'Ninefingers!' Jezal was looking down, the watery sun behind him. 'There's a strong back! Grab the end of that beam there!'

It was hard to see what good shifting a beam might do, in all of this. But great journeys start with small steps, Logen's father had always told him. So he clambered up, wood cracking and stones sliding underneath his boots, hauled himself to the top and stood there, staring.

'By the dead.' From where he was standing, the hills of wreckage seemed to go on forever. People crawled over them, dragging frantically at the rubble, sorting carefully through it, or simply standing like him, stunned by the scale of it. A circle of utter waste, a mile across or more.

'Help me, Logen!'

'Aye. Right.' He bent down and dug his hands under one end of the great length of scarred wood. Two kings, dragging at a beam. The kings of mud.

'Pull, then!' Logen heaved, his stitches burning. Gradually he felt the wood shift. 'Yes!' grunted Jezal through gritted teeth. Together they lifted it, hauled it to one side. Jezal reached down and dragged away a dry tree-branch, tore back a ripped sheet. A woman lay beneath, staring sideways. One broken arm was wrapped around a child, curly hair dark with blood.

'Alright.' Jezal wiped slowly at his mouth with the back of one dirty hand. 'Alright. Well. We'll put them with the rest of the dead.' He clambered further over the wreckage. 'You! Bring that crowbar up here! Up here, and a pick, we need to clear this stone! Stack it there. We'll need it, later. To rebuild!'

Logen put a hand on his shoulder. 'Jezal, wait. Wait. You know me.'

'Of course. I like to think so.'

'Alright. Tell me something, then. Am I…' He struggled to find the right words. 'Am I… an evil man?'

'You?' Jezal stared at him, confused. 'You're the best man I know.'

They were gathered under a broken tree in the park, a shadowy crowd of them. Black outlines of men, standing calm and still, red clouds and golden spread out above, around the setting sun. Logen could hear their slow voices as he walked up. Words for the dead, soft and sad. He could see the graves at their feet. Two dozen piles of fresh turned earth, set out in a circle so each man was equal. The Great Leveller, just as the hillmen say. Men put in the mud, and men saying words. Could've been a scene out of the old North, long ago in the time of Skarling Hoodless.

'… Harding Grim. I never saw a better man with a bow. Not ever. Can't count the number o' times he saved my life, and never expected thanks for it. Except maybe that I'd do the same for him. Guess I couldn't, this time. Guess none of us could…'