Logen stared at him. 'By the dead, I don't reckon I ever saw such a piss-weak charge as this. Did you leave your bones back in the North?'

There was a bit of mumbling, a few shifty looks. Red Hat glanced sideways, his tongue wedged into his bottom lip. 'Maybe we did. Don't get me wrong, chief, or your Royal Highness, or whatever it is now.' He bowed his head to show he meant no disrespect by it. 'I've fought before and hard enough, had my life balanced on a sword's edge, and all o' that. Just, well… why fight now, is what I'm saying. What we're all thinking, I reckon. Ain't none of our business, is it? Ain't our fight, this.'

Dogman shook his head. 'The Union are going to take us for a right crowd o' cowards.'

'Who cares what they think?' someone said.

Red Hat stepped up close. 'Look, chief, I don't care much of a shit whether some fool I don't know thinks I'm a coward. I've spilled enough blood for that. We all have.'

'Huh,' grunted Logen. 'So your vote's to stay here, then, is it?'

Red Hat shrugged. 'Well, I guess—' He squawked as Logen's forehead crunched into his face, smashing his nose like a nut on an anvil. He dropped hard on his back in the mud, spluttering blood down his chin.

Logen turned round, and he let his face hang on one side, the way he used to. The Bloody-Nine's face—cold and dead, caring for nothing. It was easy to do it. Felt as natural on him as a favourite pair of boots. His hand found the cold grip of the Maker's sword, and all around him men eased back, shuffled away, muttered and whispered.

'Any other one o' you cunts want a vote?'

The lad dropped his flask in the grass and jumped up from where he'd been sitting. Logen gave a few of them his eye, one by one, whoever looked hardest, and one by one they looked at the ground, at the trees, at anything but him. Until he looked at Shivers. That longhaired bastard stared straight back at him. Logen narrowed his eyes. 'How about you?'

Shivers shook his head, hair swaying across his face. 'Oh no. Not now.'

'When you're ready, then. When any one o' you are ready. Until then, I'll have some work out o' you. Weapons,' he growled.

Swords and axes, spears and shields were all made ready quick-time. Men fussed about, finding their places, competing all of a sudden to be the first to charge. Red Hat was just getting up, wincing with one hand to his bloody face. Logen looked down at him. 'If you're feeling hard done by, think on this. In the old days you'd be trying to hold your guts in about now.'