“Bloody-Nine, you broken dog!” Scale came pounding out of the shadows, boots battering the floorboards, an axe in his great fists with a blade big as a cart-wheel. “Here’s your death!”

Logen stayed where he was, crouching loose and ready, and he felt himself smile. The odds were against him, maybe, but that was nothing new. It was almost a relief, not to have to think. Fine words and politics, none of that meant anything to him. But this? This he understood.

The blade crashed into the boards, sent splinters flying. Logen had already rolled out of the way. Now he backed off, watching, moving, letting Scale cleave the air around him. The air healed quick, after all. The next blow flashed sideways and Logen dodged back, let it chop a great lump of plaster from the wall. He stepped in closer as Scale snarled again, his furious little eyes bulging, ready to swing his axe round in a blow to split the world.

The pommel of the Maker’s sword crunched into his mouth before he got the chance, jerked his head up, spots of black blood and a chunk of white tooth flying. He staggered back and Logen followed him. Scale’s eyes rolled down, axe going up high, opening his bloody mouth to make another bellow. Logen’s boot rammed hard into the side of his leg. His knee bent back the wrong way with a sharp pop and he dropped to the boards, axe flying from his hands, his roar turning to a shriek of pain.

“My knee! Ah! Fuck! My knee!” He thrashed on the floor, blood running down his chin, trying to kick his way back with only one good leg.

Logen laughed at him. “You bloated pig. I warned you, didn’t I?”

“By the fucking dead!” barked Dow. He sprang up out of Skarling’s chair, axe and sword in his hands. “If you want a thing done fucking right, you’d best get ready to set your own hand to it!”

Logen would’ve liked to stab Scale right through his fat head, but there were too many other men needed watching. The two Carls were still standing by the door. Calder was loading up his next bolt. Logen sidled into space, trying to keep his eye on all of them at once, and Dow most of all. “Aye, you faithless bastard!” he shouted. “Let’s have you!”

“Faithless, me?” Dow snorted as he came on slow down the steps, one at a time. “I’m a dark bastard, aye, I know what I am. But I’m nothing to you. I know my friends from my enemies. I never killed my own. Bethod was right about one thing, Bloody-Nine. You’re made of death. If I can put an end to you, d’you know what? That’ll be the best thing I’ve done in my life.”

“That all?”

Dow showed his teeth. “That, and I’m just plain sick o’ taking your fucking say-so.”

He came on fast as a snake, axe swinging over, sword flashing across waist high. Logen dodged the axe, met the blade with his own, metal clanging on metal. Dow caught him in his sore ribs with his knee and sent him gasping back towards the wall, then came at him again, blades leaving bright traces in the darkness. Logen sprang out of the way, rolled and came up, strutting out into the middle of the hall again, sword hanging loose from his hand.

“That it?” he asked, smiling through the pain in his side.

“Just getting the blood flowing.”

Dow leaped forward, made to go right and came left instead, sword and axe sweeping down together. Logen saw them coming, weaved away from the axe, turned the sword off his own and stepped in, growling. Dow jerked back as the Maker’s blade hissed through the air right in front of his face, stumbled away a step or two. His eye twitched, some red leaking down his cheek from a nick just under it. Logen grinned, spun the grip of his sword round in his hand. “Blood’s flowing now, eh?”

“Aye.” Dow gave a grin of his own. “Just like old times.”

“I should’ve killed you then.”

“Damn right you should’ve.” Dow circled round him, always moving, weapons gleaming in the cold light from the tall windows. “But you love to play the good man, don’t you? Do you know what’s worse than a villain? A villain who thinks he’s a hero. A man like that, there’s nothing he won’t do, and he’ll always find himself an excuse. We’ve had one ruthless bastard make himself King o’ the North, and I’ll be damned before I see a worse.” He feinted forward and Logen jerked back.

He heard the click of Calder’s flatbow again and saw the bolt flash right between them. Dow scowled over at him. “You trying to kill me? You loose another bolt and you’re spitted, you hear?”

“Stop pissing around and kill him, then!” snapped Calder, cranking away at his flatbow.

“Kill him!” bellowed Scale, from somewhere in the shadows.

“I’m working at it, pig.” Dow jerked his head at the two Carls by the door. “You two going to pitch in or what?” They looked at each other, none too keen. Then they came forward into the hall, their round shields up, their eyes on Logen, herding him towards one corner.

Logen bared his teeth as he backed off. “That’s how you’ll get it done, is it?”

“I’d rather kill you fair. But kill you crooked?” Dow shrugged his shoulders. “Just as good. I ain’t in the business o’ giving chances. Go on then! At him!”

The two of them closed in, cautious, Dow moving off to the side. Logen scrambled back, trying to look scared and waiting for some kind of chance. It wasn’t long coming. One of the Carls stepped a touch too close, let his shield drop low. He chose a bad moment to raise his axe and a bad way to do it. There was a click as the Maker’s sword took his forearm off, left it hanging from his elbow by a scrap of chain-mail. He stumbled forward, dragging in a great wheezing breath, making ready to scream, blood spurting out of the stump of his arm and splattering on the boards. Logen chopped a great gash out of his helmet and he dropped down on his knees.

“Gwarghh…” he muttered, blood pouring down the side of his face. His eyes rolled up to the ceiling and he flopped on his side. The other Carl jumped over his body, roaring at the top of his lungs. Logen caught his sword, their blades scraping together, then he barged into the man’s shield with his shoulder, sent him sprawling on his arse. He gave a wail, the Carl, one boot sticking up. Logen swung the Maker’s sword down and split that foot in half up to his ankle.

Quick footsteps came up under the Carl’s shriek. Logen spun, saw Black Dow charging at him, face crushed up into a killing grin.

“Die!” he hissed. Logen lurched away, the blade just missing him on one side, the axe on the other. He tried to swing the Maker’s sword but Dow was too quick and too clever, shoved Logen back with his boot and sent him staggering.

“Die, Bloody-Nine!” Logen dodged, parried, stumbled as Dow came on again, no pauses and no mercy. Steel glinted in the darkness, blades lashing, killing blows, every one.

“Die, you evil fucker!” Dow’s sword chopped down and Logen only just brought his own round in time to block it. The axe came out of nowhere, up from underneath, clattered into the crosspiece and tore Logen’s blade spinning from his numb hand. He wobbled back a couple of strides and stood, heaving in air, sweat tickling at his neck.

It was quite a scrape he was in. He’d been in some bad ones alright, and lived to sing the songs, but it was hard to see how this could get much worse. Logen nodded towards the Maker’s sword, lying on the boards just next to Dow’s boot. “Don’t suppose you fancy giving a man a fair chance, and letting me have that blade, eh?”

Dow grinned wider than ever. “What’s my name? White Dow?”

Logen had a knife to hand, of course. He always did, and more than one. His eyes flickered from the notched blade of Dow’s sword to the glinting edge of his axe and back. No amount of knives were going to be a match for those, not in Black Dow’s hands. Then there was Calder’s flatbow still rattling away as he tried to load the bastard thing again. He wouldn’t miss forever. The Carl with the split foot was dragging himself squealing towards the door, on his way to let some more men in and finish the job. If Logen stood and fought he was a dead man, Bloody-Nine or not. So it came to a choice between dying and a chance at living, and that’s no choice at all.