"I was on the road before here," Mat explains. "There's wars, some of them getting pretty close. Everything's scarce on the roads right now and there's refugees all over."

Which is the truth. Maybe not all of the truth, but so what? No one needs to know the specifics of Mat's life. He's not interested in anyone's pity. And that's bound to come if he admits his family weren't farmers, his father was too drunk and his mother too ill to do much of anything. Fuck that.

At least in a place where no one knows him at all, he can claim to be whatever he wants.

"Doesn't help the winter was threatening to go long, it's a cold spring. Or that we ran into some trouble and I ended up lost in the bloody woods." He shakes his head with a sigh, his expression rueful. Those weeks with Rand in the woods, sleeping under trees or in haystacks when they could find them, had been pure and utter hell.

"I'll take this place over the wet woods any day."