The Dogman's voice trailed off. A few heads turned to look at Logen as his footsteps crunched in the gravel. 'If it ain't the King o' the Northmen,' someone said.

'The Bloody-Nine his self.'

'We should bow, shouldn't we?'

They were all looking at him now. He could see their eyes gleaming in the dusk. Nothing more than shaggy outlines, hard to tell one man from another. A crowd of shadows. A crowd of ghosts, and just as unfriendly.

'You got something you want to say, Bloody-Nine?' came a voice from near the back.

'I don't reckon,' he said. 'You're doing alright.'

'Was no reason for us to be here.' A few mumbles of agreement.

'Not our bloody fight.'

'No need for them to have died.' More mutters.

'Should be you we're burying.'

'Aye, maybe.' Logen would have liked to weep at that. But instead he felt himself smiling. The Bloody-Nine's smile. That grin that skulls have, with nothing inside but death. 'Maybe. But you don't get to pick who dies. Not unless you've got the bones to put your own hand to it. Have you? Have any of you?' Silence. 'Well, then. Good for Harding Grim. Good for the rest o' the dead, they'll all be missed.' Logen spat onto the grass. 'Shit on the rest of you.' And he turned and walked back the way he came.

Into the darkness.

Answers

« ^ »

So much to do.

The House of Questions still stood, and someone had to take the reins. Who else will do it? Superior Goyle? A flatbow bolt through the heart prevents him, alas. Someone had to look to the internment and questioning of the many hundreds of Gurkish prisoners, more captured every day as the army drove the invaders back to Keln. And who else will do it? Practical Vitari? Left the Union forever with her children in tow. Someone had to examine the treason of Lord Brock. To dig him up, and root out his accomplices. To make arrests, and obtain confessions. And who else is there, now? Arch Lector Sult? Oh, dear me, no.

Glokta wheezed up to his door, his few teeth bared at the endless pains in his legs. A fortunate decision, at least, to move to the eastern side of the Agriont. One should be grateful for the small things in life, like a place to rest one's crippled husk. My old lodgings are no doubt languishing under a thousand tons of rubble, just like the rest of-—