'Still alive,' he whispered, hardly able to believe it.

He winced at the pain in his battered ribs, groaned as he turned away from the window and back into the great hall. Bethod's throne room, and now his. The thought tugged a meagre belch of laughter out of his gut, but even that stabbed at the mass of stitches through his cheek and up the side of his face. He limped out across the wide floor, every step an ordeal. The sound of his scraping boots echoed in the high rafters, over the whispering of the river down below. Shafts of blurred light, heavy with floating dust, shone down and made criss-cross patterns across the boards. Near to Logen, on a raised-up dais, stood Skarling's Chair.

The hall, and the city, and the land around it had all changed far beyond recognition, but Logen reckoned the chair itself was much the same as it had been when Skarling lived. Skarling Hoodless, greatest hero of the North. The man who'd united the clans to fight against the Union, long ago. The man who'd drawn the North together with words and gestures, for a few brief years, at least.

A simple seat for a simple man—big, honest chunks of old wood, faded paint around the edges, polished smooth by Skarling's sons, and grandsons, and the men who'd led his clan since. Until the Bloody-Nine came knocking at the gates of Carleon. Until Bethod took the chair for his own, and pretended that he was all that Skarling had been, while he forced the North together with fire, and fear, and steel.

'Well then?' Logen jerked his head round, saw Black Dow leaning in the doorway, arms folded across his chest. 'Ain't you going to sit in it?'

Logen shook his head, even though his legs were aching so bad he could hardly bear to stand a moment longer. 'Mud always did for me to sit on. I'm no hero, and Skarling was no king.'

'Turned down a crown, as I heard it told.'

'Crowns.' Logen spat onto the straw, spit still pink from the cuts in his mouth. 'Kings. The whole notion's shit, and me the worst choice there could be.'

'You ain't saying no, though, eh?'

Logen frowned up at him. 'So some other bastard even worse'n Bethod can sit in that chair, make the North bleed some more? Maybe I can do some good with it.'

'Maybe.' Dow looked straight back. 'But some men aren't made for doing good.'

'You talking 'bout me again?' chuckled Crummock, striding in through the doorway, Dogman and Grim at his shoulder.

'Not all talk's about you, Crummock,' said Dogman. 'You sleep alright, Logen?'

'Aye,' he lied. 'Like the dead.'

'What now?'

Logen stared at that chair. 'South, I reckon.'

'South,' grunted Grim, giving no clue whether he thought it was a good idea or a bad.

Logen licked at the ragged flesh at the side of his mouth, checking again, for no reason that made any sense, just how much it hurt. 'Calder and Scale are still out there, somewhere. No doubt Bethod sent 'em to find some help. From out past the Crinna, or up in the high valleys, or wherever.'