‘I never wanted this,’ snapped Rattleneck.
‘Believe it or not, nor did I. So let us end the fighting. Here. Now. We have the power.’
‘You listening to this?’ Blacktoe asked his Chief, voice squealing up high with disbelief. ‘Old Man Yawl won’t have no peace, not ever, and nor will I!’
‘Shut your mouth!’ snarled Rattleneck, glaring Blacktoe into a sullen silence then glancing back to Bethod, combing thoughtfully at his beard. Most of his other men had softened up, too. Thinking it over. Thinking what peace might mean. ‘Blacktoe’s got a point, though,’ said Rattleneck. ‘Old Man Yawl won’t have it, and there’s Black Dow to think on, too, and plenty of others on my side with scores to settle. They might not take to peace.’
‘Most will. For the others, it’s our job to make them take to it.’
‘They won’t let go their hate of you,’ said Blacktoe.
Bethod shrugged. ‘That they can keep. As long as they hate me in peace.’ He leaned forward and put the iron into his voice. ‘But if they fight me, I’ll crush them. Like I did Threetrees, and Beyr, and all the rest.’
‘What about the Bloody-Nine?’ asked Rattleneck. ‘You’ll be making a farmer of that animal, will you?’
Bethod gave away no hint of his doubts in that direction. ‘Maybe I will. My man. My business.’
‘He’ll just do what you tell him, will he?’ sneered Blacktoe.
‘This is bigger than one man,’ said Bethod, holding Rattleneck’s eye. ‘This is bigger than you, or me, or your son, or the Bloody-Nine. This is something we owe our people. Talk to the other clans. Call off your dogs. Tell them the land I’ve taken in battle belongs to me and my sons and their sons. What you still hold is yours. Yours and your sons’. I don’t want it.’ He stood and held out his hand, making sure it was neither palm up nor palm down, but perfectly level. Perfectly fair. A hand that took no liberties and gave no favours. A hand that could be trusted. ‘Take my hand, Rattleneck. Let’s end this.’
Rattleneck’s shoulders slumped. He looked a tired man as he slowly rose. An old man. A man with no fight left in him.
‘All I want is my son,’ he croaked, and he reached out and took Bethod’s hand, and by the dead his grip felt fine. ‘Give me my son, you can have a thousand years of peace, far as I care.’
Bethod walked with a spring in his step and an unfamiliar joy in his heart. As though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and why not? How many enemies made, how much blood spilled, how many times had he beaten impossible odds, just to survive? How long had he been living in fear?
Peace. They had told him he would never have peace.
But it was as his father had always said. Swords are well enough, but the only true victories are won with words. Now he would set to building. Building something to be proud of. Something his father would have been proud of. Something his sons-
And then he saw the Dogman, lurking at the head of the steps with the strangest guilty look on his pointed face, and Bethod felt a horror flood up in him, cold as ice, and freeze all his dreams dead.
‘What are you doing here?’ he managed to whisper.
The Dogman only shook his head, tangle of long hair swaying across his face.
‘Is Ninefingers down there?’
The Dogman’s eyes were wide and wet, and his mouth opened, but he said nothing.
‘I told you not to let him do anything stupid,’ Bethod forced through his gritted teeth.
‘You didn’t tell me how.’
‘You want me to come down there with you?’ But Craw looked far from keen, and Bethod hardly blamed him.
‘Best I go alone,’ he whispered.
Reluctantly as a man digging his own grave, Bethod edged sideways down the steps, one at a time into the buried dark. The tunnel stretched away, torchlight shining on the damp rock at the far end, shadows shifting across the moss-streaked wall as something moved.
He wanted only to run, but he forced himself towards it, step by reluctant step, breath by wheezing breath. He started to hear strange noises over the thudding of his heart. A squelching and a crunching. A humming and a whistling. Growling and grunting and occasionally full-sung phrases, and badly sung at that.
The breath crawled in Bethod’s throat as he forced himself around the corner, and looked through the wide-open door and into the cell, and he went cold from the tips of his toes to the roots of his hair. Cold as the dead.
Ninefingers stood, naked still, lips pursed as he tunelessly whistled, twisted muscles knotting and flexing as he worked, eyes shining with happiness, skin dashed and spattered black from head to toe.
There was something hanging all around the cell, glistening rope in swags and festoons like decorations for some mad festival. Guts, Bethod realised. Guts, unwound and nailed up.
‘By the dead,’ he whispered, putting one hand across his mouth at the stink.
‘That’s got it!’ And Ninefingers buried the big knife in the table and held the head dangling by one ear, blood still trickling from the hacked-off neck and spattering the floor. The head of Rattleneck’s son. He grabbed the slack jaw with his other hand and moved it clumsily up and down while he spoke through his clenched teeth in a piping mockery of a voice.
‘I want to go back to my daddy.’ And Ninefingers laughed. ‘Take me back to Daddy.’ And he chuckled. ‘I’m scared.’ And he sighed, and tossed the head away, and frowned at it as it rolled into the corner.
‘Thought that’d be funnier.’ And he looked around for something to wipe his hands on, blood-slick to the elbows, but couldn’t find anything. ‘You reckon Rattleneck’ll still want him?’
‘What have you done?’ whispered Bethod, staring at the thing on the table that hardly looked like it had ever been a man.
And Logen smiled that easy smile he used to have – the smile of a man who’d never entertained a dark purpose – and shrugged.
‘Changed my mind.’