Olver

Olver was nine years old when the wars left him alone in the world. Aiel killed his father, and sickness took his mother not long after, and what remained was a Cairhienin refugee boy loose in Maerone, one small face among the thousands the fighting had pushed toward the Erinin. He came out of it with almost nothing, and with the sharp instincts of a child who has had to feed himself.

Those instincts served him. He knew how to make himself useful to men with full purses, and for a time he ran errands for Lord Edorion of the Band of the Red Hand in exchange for food and clothing. Under Mat Cauthon's care he did rather better: a messenger's post in the Band's camp, coins in his pocket, and a horse of his own, all of which he accepted as nothing less than his due. Mat's company suited him. There was food in it, adventure, and a kind of belonging he had gone without since Cairhien.

For all his mischief, there was a hard grain of wariness in him; the roads had taught him what carelessness cost. He carried one grudge openly and without apology. Aiel had killed his father, and Olver hated Aiel, all of them, completely, with a nine-year-old's undivided conviction.