He'd kept his robe on because of the cold, and was glad of it when the door rattled open not long after dawn and the Lord of Hollowtree, his warsword, four bristling-with-blades guards and Taeauna had all trooped in, all fully dressed and with the alert faces of folk who'd been up and doing things for hours. Someone had given Taeauna patched and well-worn leather armor that was tight enough to creak, here and there, but hung loosely in other places. Her welcoming smile, however, lit up Rod's morning like the sun.

The jug of wash-water was icy, and Rod emerged from behind the curtain shivering to find the lord and the guards gone again. Lhauntur, however, stood waving at the bed, and a stream of servants were dumping armfuls of this and that on it.

"Don't stare at yon heap like you've never seen clothes before, goodman," the warsword told him gruffly. "Get dressed in whatever fits. 'Tis yours. There's food coming, too."

Taeauna was already kneeling beside the bed raking through piles of homespun and what looked like buckskin. She cast a critical eye Rod's way, obviously measuring his height, length of limbs, and girth, and by the time Rod had curiously explored the leather shoulder sacks two young and unsmiling maids dumped into his lap, Taeauna had picked out a paltry pile of simple breeches, clumsy boots, tunics, and cloaks.

The sacks were odd pleated things of clanking buckles and uncured, strong-smelling hide that had an arm-loop and a chest-belt; Rod was obviously supposed to sling his over one shoulder and use the belt around his chest to keep it there. Both sacks held a lot of empty space and a sphere of oily cloth bound closed with a rawhide thong. Undone, one of these proved to be two bowls strapped rim to rim: one of wood and the other a battered and repaired warhelm. Inside the bowls were more cloth bundles: a trio of hard, round-domed loaves of dark bread, two disks of sharp-smelling cheese the size and weight of hockey pucks and the color of old yellow soap, and a tiny twist of oiled cloth with a something brown and gritty in it.