Ban Coverlast Courts
- In the water, Cam thrashes to try to get his balance. He's trying to swim, but it's been a while since he went for a dip; Ban is there and promises to give him directions.
- Since Ban's chore is to milk the goats, he goes and works before he can help Cam.
- While there, Ardow warns him to be careful of Cam—he's just come back from war, so who knows if he's messed up. Folks are really on edge about Cam, right?
- We get some of the backstory of why everyone is walking on eggshells around Cam. Since he's the only one in the whole town who returned from war, no one knows what to make of him.
- All kinds of questions surface: Why was he allowed to live and no one else? Was he a traitor? Why won't he tell them how everyone else died?
- Cam claims that because they're all dead, it doesn't matter if it was from an arrow or a sword—it won't change the fact that they are all dead.
- Ban gets his point, but he still thinks people have the right to know what happened out there. He's super sleepy, though, so he promises to teach Cam to swim some other time.
- When Ban asks Cam if he cares for Graceful, Cam gets upset. Low blow, Ban.
- Ban starts remembering some of the stuff he's heard about Cam: he fought for the other side (Uplanders); he killed off his own friends; and a bunch of other stories too. Ban doesn't buy them for one second.
- He asks Cam to help him hunt, and he willingly does. When Cam catches a rabbit though, it dawns on Ban that Cam moves like an Uplander soldier.
- It's as if he's still fighting the war when he's out there, hunting the animals.
- The only problem is, they hunted on the Fenisters' properly. That's a big no-no.
- When Cam delivers the game to his family and friends, Ardow accuses Ban of using Cam to get the goods—he's right, of course, and Ban considers that maybe this is about something else entirely, although he's not sure what.
- Cam decides to take some stuff from Sanderlin's store without paying, which, um, most people would call burglary.
- At first Ban hates his family for thinking such mean things about Cam, but then he starts to wonder if they're right—he did just break in to Sanderlin's store, after all.
- Ban decides to cool it with Cam for a while, and a couple days later, his friend asks him where he's been.
- They go horseback riding on a gift horse from an Uplander lord to Cam.
- Cam tells Ban that he doesn't hate Uplanders because deep down, they're just like Downlanders: humans.
- Brr… it's a really cold winter and everyone's feeling down in the dumps because of it.
- Someone named Bubbo asks Cam about his bro Bailey. What happened to him in the war?
- When Cam doesn't respond, people get agitated—Cam still doesn't answer though, and he asks them to just let him forget.
- Cam gets annoyed and leaves. Ban follows him and pushes the questions, but this just makes Cam on edge. Leave him alone already—he can't say any more than he already has.
- The next morning, Cam is gone. No one knows where he went or why, but we can't say anyone misses him.