'New recruit,' grumbled the lad. 'Wants to see the chief.'

The old man squinted at Logen, frowning. 'Do I know you, friend?'

Logen lifted up his face so the torchlight fell across it. Better to look a man in the eye, and let him see you, and show him you feel no fear. That was the way his father had taught him. 'I don't know. Do you?'

'Where did you come over from? Whitesides' crew, is it?'

'No. I been working alone.'

'Alone? Well, now. Seems like I recognise—' The old boy's eyes opened up wide, and his jaw sagged open, and his face went white as cut chalk. 'By all the fucking dead,' he whispered, taking a stumbling step back. 'It's the Bloody-Nine!'

Maybe Logen had been hoping no one would know him. That they'd all have forgotten. That they'd have new things to worry them, and he'd be just a man like any other. But now he saw that look on the old boy's face—that shitting-himself look, and it was clear enough how it would be. Just the way it used to be. And the worst of it was, now that Logen was recognised, and he saw that fear, and that horror, and that respect, he wasn't sure that he didn't like seeing it. He'd earned it, hadn't he? After all, facts are facts.

He was the Bloody-Nine.

The lad didn't quite get it yet. 'Having a joke on me are yer? You'll be telling me it's Bethod his self come over next, eh?' But no one laughed, and Logen lifted his hand up and stared through the gap where his middle finger used to be. The lad looked from that stump, to the trembling old man and back.

'Shit,' he croaked.

'Where's your chief, boy?' Logen's own voice scared him. Flat, and dead, and cold as the winter.

'He's… he's…' The lad raised a quivering finger to point towards the fires.

'Well then. Guess I'll sniff him out myself.' The two of them edged out of Logen's way. He didn't exactly smile as he passed. More he drew his lips back to show them his teeth. There was a certain reputation to be lived up to, after all. 'No need to worry,' he hissed in their faces. 'I'm on your side, ain't I?'

No one said a word to him as he walked along behind the Carls, up towards the head of the fire. A couple of them glanced over their shoulders, but nothing more than any newcomer in a camp might get. They'd no idea who he was, yet, but they soon would have. That lad and that old man would be whispering, and the whispers would spread around the fire, as whispers do, and everyone would be watching him.