“I don’t spring up from a fall as lightly as I once did.” He’s a few years younger than she is, but he’s been thrown a hundred times—after a point, his bones simply tired of it, he supposes. The chill of wet clothes likely isn’t doing much for the sore muscle, but that can’t be helped. “It wants rest. ...And a horse to bear me up the road to Lethevale, but that I cannot have.”

The ruefulness in that teeters on the edge of bitterness. He’s always had a pessimistic streak; that, too, has grown stronger in recent years.