Tarn

A wandering traveller passing through, a stranger in Holmford, who knows the wildwood and the craft of tracking. When Maris goes missing, the village's fear makes a scapegoat of him first — an outsider easy to pin the blame on. In the course of the rescue, though, he proves indispensable: it is he who reads the tracks and leads through the wilds the locals fear, and from suspect he becomes Bren's chief ally.

The rescue costs him for real — he is wounded in the thigh. When the ford is opened again, he leaves by the road north, toward the Wool, as quietly as he came.