“Burned ’em,” muttered Grim. That was a full day’s talk out of him already.
“Burned a whole fucking pile of ’em,” hissed Dow, grinning like he never heard such a joke as corpses on fire. “They don’t scare me, big lad, no more’n you do, but I don’t plan to sit here waiting for ’em neither, just so Threetrees has time to haul his flabby old arse out of bed. I’m going south!” And he tore off another mouthful of meat.
“Who’s got the flabby arse now?”
Dogman cracked a grin as he saw Threetrees striding over towards the fire, and he started up and grabbed the old boy by the hand. He had Forley the Weakest with him and all, and Dogman clapped the little man on the back as he came past. Nearly knocked him over, he was that pleased to see they were all alive and made it through another month. Didn’t hurt to have some leadership round the fire, neither. Everyone looked happy for once, smiling and pressing hands and all the rest. Everyone but Dow, o’ course. He just sat there, staring at the fire, sucking on his bone, face sour as old milk.
“Right good to see you again, lads, and all in one piece.” Threetrees hefted his big round shield off his shoulder and leant it up against a broken old bit of wall. “How’ve you been?”
“Fucking cold,” said Dow, not even looking up. “We’re going south.”
Dogman sighed. Back together for ten heartbeats and the bickering was already started. It was going to be a tough crowd now, without Logen to keep things settled. A tough crowd, and apt to get bloody. Threetrees wasn’t rushing into anything, though. He took a moment to think on it, like always. He loved to take his moment, that one. That was what made him so dangerous. “Going south, eh?” said Threetrees, after he’d chewed it over for a minute. “And just when did all this get decided?”
“Nothing’s decided,” said the Dogman, showing his palms one more time. He reckoned he might be doing that a lot from now on.
Tul Duru frowned down at Dow’s back. “Nothing at all,” he rumbled, mightily annoyed at having his mind made up for him.
“Nothing is right,” said Threetrees, slow and steady as the grass growing. “I don’t recall this being no voting band.”
Dow took no time at all to think about that. He never took time, that one. That was what made him so dangerous. He leaped up, flinging the bone onto the ground, squaring up to Threetrees with a fighting look. “I… say… south!” he snarled, eyes bulging like bubbles on a stew.
Threetrees didn’t back down a step. That wouldn’t have been his way at all. He took his moment to think on it, course, then he took a step forward of his own, so his nose and Dow’s were almost touching. “If you wanted a say, you should have beaten Ninefingers,” he growled, “instead of losing like the rest of us.”
Black Dow’s face turned dark as tar at that. He didn’t like being reminded of losing. “The Bloody-Nine’s gone back to the mud!” he snarled. “Dogman seen it, didn’t you?”
Dogman had to nod. “Aye,” he muttered.
“So that’s the end of that! There’s no reason for us to be pissing around here, North of the mountains, with Flatheads crawling up our arses! I say south!”
“Ninefingers may be dead,” said Threetrees in Dow’s face, “but your debt ain’t. Why he saw fit to spare a man as worthless as you I’ll never know, but he named me as second,” and he tapped his big chest, “and that means I’m the one with the say! Me and no other!”
Dogman took a careful step back. The two of ’em were shaping up for blows alright, and he’d no wish to get a bloody nose in all the confusion. It would hardly have been the first time. Forley took a stab at keeping the peace. “Come on boys,” he said, all nice and soft, “there’s no need for this.” He might not have been much at killing, Forley, but he was a damn good boy for stopping those that were from killing each other. Dogman wished him luck with it. “Come on, why don’t you—”
“Shut your fucking hole, you!” growled Dow, one dirty finger stabbing savage in Forley’s face. “What’s your fucking say worth, Weakest?”
“Leave him be!” rumbled Tul, holding his great fist up under Dow’s chin, “or I’ll give you something to shout about!”
The Dogman could hardly look. Dow and Threetrees were always picking at each other. They got fired up quick and damped down quick. The Thunderhead was a different animal. Once that big ox got properly riled there was no calming him. Not without ten strong men and a lot of rope. Dogman tried to think what Logen would have done. He’d have known how to stop ’em fighting, if he hadn’t been dead.
“Shit!” shouted Dogman, jumping up from the fire all of a sudden. “There’s fucking Shanka crawling all over us! And if we get through with them there’s always Bethod to think on! We’ve a world full of scores to settle without making more ourselves! Logen’s gone and Threetrees is second, and that’s the only say I’ll hear!” He did some jabbing with his own finger, at no one in particular, then he waited, hoping like hell that it had done the trick.
“Aye,” grunted Grim.
Forley started nodding like a woodpecker. “Dogman’s right! We need to fight each other like we need the cock-rot! Threetrees is second. He’s the chief now.”
It was quiet for a moment, and Dow fixed the Dogman with that cold, empty, killing look, like the cat with the mouse between its paws. Dogman swallowed. A lot of men, most men even, wouldn’t have dared meet no look like that from Black Dow. He got the name from having the blackest reputation in the North, with coming sudden in the black of night, and leaving the villages behind him black from fire. That was the rumour. That was the fact.
It took all the bones Dogman had not to stare at his boots. He was just ready to do it when Dow looked away, eyed the others, one at a time. Most men wouldn’t have met that look, but these here weren’t most men. You could never have hoped to meet a bloodier crowd, not anywhere under the sun. Not a one of them backed down, or even seemed to consider it. Apart from Forley the Weakest, of course, he was staring at the grass before his turn even came.
Once Dow saw they were all against him he cracked a happy smile, just as if there never was a problem. “Fair enough,” he said to Threetrees, the anger all seeming to drain away in an instant. “What’s it to be then, chief?”
Threetrees looked over at the woods. He sniffed and sucked at his teeth. He scratched at his beard, taking his moment to think on it. He looked each one of them over, considering. “We go south,” he said.
He smelled ’em before he saw ’em, but that was always the way with him. He had a good nose, did the Dogman, that’s how he got the name after all. Being honest though, anyone could have smelled ’em. They fucking stank.
There were twelve down in the clearing. Sitting, eating, grunting to each other in their nasty, dirty tongue, big yellow teeth sticking out everywhere, dressed in lumps of smelly fur and reeking hide and odd bits of rusty armour. Shanka.
“Fucking Flatheads,” Dogman muttered to himself. He heard a soft hiss behind, turned round to see Grim peering up from behind a bush. He held out his open hand to say stop, tapped the top of his skull to say Flatheads, held up his fist, then two fingers to say twelve, and pointed back down the track towards the others. Grim nodded and faded away into the woods.
The Dogman took one last look at the Shanka, just to make sure they were all still unwary. They were, so he slipped back down the tree and off.
“They’re camped round the road, twelve that I saw, maybe more.”
“They looking for us?” asked Threetrees.
“Maybe, but they ain’t looking too hard.”
“Could we get around them?” asked Forley, always looking to miss out on a fight.