"Stop!" Loman called to the column of soldiers, holding up a hand before he dropped out of his saddle and strode through the muddy, slushy snow on the cobblestone road to reach the widower.
"What happened, goodman?" Loman asked as he reached out to put a hand on the other man's shoulder, feeling the bone-deep cold, weariness, and despair that had seeped into the man's bones.
"It, it happened last night, yer lordship," he man said, momentarily startled that anyone had bothered to listen to his pleas. "I, I weren't home, but, but when I came back this morning after tha snow stopped, it were like this, yer lordship," he said as his shoulders shook with a combination of suppressed sobs and shivering from the cold. "Me wife, Saela an' me daughter, Hannah, she's only two winters old, yer lordship, they were home alone when it happened an' now… now…"
