Kilvan

A hobgoblin of a thorp in Idir too small to have been given a name, red-skinned and dark-haired, and the first man in that country to take Mikhail’s hand.

He was the one doing the talking when a stranger came up the road, giving Mikhail the stories about Orsugo that were going around and throwing a hard look back at the man who called out from the crowd that it had been three others and not him. He heard the accent and guessed at Haudh-Gwenn, or at nowhere in Idir at all.

Then he put his hand out. He saw the state of it, took it back, wiped it, looked at it again, spat on it, wiped it again, and held it out at last while giving his name. Mikhail had already committed his own hand by then and shook it.

What left him free to spend an afternoon on a stranger was that he had already done his share and more of the work in front of them. He had been among the first to the fire the night before, had worked at it harder than anyone else in the thorp, and was the one who established that nobody had come out of that house alive. He told Mikhail without dressing it up that clearing it would be grim work. By dusk he was exhausted and slow with it, and waved off every suggestion that he stop (S0E01).