'Better to come late than not to come at all.'

'You'll get no trace of an argument from me. That is a fact.'

West frowned down at Grim sewing his arm up. 'You alright?'

'Well, you know. Tul's dead.'

'Dead?' West stared at him. 'How?'

'It's a battle, ain't it? Dead men are the point o' the fucking exercise.' He waved the flask around. 'I've been sat here, thinking about what I could've done differently. Stopped him going down them steps, or gone down with him to watch his back, or made the sky fall in, or all kind o' stupid notions, none of 'em any help to the dead nor the living. Seems I can't stop thinking, though.'

West frowned down at the rutted earth. 'Might be's a game with no winners.'

'Ah, fuck!' Dogman snarled as the needle jabbed into his arm again, and he flung the empty flask bouncing away. 'The whole fucking business has no winners, though, does it! Shit on it all, I say.'

Grim pulled his knife out and cut the thread. 'Move your fingers.' It burned all the way up Dogman's arm to make a fist, but he forced the fingers closed, growling at the pain as they bunched up tight.

'Looks alright,' said Grim. 'You're lucky.'

The Dogman stared round miserably at the carnage. 'So this is what luck looks like, is it? I've often wondered.' Grim shrugged his shoulders, ripped a piece of cloth for a bandage.

'Do you have Bethod?'

Dogman looked up at West, his mouth open. 'Don't you?'

'A lot of prisoners, but he wasn't among them.'

Dogman turned his head and spat his disgust out into the mud. 'Nor his witch, nor his Feared, nor neither one of his swollen up sons, I'll be bound.'

'I imagine they'll be riding for Carleon as swiftly as possible.'

'More'n likely.'

'I imagine he'll try to raise new forces, to find new allies, to prepare for a siege.'

'I shouldn't wonder.'

'We should follow him as soon as the prisoners are secure.'

Dogman felt a sudden wave of hopelessness, enough almost to knock him over. 'By the dead. Bethod got away.' He laughed, and felt tears prickling his eyes the next moment. 'Will there ever be an end to it?'

Grim finished wrapping the bandage and tied it up tight. 'You're done.'

Dogman stared back at him. 'Done? I'm starting to think I won't ever be done.' He held his hand out. 'Help me up, eh, Furious? I got a friend to bury.'

The sun was getting low when they put Tul in the ground, just peering over the tops of the mountains and touching the edges of the clouds with gold. Good weather, to bury a good man. They stood round the grave, all packed in tight. There were plenty of others being buried, the sad words for them wept and whispered all around, but Tul had been well-loved, no man more, so there was quite the crowd. Even so, all round Logen there was a gap. An empty space a man wide. That space he used to have around him in the old days, where no one would dare to stand. Logen hardly blamed them. He'd have run away himself, if he could.