Vaylo grinned. Pasha ran up to Bern and wriggled under her granda's free arm, and he got to tell his two best girls about the day he dropped his newly minted warhammer on Nolan Culldayis' left foot whilst attempting the special move.

The wind wailed as they walked, blowing in their faces and scaling their skin. Silvery spikes of heather undulated in waves like the surface of a lake. Ahead the Copper Hills grew taller and more desolate, and Vaylo could see sunken holes in their faces where ancient and unsealed mine shafts lay. Ockish Bull had told him once that the deepest hole ever dug by a clansman could be found in these hills. "Harlin Dhoone ordered its excavation. Had an old mineshaft reopened, climbed down to the deepest level, and pointed to the ground. 'Dig there, he commanded his men, 'and do not rest your spades for one year. " Vaylo recalled asking Ockish what the hole was for; had Harlin reason to believe that a new lode of copper lay beneath? Ockish had shaken his large bland head. "Copper, no. Harlin dug it as a warning to his enemies. Cross me and you'll end up down there."

Vaylo frowned. With Ockish Bull you could never quite be sure what was and wasn't true. He could spin tales with the best of them, and possessed a facial expression so inscrutable that it never helped to look at him while he spoke. Vaylo smiled to himself, remembering. Gods, he missed him. "Granda. Over there. Look."

Vaylo followed the line of his grandson's arm, squinting to make out detail in the distance. "What is it, boy?" he barked, unable to see anything in the valley except heather and shrunken pines, and feeling the first stirrings of fear.

"Mounted men, Granda. Dozens of them."

Dear Gods, no. "Get down," he hissed. "Now!"

"Granda," came Pasha's voice, cool as cream. "They're Bludd. I can see the red banns."

Cluff Drybannock. Vaylo had dropped to his knees—he was the only one who had done so—and Hammie came forward to offer him a hand. Preferring to stand on his own, Vaylo slapped him away. "What do you see?" he asked.

Hammie frowned in concentration as he scanned the valley. "Bairns are right," he Sid eventually. "There's over a hundred clansmen down there. It's definitely Bludd, I can see their cloaks. They're heading right for us."

"It's Drybone!" Aaron said excitedly. The boy began jumping up and down and waving both hands over his head. "We're here! We're here!"

Vaylo and Hammie exchanged a glance. Hammie shrugged. Vaylo pressed his knuckles against his heart; some tightness there. "Warriors do not jump up and down when they greet each other." He gave his grandson a long, reprimanding stare. Dropping his arms, the boy fell silent. "Good. Chin up. You too, Pasha. One on each side of me."

As the bairns fell in line, Vaylo looked ahead. He could see the horsemen now, see the rich blackness of sable cloaks and the oily sheen of well-groomed horses. Most of the men had spears couched upright on saddle horns and all had longswords holstered so high on their backs that the crossguards and handguards were visible above their shoulders. They had moved into the formation known as "rule of all," where a single line curved inward forming a reverse C shape so that the farther a man stood from the center the more forward he was. It was a little-used formation and Vaylo wondered what, if anything, it meant.

Cluff Drybannock rode at the center of the line. He was bareheaded and his waist-length braids streamed behind him as he closed distance across the valley floor. Opal rings bound his hair, and as he drew closer Vaylo saw other signs of the Sull: a quarter-moon painted on the shaved portion of his skull, owl feathers sewn on the collar of his cloak, hands gloved in darkly iridescent moonsnake.

Vaylo did not move from his place on the hill. He had formed a line of his own with him at the center, a bairn on each side, Nan at one end and Hammie at the other. Nan and Hammie had taken their cue from what Vaylo had said to the bairns, and stood, chins high, as they waited. Vaylo wondered if they felt the same apprehension as he did, wondered if they also strained to make out the expression on Cluff Drybannock's red-clay face.

Spying a streak of black and gray at Dry's right stirrup, Vaylo understood what had brought these men out. The wolf dog trotted at Dry's heels, tail up and in motion, its yellow eyes alert. It had raced ahead to the Dhoonewall and returned with the mounted might of Bludd.

Vaylo swallowed. Several outcomes occurred to him, and he found some comfort in the fact that there wasn't one in which the bairns came to harm. He could see Cluff Drybannock's startling blue eyes now; all the Sull Vaylo had ever met had eyes that looked as if a light shone through them. What does he see when he looks at me? Vaylo wondered. An old man? A failed chief? An encumbrance? A rival?

As the wings of the C hit the hill and began to climb, Vaylo recognized many men: Mogo Salt, Midge Pool, Big Borro, Odwin Two Bear. He looked all of them straight in the eye. They looked right back, he was glad of that, but their faces were hard to read. In a matter of seconds the formation closed around him and he found himself facing Cluff Drybannock. Expertly, the longswordsman reined in his horse. The line halted. For a moment the wolf dog was the only thing that moved as it trotted across the thirty paces that separated Drybone from its master. Vaylo paid it no heed. His gaze was fixed on Cluff Drybannock.

The two men stared at each other, the chief's bastard and Sull bastard. Overhead a V of geese passed north, their calls dull and labored as they fought the wind. Soon they would cross the Rift, Vaylo realized, and wondered what they would see when they looked straight down into the abyss.

Cluff Drybannock did not blink or speak. Raising his left fist, he issued a prearranged command, and one hundred and sixty men— Vaylo knew this because he had counted them—stood in their stirrups and dismounted. Drybone did the same, and perhaps of all the people gathered here this day only Vaylo could tell that Dry forced his movements to slowness to match time with the other men. When a perfect half-circle had been formed a second command was issued, again with the raising of a fist.

As one a hundred and sixty men raised their arms and gripped the handles of the swords. As one they drew them. The snick of metal shaving leather rang out as a single sound. All waited. The wind died. At Vaylo's side, the wolf dog howled, confused.

Then Cluff Drybannock, the greatest longswordsman in the North, exploded into motion. Drawing a form in the air with the point of his sword, he leapt forward, his movements so swift his cloak crackled like lightning. He spoke a word and it was no word that Vaylo knew, and then, halting, he raised his longsword to his chest, took it in both hands… and sent it plunging into the earth.

That was the signal for the other hundred and sixty men to come forward and lay down their swords before their chief. Kneeling, they laid their weapons, point-out toward him, forming a semicircle of steel around Vaylo Bludd.

The Dog Lord stood and accepted them. Dry's sword vibrated right in front of him, its blade a foot deep in the stony soil. Dry himself was breathing hard, yet his face was still. "Son," Vaylo said to him.

"Father," Cluff Drybannock replied, using that word to address his chief for the first time in his twenty-nine-year life. "We have waited long days for you to come.