Kerr watched attentively as the man pulled himself, through willpower alone, to first his feet, then to a chair by the window. He nodded slightly to himself and turned his attention to sharpening his dagger to give the man some privacy to sulk.
Eventually, though, he rose to his feet and began to wrap himself, once again, in the heavy layers that had protected him from the cold earlier.
"You're from Allar, so I know you know how bad a blizzard can be. What you probably don't know, Your Grace, is just how difficult it is to travel by foot in a heavy snow." No, the Grand Duke -- and even a man with so low a rank as a lord -- would have no idea what it meant to travel in a blizzard; they had men to prepare the road for them and to travel beside them. Two men, alone, however... It was vastly different. "You'll kill us both unless you're strong enough to travel." His smile was dark as he added, "And I'm not foolish enough to throw myself on Angsar's mercy." No, he knew how that would end... "We stay until you're no longer a liability."
With that, he lifted the scarf up over his face and plunged into the snowbank outside to begin the long process of digging them out.
---
The weeks dragged by slowly. Kerr was as gracious a host and companion as he could manage to be -- which was to say, he was careful to be civil, if not particularly polite. But he was civil, in a down-to-earth, soldiering kind of way...
As soon as Calent was well enough to sit up and to help, he was put to work. There would be no pampering here -- if it were Kerr alone, he would have waited out the worst of the winter in this secluded place rather than risk a trip in the snow...but with two of them and one of them antsy to be on his way, preparations had to be made. Kerr managed to do a little hunting, so the meat had to be prepared for travel. He managed to collect some firewood, which had to be carefully dried and bundled. And a makeshift sled had to be prepared to carry everything. And if there was anything Kerr had learned, it was that survival depended on careful planning...