A voice drifted over from the forest ahead. “You with Bethod?” Whoever it was spoke Northern with some strange-sounding accent.
Dow and Dogman looked at each other for a minute, then shrugged. “No!” Dow roared back. “And if you are, you’d best make ready to meet the dead!”
A pause. “We’re not with that bastard, and never will be!”
“Good enough!” shouted Dogman, putting his head up no more’n an inch, his bow full drawn and ready in his hands. “Show yourselves, then!”
A man stepped out from behind a tree maybe six strides distant. Dogman was that shocked he nearly fumbled the string and let the shaft fly. More men started sliding out of the woods all round. Dozens of ’em. Their hair was tangled, their faces were smeared with streaks of brown dirt and blue paint, their clothes were ragged fur and half-tanned hides, but the heads of their spears, and the points of their arrows, and the blades of their rough-forged swords all shone bright and clean.
“Hillmen,” Dogman muttered.
“Hillmen we are, and proud of it!” A great big voice, echoing out from the woods. A few of ’em started to shuffle to one side, like they were making way for someone. Dogman blinked. There was a child coming between them. A girl, maybe ten years old, with dirty bare feet. She had a huge hammer over one shoulder, a thick length of wood a stride long with a scarred lump of iron the size of a brick for a head. Far and away too big for her to swing. It was giving her some trouble even holding it up.
A little boy came next. He had a round shield across his back, much too wide for him, and a great axe he was lugging along in both hands. Another boy was at his shoulder with a spear twice as high as he was, the bright point waving around above his head, gold twinkling under the blade in the strips of sunlight. He kept having to look up to make sure he didn’t catch it on a branch.
“I’m dreaming,” muttered the Dogman. “Aren’t I?”
Dow frowned. “If y’are it’s a strange one.”
They weren’t alone, the three children. Some huge bastard was coming up behind. He had a ragged fur round his great wide shoulders, and some big necklace hanging down on his great fat belly. A load of bones. Fingerbones, the Dogman saw as he got closer. Men’s fingers, mixed up with flat bits of wood, strange signs cut into them. He had a great yellow grin hacked out from his grey-brown beard, but that didn’t put the Dogman any more at ease.
“Oh shit,” groaned Dow, “let’s go back. Back south and enough o’ this.”
“Why? You know him?”
Dow turned his head and spat. “Crummock-i-Phail, ain’t it.”
Dogman almost wished it had turned out to be an ambush, now, rather than a chat. It was a fact that every child knew. Crummock-i-Phail, chief of the hillmen, was about the maddest bastard in the whole damn North.
He pushed the spears and the arrows gently out of his way as he came. “No need for that now, is there, my beauties? We’re all friends, or got the same enemies, at least, which is far better, d’you see? We all have a lot of enemies up in them hills, don’t we, though? The moon knows I love a good fight, but coming at them great big rocks, with Bethod and all his arse-lickers stuck in tight on top? That’s a bit too much fight for anyone, eh? Even your new Southern friends.”
He stopped just in front of them, fingerbones swinging and rattling. The three children stopped behind him, fidgeting with their great huge weapons and frowning up at Dow and the Dogman.
“I’m Crummock-i-Phail,” he said. “Chief of all the hillmen. Or all the ones as are worth a shit.” He grinned as though he’d just turned up to a wedding. “And who might be in charge o’ this merry outing?”
Dogman felt that hollow feeling again, but there was nothing for it. “That’d be me.”
Crummock raised his brows at him. “Would it now? You’re a little fellow to be telling all these big fellows just what to be about, are you not? You must have quite some name on your shoulders, I’m thinking.”
“I’m the Dogman. This is Black Dow.”
“Some strange sort of a crew you got here,” said Dow, frowning at the children.
“Oh it is! It is! And a brave one at that! The lad with my spear, that’s my son Scofen. The one with my axe is my son Rond.” Crummock frowned at the girl with the hammer. “This lad’s name I can’t remember.”
“I’m your daughter!” shouted the girl.
“What, did I run out of sons?”
“Scenn got too old and you give him ’is own sword, and Sceft’s too small to carry nothing yet.”
Crummock shook his head. “Don’t hardly seem right, a bloody woman taking the hammer.”
The girl threw the hammer down on the ground and booted Crummock in his shin. “You can carry it yourself then, y’old bastard!”
“Ah!” he squawked, laughing and rubbing his leg at once. “Now I remember you, Isern. Your kicking’s brought it all back in a rush. You can take the hammer, so you can. Smallest one gets the biggest load, eh?”
“You want the axe, Da?” The smaller lad held the axe up, wobbling.
“You want the hammer?” The girl dragged it up out the brush and shouldered her brother out the way.
“No, my loves, all I need for now is words, and I’ve plenty of those without your help. You can watch your father work some murder soon, if things run smooth, but there’ll be no need for axes or hammers today. We didn’t come here to kill.”
“Why did you come here?” asked Dogman, though he wasn’t sure he even wanted the answer.
“Right to business is it, and no time to be friendly?” Crummock stretched his neck to the side, his arms over his head, and lifted one foot and shook it around. “I came here because I woke in the night, and I walked out into the darkness, and the moon whispered to me. In the forest, d’you see? In the trees, and in the voices of the owls in the trees, and d’you know what the moon said?”
“That you’re mad as fuck?” growled Dow.
Crummock slapped his huge thigh. “You’ve a pretty way of talking for an ugly man, Black Dow, but no. The moon said…” And he beckoned to the Dogman like he had some secret to share. “You got the Bloody-Nine down here.”
“What if we do?” Logen came up quiet from behind, left hand resting on his sword. Tul and Grim came with him, frowning at all the painted-face hillmen stood about, and at the three dirty children, and at their great fat father most of all.
“There he is!” roared Crummock, sticking out one great sausage of a trembling finger. “Take your fist off that blade, Bloody-Nine, before I piss my breaks!” He dropped down on his knees in the dirt. “This is him! This is the one!” He shuffled forward through the brush and he clung to Logen’s leg, pressing himself up against it like a dog to his master.
Logen stared down at him. “Get off my leg.”
“That I will!” Crummock jerked away and dropped down on his fat arse in the dirt. Dogman had never seen such a performance. Looked like the rumours about him being cracked were right enough. “Do you know a fine thing, Bloody-Nine?”
“More’n one, as it goes.”
“Here’s another, then. I saw you fight Shama Heartless. I saw you split him open like a pigeon for the pot, and I couldn’t have done it better my blessed self. A lovely thing to see!” Dogman frowned. He’d been there too, and he didn’t remember much lovely about it. “I said then,” and Crummock rose up to his knees, “and I said since,” and he stood up on his feet, “and I said when I came down from the hills to seek you out,” and he lifted up his arm to point at Logen. “That you’re a man more beloved of the moon than any other!”
Dogman looked over at Logen, and Logen shrugged. “Who’s to say what the moon likes or doesn’t? What of it?”
“What of it, he says! Hah! I could watch him kill the whole world, and a thing of beauty it would be! The what of it is, I have a plan. It flowed up with the cold springs under the mountains, and was carried along in the streams under the stones, and washed up on the shore of the sacred lake right beside me, while I was dipping my toes in the frosty.”