'Here's another, then. I saw you fight Shama Heartless. I saw you split him open like a pigeon for the pot, and I couldn't have done it better my blessed self. A lovely thing to see!' Dogman frowned. He'd been there too, and he didn't remember much lovely about it. 'I said then,' and Crummock rose up to his knees, 'and I said since,' and he stood up on his feet, 'and I said when I came down from the hills to seek you out,' and he lifted up his arm to point at Logen. 'That you're a man more beloved of the moon than any other!'

Dogman looked over at Logen, and Logen shrugged. 'Who's to say what the moon likes or doesn't? What of it?'

'What of it, he says! Hah! I could watch him kill the whole world, and a thing of beauty it would be! The what of it is, I have a plan. It flowed up with the cold springs under the mountains, and was carried along in the streams under the stones, and washed up on the shore of the sacred lake right beside me, while I was dipping my toes in the frosty.'

Logen scratched at his scarred jaw. 'We've got work to be about, Crummock. You got something worth saying you can get to it.'

'Then I will. Bethod hates me, and the feeling's mutual, but he hates you more. Because you've stood against him, and you're living proof a man of the North can be his own man, without bending on his knee and tonguing the arse of that golden-hat bastard and his two fat sons and his witch.' He frowned. 'Though I could be persuaded to take my tongue to her. D'you follow me so far?'

'I'm keeping up,' said Logen, but Dogman weren't altogether sure that he was.

'Just whistle if you drop behind and I'll come right back for you. My meaning's this. If Bethod were to get a good chance at catching you all alone, away from your Union friends, your crawling-like-ants sunny-weather lovers over down there yonder, then, well, he might give up a lot to take it. He might be coaxed down from his pretty hills for a chance like that, I'm thinking, hmmm?'

'You're betting that he hates me a lot.'