'Who wants to speak?' asked the Dogman, looking at them, one by one. Logen stared down at his feet, not even able to meet his eye, let alone say a word. He wasn't sure what had happened, in the battle, but he could guess. He could guess well enough, from the bits he did remember. He glanced around, licking at his split lips, but if anyone else guessed, they kept it to themselves.

'No one going to say a word?' asked Dogman again, his voice cracking.

'Guess it best be fucking me, then, eh?' And Black Dow stepped forward. He took a long look round at the gathering. Took a long look at Logen in particular, it seemed to him, but that was most likely just his own worries playing tricks.

'Tul Duru Thunderhead,' said Dow. 'Back to the mud. The dead know, we didn't always see things the same way, me and him. Didn't often agree on nothing, but maybe that was my fault, as I'm a contrary bastard at the best o' times. I regret it now, I reckon. Now it's too late.' He took a ragged breath.

'Tul Duru. Every man in the North knew his name, and every man said it with respect, even his enemies. He was the sort o' man… that gave you hope, I reckon. That gave you hope. You want strength, do you? You want courage? You want things done right and proper, the old way?' He nodded down at the new-turned earth. 'There you go. Tul Duru Thunderhead. Look no fucking further. I'm less, now that he's gone, and so are all o' you.' And Dow turned and stalked off away from the grave and into the dusk, his head down.

'We're all less,' muttered Dogman, staring down at the earth with the glimmer of a tear in his eye. 'Good words.' They all looked broken up, every one of them stood around the grave. West, and his man Pike, and Shivers, and even Grim. All broken up.

Logen wanted to feel as they did. He wanted to weep. For the death of a good man. For the fact that he might've been the one to cause it. But the tears wouldn't come. He frowned down at the fresh-turned earth, as the sun sank behind the mountains, and the fortress in the High Places grew dark, and he felt less than nothing.

If you want to be a new man you have to stay in new places, and do new things, with people who never knew you before. If you go back to the same old ways, what else can you be but the same old person? You have to be realistic. He'd played at being a different man, but it had all been lies. The hardest kind to see through. The kind you tell yourself. He was the Bloody-Nine. That was the fact, and however he twisted, and squirmed, and wished to be someone else, there was no escaping it. Logen wanted to care.