Lopen

Lopen is a Herdazian bridgeman of Bridge Four. He joins the crew missing his left arm, a disability that might excuse a man from bridge duty; Lopen treats it as a detail. Too light to bear the bridge's weight for long, he makes himself indispensable instead, hauling waterskins on runs, helping tend the wounded afterward, and supplying whatever the crew needs through an apparently inexhaustible network of cousins, who appear whenever a favor is required. He is irrepressible: quick with jokes, most of them about Herdazians before anyone else can make them, immune to insult, and cheerfully certain of his own importance. The men call him the Lopen, at his own insistence, because there is only one of him.