“That’s not how it was,” growled Logen.

Bethod’s laughter echoed harsh on the wind. “Is it not? I wanted to talk with Shama Heartless, but you had to kill him! I tried to strike a deal at Heonan, but you had to climb up and settle your score, and start a dozen more! Peace, you say? I begged you to let me make peace at Uffrith, but you had to fight Threetrees! On my knees I begged you, but you had to have the biggest name in all the North! Then once you’d beaten him, you broke your word to me and let him live, as though there was nothing bigger to think about than your damn pride!”

“That’s not how it was,” said Logen.

“There’s not a man in the North that doesn’t know the truth of it! Peace? Hah! What about Rattleneck, eh? I would have ransomed his son back to him, and we could all have gone home happy, but no! What did you say to me? Easier to stop the Whiteflow than to stop the Bloody-Nine! Then you had to nail his head to my standard for the whole world to see, so the vengeance would never find an end! Every time I tried to stop, you dragged me on, deeper and deeper into the mire! Until there could be no stopping any longer! Until it was kill or be killed! Until I had to put down the whole North! You made me King, Ninefingers. What other choices did you leave me?”

“That’s not how it was,” whispered Logen. But he knew it had been.

“Tell yourself that I’m the cause of all your woes if it makes you happy! Tell yourself I’m the merciless one, the murderous one, the bloodthirsty one, but ask yourself who I learned it from. I had the best master! Play at being the good man if you please, the man with no choices, but we both know what you really are. Peace? You’ll never have peace, Bloody-Nine. You’re made of death!”

Logen would’ve liked to deny it, but it would just have been more lies. Bethod truly knew him. Bethod truly understood him. Better than anyone. His worst enemy, and still his best friend. “Then why not kill me, when you had the chance?”

The King of the Northmen frowned, as though he couldn’t understand something. Then he started to laugh again. He shrieked with it. “You don’t know why? You stood right beside him and you don’t know? You learned nothing from me, Ninefingers! After all these years, you still let the rain wash you any way it pleases!”

“What’re you saying?” snarled Logen.

“Bayaz!”

“Bayaz? What of him?”

“I was ready to put the bloody cross in you, sink your carcass in a bog with all the rest of your misfit idiots and was happy to do it, until that old liar came calling!”

“And?”

“I owed him, and he wanted you let go. It was that meddling old fuck that saved your worthless hide, and nothing else!”

“Why?” growled Logen, not knowing what to make of it, but not liking that he was learning about it so long after everyone else.

But Bethod only chuckled. “Maybe I didn’t grovel low enough for his taste. You’re the one he saved, you ask him the whys, if you live long enough. But I don’t think you will. I take your challenge! Here. Tomorrow. At sunrise.” He rubbed his palms together. “Man against man, with the future of the North hanging bloody on the outcome! Just as it used to be, eh, Logen? In the old days? In the sunny valleys of the past? Roll the dice together one more time, shall we?” The King of the Northmen stepped slowly back, away from the battlements. “Some things have changed, though. I’ve a new champion now! If I was you, I’d say your goodbyes tonight, and get ready for the mud! After all… what was it you used to tell me…?” His laughter faded slowly into the dusk. “You have to be realistic!”

“Good piece o’ meat,” said Grim.

A warm fire and a good piece of meat were two things to be thankful for, and there’d been times enough when Dogman had a lot less, but watching the blood drip from that chunk of mutton was making him feel sick. Reminded him of the blood that came out of Shama Heartless when Logen split him open. Years ago, maybe, but the Dogman could see it fresh as yesterday. He could hear the roars from the men, the shields crashing together. He could smell the sour sweat and the fresh blood on the snow.

“By the dead,” grunted Dogman, mouth watering like he was about to puke. “How can you think about eating now?”

Dow gave a toothy grin. “Us going hungry ain’t going to help Ninefingers any. Nothing is. That’s the point of a duel, ain’t it? All about one man.” He poked at the meat with his knife and made the blood run sizzling into the fire. Then he sat back, thoughtful. “You reckon he can do it? Really? You remember that thing?” Dogman felt a ghost of the sick fear he’d had in the mist, and he shuddered to his boots. He weren’t likely ever to forget the sight of that giant coming through the murk, the sight of his painted fist rising, the sound of it crunching into Threetrees’ ribs and crushing the life out of him.

“If anyone can do it,” he growled through his gritted teeth, “I reckon Logen can.”

“Uh,” grunted Grim.

“Aye, but do you think he will? That’s my question. That, and what happens if he don’t?” It was a question that Dogman could hardly bear to think up an answer to. Logen would be dead, for a first thing. Then there’d be no siege of Carleon anymore. Dogman had too few men left after the mountains to keep a piss-pot surrounded, let alone the best walled city in the North. Bethod could do as he pleased—seek out help, and find new friends, and set to fighting again. There was no one tougher in a tight corner.

“Logen can do it,” he whispered, bunching his fists and feeling the long cut down his arm burning. “He has to.”

He nearly fell in the fire when a great fat hand thumped him on the back. “By the dead but I never seen such a fire-full o’ long faces!” Dogman winced. The crazy hillman was hardly what he needed to lift his mood, grinning out of the night with his children behind him, great big weapons over their shoulders.

Crummock was down to just the two now, since one of his sons got killed up in the mountains, but he didn’t seem so upset about it. He’d lost his spear too, snapped off in some Easterner, as he was fond of saying, so he still didn’t have to carry aught himself. Neither one of the children had said much since the battle, or not in the Dogman’s hearing, anyway. No more talk about how many men folk might’ve killed. The seeing of it close up could be a woeful drain on your enthusiasm for the business of war. Dogman knew well enough how that went.

But Crummock himself had no trouble keeping cheerful. “Where’s Ninefingers got himself off to?”

“Gone off on his own. Always liked to do that, before a duel.”

“Mmm.” Crummock stroked at the fingerbones round his neck. “Speaking to the moon, I’ll be bound.”

“Shitting himself is closer to it, I reckon.”

“Well, as long as you get the shitting done before the fight, I don’t reckon anyone could grumble.” He grinned all across his face. “No one’s loved of the moon like the Bloody-Nine, I tell you! No one in all the wide Circle of the World. He’s got some kind of chance at winning a fair fight, and that’s the best a man could hope for against that devil-thing. There’s only one problem.”

“Just one?”

“There’ll be no fair fight as long as that damn witch is alive.”

The Dogman felt his shoulders slump even further. “How d’you mean?”

Crummock spun one of the wooden signs on his necklace round and around. “I can’t see her letting Bethod lose, and herself along with him, can you? A witch as clever as that one? There’s all kinds of magic she could mix. All kinds of blessings and curses. All kinds of ways that bitch could tilt the outcome, as though the chances weren’t tilted enough already.”

“Eh?”

“My point is this. Someone needs to stop her.”

Dogman hadn’t thought he could feel any lower. Now he knew better. “Good luck with that,” he muttered.