Nobody would be any the wiser except himself. For a moment that he wanted to do that more than anything in the world but the oath held him, the words of a boy stronger than the fear and weariness of a man. “I do.”

“Then I ask of you this boon- protect us from the terrors of the night. Watch over while we sleep. Guard us, the children of the Sun, from the children of the Moon.”

All their eyes were locked on him. Fear and hope shone in them. The words were spoken according to the rite.