right

aye." Now that he wasn't fighting for his life, the Fox noticed how much that arm hurt. "But I'd not want to be a peasant, even one with a mattock or scythe, and have one of those things spring at me from out of the woods. If I were lucky and hit it a good lick, it might run off. But if I missed that first stroke, I'd never get a chance to make a second one."
"You're right about that, too," Van said. After a moment's reflective pause, he added, "One of the ones that got away fled north."
"I saw it go. I was trying not to think about it," Gerin said wearily. "That's one past us, certain sure. I wonder how many more there are that we've never seen. Even the one is too many."
"And you're right about that," Van said. "If you're so bloody right all the time, why are we in this mess?" Gerin had no good answer for him.
VII
Rihwin walked mournfully through the courtyard, a bandage plastered over his left ear and tied round his head to hold it in place. "Can't you take that off yet?" Gerin asked him. "We've been back here ten days now, so you can't still be bleeding, and the wound didn't fester, or you'd have taken sick long since."
"Oh, I could, if that were all there was to it," Rihwin answered. "The sad truth is, though, that I'm uglier without the bandage than with it."
Gerin clapped a hand to his forehead. "You're vainer than a peacock, is what you are. If you hadn't worn that gold hoop in your ear, the monster down in Bevon's holding never would have had the chance to hook a claw on it and tear it out. And a torn ear's not the worst thing in the world, anyhow. I've seen plenty of men with worse, and that's a fact."
Rihwin's mobile features twisted into a dolorous frown. "But my earlobe has shriveled up and withered. In the southlands, surgeons had ways of repairing such wounds, for those who could bear the pain. Many did, as a ruined ear does one's appearance no good. Henceforward, I'm liable to be styled Rihwin One-Ear, not Rihwin the Fox. But who in this benighted country is