Bawde is wrong. These northmen ain't like men at home. I still got both my hands an' all my fingers.
I bin runnin' scared fer weeks that iffen I get caught taking things these northern folk will have a knife out, slap me hand on an oak stump and... well I dursn't have ter say more. Bawde says they'm like men at home - an' I knows iffen a warrior or an eorl says you done summat, then a poor lass's word counts fer nothin'.
But this Oldgrove... see, he -ought- ter have done what was right, and I -ought- ter be sittin' here cursin' and cryin'. I knows I deserves it. But, instead I got a new blanket and a box of salt as gifts - an' all my fingers too.
Oh he found me alright. But I dursent know iffen I am pleased or not. I tell yer, I was a-feared, out in the dead-lands. While the heat were in me; gettin' out of the town, runnin' - I dursen't think much. But when I stopped runnin' and looked around me, I were in a bit of the corpse-fields I aint ever seen affore, holdin' his shiny star in m' hands and night comin' on...
He finds me, just after I pushes the star deep into a corpse-house. I had ter hide it, see... till I could get it back ter the Burnt Man. It aint nice, I'm tellin' yer, pushin yer hand inside some dead man's tomb... I know they'm been dead for an age... but there are worms and wriggling things... feel like dead man's fingers, cold, wriggling back, trying ter wrap themselves around yer... and the dead aint happy, up there...
An' he appears, out o' nowhere, as silent as a bloody shade, hood up like he got no face... I tell yer, I nearly soiled me britches. It aint like that in hero-tales, but I'm tellin yer - that is what fear is like. I thought the owner of the corpse-house had come fer me ...
Iffen I'm honest, I dursn't know why I tried ter convince him I aint taken the star. He knew, like a dog knows where the bitches are, an' he just stands there, not shoutin', not threatenin' ... just... lookin'. He gets the star hisself, in the end.
Then he brings me out of the dead-fields, with the shades howling at us. He dursent heed 'em, like a true warrior in a tale. But me, I tell yer... I dursn't know where ter go or what ter think. iffen I run, I know the dead' ll have me, iffen I stay next ter him he'll have m' fingers or m' hand ... or string me up, make me do the death-dance. I seen that once, out in the westfold when I was a little lass. It dursen't seem so funny now, like it did when I was a little'un watchin' with me hand in my Da's, seein' a man all kickin' in the air, stinkin', wi' his face blue, pulling faces and his tongue stickin' out like a black sausage.
