'What? Do you doubt that a man could hate you that much?' Crummock turned away, spreading his great long arms out wide at Tul and Grim. 'But it's not just you, Bloody-Nine! It's all of you, and me as well, and my three sons here!' The girl threw the hammer down again and planted her hands on her hips, but Crummock blathered on regardless. 'I'm thinking your boys join up with my boys and it might be we'll have eight hundred spears. We'll head up north, like we're going up into the High Places, to get around behind Bethod and play merry mischief with his arse end. I'm thinking that'll get his blood up. I'm thinking he won't be able to pass on a chance to put all of us back in the mud.'

The Dogman thought it over. Chances were that a lot of Bethod's people were jumpy about now. Worried to be fighting on the wrong side of the Whiteflow. Maybe they were hearing the Bloody-Nine was back, and thinking they'd picked the wrong side. Bethod would love to put a few heads on sticks for everyone to look at. Ninefingers, and Crummock-i-Phail, Tul Duru and Black Dow, and maybe even the Dogman too. He'd like that, would Bethod. Show the North there was no future in anything but him. He'd like it a lot.

'Supposing we do wander off north,' asked Dogman. 'How's Bethod even going to know about it?'

Crummock grinned wider than ever. 'Oh, he'll know because his witch'll know.'

'Bloody witch,' piped up the lad with the spear, his thin arms trembling as he fought to keep it up straight.

'That spell-cooking, painted-face bitch Bethod keeps with him. Or does she keep him with her? There's a question, though. Either way, she's watching. Ain't she, Bloody-Nine?'

'I know who you mean,' said Logen, and not looking happy. 'Caurib. A friend o' mine once told me she had the long eye.' Dogman didn't have the first clue about all that, but if Logen was taking it to heart he reckoned he'd better too.

'The long eye, is it?' grinned Crummock. 'Your friend's got a pretty name for an ugly trick. She sees all manner of goings-on with it. All kind of things it'd be better for us if she didn't. Bethod trusts her eyes before he trusts his own, these days, and he'll have her watching for us, and for you in particular. She'll have both her long eyes open for it, that she will. I may be no wizard,' and he spun one of the wooden signs around and around on his necklace, 'but the moon knows I'm no stranger to the business neither.'

'And what if it goes like you say?' rumbled Tul, 'what happens then? Apart from we give Bethod our heads?'