The Feared reached down and took hold of the hilt of Threetrees' sword. He slid it out from his leg and let it drop bloody in the dirt at his feet. It left no wound behind. No wound at all. Then he turned and sprang away into the gloom, and the mist closed in behind him, and the Dogman heard the sounds of him crashing away through the trees, and he was never so glad to see the back of anything.

'Come 'ere!' Dow screamed, making ready to tear down the slope after him, but Tul got in his way with one big hand held up.

'You're going nowhere. We don't know how many Shanka there are down there. We can kill that thing another day.'

'Out o' my way, big lad!'

'No.'

Dogman rolled forward, wincing all the way at the pain in his chest, started clawing his way up the slope. The mist was already spilling back, leaving the cold clear air behind. Grim was coming down the other way, bow string drawn back with an arrow nocked. There were a lot of corpses in the mud and the snow. Shanka mostly, and a couple of Carls.

Seemed to take the Dogman an age to drag himself up to Threetrees. The old boy was lying on his back in the mud, one arm lying still with his broken shield strapped to it. Air was snorting in shallow through his nose, bubbling back out bloody from his mouth. His eyes rolled down to Dogman as he crawled up next to him, and he reached out and grabbed a hold of his shirt, pulled him down, hissing in his ear through clenched tight, bloody teeth.

'Listen to me, Dogman! Listen!'

'What, chief?' croaked Dogman, hardly able to talk for the pain in his chest. He waited, and he listened, and nothing came. Threetrees' eyes were wide open, staring up at the branches. A drop of water splattered on his cheek, ran down into his bloody beard. Nothing else.

'Back to the mud,' said Grim, face hanging slack as old cobwebs.

West chewed at his fingernails as he watched General Kroy and his staff riding up the road, a group of dark-dressed men on dark horses, solemn as a procession of undertakers. The snow had stopped, for now, but the sky was angry black, the light so bad it felt like evening, and an icy wind was blowing through the command post making the fabric of the tent snap and rustle. West's borrowed time was almost done.

He felt a sudden impulse, almost overpowering, to turn and run. An impulse so ludicrous that he immediately had another, equally inappropriate, to burst out laughing. Luckily, he was able to stop himself from doing either. Lucky to stop himself laughing, at least. This was far from a laughing matter. As the clattering hooves came closer, he was left wondering whether the idea of running was such a foolish one after all.