'Well, well, well, if it ain't my old friend Furious,' said Black Dow. 'Turned up late to the party, eh? You always was a slow mover, lad.'

'There were some difficulties. Marshal Burr is dead.'

'Back to the mud, eh? Well, he's in good company, at least. Plenty of good men done that these past days. Who's your chief, now?'

West took a long breath. 'I am.'

Dow laughed, and West watched him laugh, feeling the slightest bit sick. 'Big chief Furious, what do you know?' and he stood up straight and made a mockery of a Union salute while the bodies turned slowly this way and that behind him. 'You should meet my friends. They're all big men too. This here is Crendel Goring, fought for Bethod from way back.' And he reached up and gave one of the bodies a shove, watched it sway back and forth.

'This here is Whitesides, and you couldn't have found a better man anywhere for killing folk and stealing their land.' And he gave the next a push and set it spinning round and round one way, then back the other, limbs all limp and floppy.

'And this one here is Littlebone. As hard a bastard as I've ever hung.' This last man was hacked near to meat, his gold-chased armour battered and dented, a great wound across his chest and his hanging grey hair thick with blood. One leg was off below his knee, and a pool of dry blood stained the ground underneath him.

'What happened to him?' asked West.

'To Littlebone?' The great fat hillman, Crummock-i-Phail, was one of the crowd. 'He got cut down in the battle, fighting to the last man, over yonder.'

'That he did,' said Dow, and he gave West a grin even bigger than usual. 'But that's no kind of a reason not to hang him now, I reckon.'

Crummock laughed. 'No kind of a reason!' And he smiled at the three bodies turning round and round, the ropes creaking. 'They make a pretty picture, don't they, hanging there? They say you can see all the beauty in the world in the way a hanged man swings.'

'Who does?' asked West.

Crummock shrugged his great shoulders. 'Them.'

'Them, eh?' West swallowed his nausea and pushed his way between the hanging bodies into the fortress. 'They surely are a bloodthirsty crowd.'

Dogman took another pull at the flask. He was getting good and drunk now. 'Alright. Let's get it done then.'

He winced as Grim stuck the needle in, curled his lips back and hissed through his teeth. A nice pricking and niggling to add to the dull throb. The needle went through the skin and dragged the thread after, and Dogman's arm started burning worse and worse. He took another swig, rocking back and forward, but it didn't help.

'Shit,' he hissed. 'Shit, shit!'

Grim looked up at him. 'Don't watch, then.'

Dogman turned his head. The Union uniform jumped out at him straight away. Red cloth in the midst of all that brown dirt. 'Furious!' shouted the Dogman, feeling a grin on his face even through the pain. 'Glad you could make it! Real glad!'