'You'll never have anything! You'll never be anything! You'll never make anything but corpses!'

Out onto the roof, blinking in the morning brightness, spitting a mouthful of blood over his shoulder. Bethod stood at the battlements. The Named Men stumbled out of Logen's way as he strode towards him.

'You're made of death, Bloody-Nine! You're made of—'

Logen's fist crunched into his jaw and he took a flopping step back. Logen's other hand smashed into his cheek and he reeled against the parapet, a long string of bloody drool running from his split mouth. Logen caught the back of his head and jerked his knee up into Bethod's face, felt his nose crunch flat against it. Logen tangled his fingers in Bethod's hair, gripped it tight, pulled his head up high, and rammed it down into the stones.

'Die!' he hissed.

Bethod jerked, gurgled, Logen lifted his head and drove it down again, and again. The golden ring flew off his broken skull, bounced across the rooftop with a merry jingling.

'Die!'

Bone crunched, and blood shot out over the stone in fat drops and thin spatters. Pale-as-Snow and his Named Men stared, white-faced, helpless and fearful, horrified and delighted.

'Die, you fucker!'

And Logen hauled Bethod's ruined corpse into the air with one last effort and flung it tumbling over the battlements. He watched it fall. He watched it crunch to the ground and lie, on its side, arms and legs stuck out awkwardly, fingers curled as if they were grasping at something, the head no more than a dark smear on the hard earth. All the faces of the crowds of men standing below were turned towards that corpse, then slowly, eyes and mouths wide open, they lifted up to stare at Logen.

Crummock-i-Phail, standing in their midst, in the centre of the shaved circle beside the great body of the Feared, slowly raised his long arm, the fat forefinger on the end of it pointing upwards. 'The Bloody-Nine!' he screamed. 'King o' the Northmen!'

Logen gaped down at him, panting for breath, legs wobbling, trying to understand. The fury was gone and left nothing but terrible tiredness behind it. Tiredness and pain.

'King o' the Northmen!' someone shrieked, way back in the crowd.

'No,' croaked Logen, but no one heard him. They were all too drunk with blood and fury, or busy thinking what was easiest, or too scared to say any different. The chants broke out all over, first a trickle of them, then a flow, and then a flood, and all Logen could do was watch, clinging to the bloody stone and trying not to fall.

'The Bloody-Nine! King o' the Northmen!'

Pale-as-Snow was down on one knee beside him, spots of Bethod's blood sprayed across the white fur on his coat. He always had been one to lick whatever arse was nearest, but he wasn't alone. They were all kneeling, up on the walls and down on the grass. The Dogman's Carls and Bethod's. The men who'd held the shields for Logen and the ones who'd held the shields for the Feared. Maybe Bethod had taught them a lesson. Maybe they'd forgotten how to be their own men, and now they needed someone else to tell them what to do.