'Can't have too many arrows at a time like this,' said Tul. 'Number o' those Crinna bastards we killed today, I reckon we'll have more spears tonight than we had this morning.'

Dogman managed to put a grin on his face. 'Nice of 'em to bring us something to fight with.'

'Aye. Reckon they'd get bored right quick if we ran out of arrows.' Tul laughed, and he clapped the Dogman on the back harder than ever, hard enough to make his teeth rattle. 'We did well! You did well! We're still alive, ain't we?'

'Some of us are.' Dogman looked down at the corpse of the one man who'd died up on the tower. An old boy, hair mostly grey, a rough-made arrow in his neck. Bad luck, that had been, to catch a shaft on a day as wet as today, but you're sure to get a measure of luck in a fight, both good and bad. He frowned down into the darkening valley. 'Where the hell are the Union at?'

At least the rain had stopped. You have to be grateful for the small things in life, like some smoky kind of a fire after the wet. You have to be grateful for the small things, when any minute might be your last.

Logen sat alone beside his scrub of a flame, and rubbed gently at his right palm. It was sore, pink, stiff from gripping the rough hilt of the Maker's sword all the long day, blistered round the joints of his fingers. His head was bruised all over. The cut on his leg was burning some, but he could still walk well enough. He could've ended up a lot worse. There were more than three score buried now, and they were putting them in pits for a dozen each, just as Crummock had said they would. Three score and more gone back to the mud, and twice that many hurt, a lot of them bad.

Over by the big fire, he could hear Dow growling about how he'd stabbed some Easterner in the fruits. He could hear Tul's rumbling laughter. Logen hardly felt like a part of it, any more. Maybe he never had been. A set of men he'd fought and beaten. Lives he'd spared, for no reason that made sense. Men who'd hated him worse than death, but been bound to follow. Hardly more his friends than Shivers was. Perhaps the Dogman was his only true friend in all the wide Circle of the World, and even in his eyes, from time to time, Logen thought he could see that old trace of doubt, that old trace of fear. He wondered if he could see it now, as the Dogman came up out of the darkness.

'You think they'll come tonight?' he asked.

'He'll give it a go in the dark sooner or later,' said Logen, 'but my guess is he'll leave it 'til we're a bit more worn down.'

'You get more worn down than this?'