Logen thought of the floor in Bethod’s hall, and the two princes, laughing and poking. “Alright,” he muttered, standing up and hefting the sword. “Alright.”

Blacktoe smiled. “You were right, Ninefingers. I never should have knelt to Bethod. Never. Shit on him and his Feared. It would have been better to die up in the mountains, fighting him to the last. There might have been something fine in that. I just had enough. You can see that, can’t you?”

“I can see that,” muttered Logen. “I’ve had enough myself.”

“Something fine,” said Blacktoe, staring far up into the grey skies, “I just had enough. So I reckon I earned this. Fair is fair.” He lifted his chin. “Well then. Get it done, lad.”

Logen raised the sword.

“I’m glad it’s you, Ninefingers,” hissed Blacktoe through gritted teeth, “for what it’s worth.”

“I’m not.” Logen swung the blade down.

The scorched stumps were still smouldering, smoke curling up into the air, but all was cold now. Logen’s mouth tasted salty, like blood. Perhaps he bit his tongue somewhere. Perhaps it was someone else’s. He threw the sword down and it bounced and clattered, shedding red specks across the dirt. Quai gaped around for a moment, then he folded up and coughed puke into the road. Logen stared down at Blacktoe’s headless corpse. “That was a good man. Better than me.”

“History is littered with dead good men.” Bayaz knelt stiffly and picked up the sword, wiped the blade on Blacktoe’s coat, then he squinted up the road, peering through the haze of smoke. “We should be moving. Others might be on their way.”

Logen looked at his bloody hands, slowly turning them over and over. They were his hands, no doubt. There was the missing finger. “Nothing’s changed,” he mumbled to himself.

Bayaz straightened up, brushing the dirt from his knees. “When has it ever?” He held out the sword out to Logen, hilt first. “I think you’ll still be needing this.”

Logen stared at the blade for a moment. It was clean, dull grey, just as it had always been. Unlike him, it showed not so much as a scratch from the hard use it had seen that day. He didn’t want it back. Not ever.

But he took it anyway.

PART II

What Freedom Looks Like

The point of the shovel bit into the ground with the sharp scrape of metal on earth. An all too familiar sound. It didn’t bite in far, for all the effort put behind it, as the soil was rocky hard and baked by the sun.

But she wasn’t to be deterred by a little hard soil.

She had dug too many holes, and in ground worse for digging than this.

When the fighting is over, you dig, if you’re still alive. You dig graves for your dead comrades. A last mark of respect, however little you might have had for them. You dig as deep as you can be bothered, you dump them in, you cover them up, they rot away and are forgotten. That’s the way it’s always been.

She flicked her shoulder and a sent a shovelful of sandy soil flying. Her eyes followed the grains of dirt and little stones as they broke apart in the air, then fell across the face of one of the soldiers. One eye stared at her reproachfully. The other had one of her arrows snapped off in it. A couple of flies were buzzing lazily around his face. There would be no burial for him, the graves were for her people. He and his bastard friends could lie out in the merciless sun.

After all, the vultures have to eat.

The blade of the shovel swished through the air and bit again into the soil. Another clump of dirt tumbled away. She straightened up and wiped the sweat from her face. She squinted up at the sky. The sun was blazing, straight above, sucking whatever moisture remained out of the dusty landscape, drying the blood on the rocks. She looked at the two graves beside her. One more to go. She would finish this one, throw the earth on top of those three fools, rest for a moment, then away.

Others would be coming for her soon enough.

She stuck the shovel into the earth, took hold of the water skin and pulled the stopper out. She took a few lukewarm swallows, even allowed herself the luxury of pouring a trickle out into her grimy hand and splashing it on her face. The early deaths of her comrades had at least put a stop to the endless squabbling over water.

There would be plenty to go round now.

“Water…” gasped the soldier by the rocks. It was surprising, but he was still alive. Her arrow had missed his heart but it had killed him still—just a little less quickly than she had intended. He had managed to drag himself as far as the rocks, but his crawling days were over. The stones around him were coated in dark blood. The heat and that arrow would do for him soon, however tough he was.

She wasn’t thirsty, but there was water to spare and she wouldn’t be able to carry it all. She took a few more swallows, letting it slosh out of her mouth and down her neck. A rare treat out here in the Badlands, to let water fall. Shining drops spattered onto the dry earth, turning it dark. She splashed some more on her face, licked her lips, and looked over at the soldier.

“Mercy…” he croaked, one hand clasped to his chest where the arrow was sticking out of it, the other stretched weakly towards her.

“Mercy? Hah!” She pushed the stopper back into the skin, then tossed it down next to the grave. “Don’t you know who I am?” She grabbed hold of the handle of the shovel, the point of its blade bit once more into the earth.

“Ferro Maljinn!” came a voice from somewhere behind her, “I know who you are!”

A most unwelcome development.

She swung the shovel again, mind racing. Her bow was lying just out of reach on the ground by the first grave she had dug. She threw some dirt away, her sweating shoulders prickling at the unseen presence. She glanced over at the dying soldier. He was staring at a point behind her, and that gave her a good idea where this new arrival was standing.

She dug the point of the shovel in again, then let go and sprang forward out of the hole, rolling across the dirt, snatching up her bow as she moved, notching an arrow, drawing back the string in one smooth motion. An old man was standing about ten strides away. He was making no move forward, was holding no weapon. He was just standing, looking at her with a benign smile.

She let the arrow fly.

Now Ferro was about as deadly with a bow as it’s possible to be. The ten dead soldiers could have testified to that, if they’d been able. Six of them had her arrows sticking out of them, and in that fight she hadn’t missed once. She couldn’t remember missing at close range, however quickly the shot had been taken, and she’d killed men ten times further away than this smiling old bastard was now.

But this time she missed.

The arrow seemed to curve in the air. A bad feather maybe, but it still didn’t seem quite right. The old man didn’t flinch, not even a hair. He simply stood, smiling, exactly where he’d always stood, and the arrow missed him by a few inches and disappeared off down the hillside.

And that gave everyone time to consider the situation.

He was a strange one, this old man. Very dark-skinned, black as coal, which meant he was from the far south, across the wide and shelterless desert. That’s a journey not lightly taken, and Ferro had rarely seen such people. Tall and thin with long, sinewy arms and a simple robe wrapped round him. There were strange bangles round his wrists, stacked up so they covered half his forearms, glittering dark and light in the savage sun.

His hair was a mass of grey ropes about his face, some hanging down as low as his waist, and there was a grey stubble on his lean, pointed jaw. He had a big water skin wrapped around his chest, and a bunch of leather bags hanging from a belt around his waist. Nothing else. No weapon. That was the strangest thing of all, for a man out here in the Badlands. No one came to this god-forsaken place except those who were running, and those sent to hunt them. In either case, they should be well armed.