Hroth Aegirsson

Hroth's age and service make him a living point of reference for the Red Moot.

Appearance

Hroth is old enough that his scars have scars, bent at the shoulders but sharp in the eye, with broad hands he rests on the pommel of his runeblade.

In The Highlander

Hroth Aegirsson is First Blade of the Red Moot when the book opens. He had led it for twenty years from the stone chair beneath Orun's Weight by being less foolish than louder men and more frightening than ambitious ones. He met Caelis Vey's demands with dry contempt, refused to strip the passes of road-wardens while Varkhul hunted, and brought unwanted witnesses, Eira among them, to the envoy's private pressure. Early on he laughed at one of Eira's retorts and coughed until his hand came away spotted red. When Branok Stoneheart swore containment, Hroth warned that a true oath is not the same as a safe one, and at the formal weighing he set the condition that Branok's blade would be forfeit if the burden passed through him.

His caution during the hunt for Varkhul was tactically sound but looked like the tired hand of the old order. Branok challenged him for emergency command. Hroth fought well and cut Branok across the ribs, until Branok pressed on the doubt in his oath; his blade dimmed and he yielded. He later admitted to Eira that part of him had held command because he did not know who he was once others stopped needing him.

In defeat he became one of the book's wisest voices. He sent a whetstone to sit on his empty chair at Branok's first council. He refused to lead resistance on others' behalf or to call Branok a tyrant without a better accusation, advising Eira to resist the rotten choices and not the necessary ones, and to name the price of a dangerous man's success. He urged her into the Ink Hollow so that others would not name the truth found there. He retrained with his dimmed blade from the basics, sparred with Eira, and took her to the old weighing stones to name her fears and Branok's. He bowed his head when Redress woke clean at her refusal, and the book leaves him displaced but unbroken, walking her to the gate and telling her that neither she nor Branok was done becoming.

After the books

An elder measure of Highlander law after the crisis. He remains part of the difficult work of carrying Highlander law forward without repeating its failures.