Brodd Tenways and some of his boys were facing ’em across a windblown fire, and he had a lot of blood on his rashy face and maybe a broken nose too. Might be that Calder had been the one to do it, given how he’d come stomping past like that and now was standing next to Craw with sword in hand and smirk on face. Still, the whys didn’t seem too important right then. It was the what nexts that were looming large on everyone’s minds.

‘Put ’em away.’ Craw spoke slow but there was a kind of iron to his voice said he’d be backing down from nothing. It put iron in Beck’s bones, made him feel like he’d be backing down from nothing neither.

Tenways didn’t look like taking any backward steps himself, though. ‘You fucking put ’em away.’ And he spat blood into the fire.

Beck found his eyes had caught a lad’s on the other side, maybe a year or two older’n him. Yellow-haired lad with a scar on one cheek. They turned a little to face each other. As if on an instinct they were all pairing off with the partner who suited ’em best, like folk at a harvest dance. Except this dance seemed likely to shed a lot of blood.

‘Put ’em up,’ growled Craw, and his voice had more iron now. A warning, and the dozen all seemed to shift forwards around him at it, steel rattling.

Tenways showed his rotten teeth. ‘Fucking make me.’

‘I’ll give it a try.’

A man came strolling out of the dark, just his sharp jaw showing in the shadows of his hood, boots crunching heedless through the corner of the fire and sending a flurry of sparks up around his legs. Very tall, very lean and he looked like he was carved out of wood. He was chewing meat from a chicken bone in one greasy hand and in the other, held loose under the crosspiece, he had the biggest sword Beck had ever seen, shoulder-high maybe from point to pommel, its sheath scuffed as a beggar’s boot but the wire on its hilt glinting with the colours of the fire-pit.

He sucked the last shred of meat off his bone with a noisy slurp, and he poked at all the drawn steel with the pommel of his sword, long grip clattering against all those blades. ‘Tell me you lot weren’t working up to a fight without me. You know how much I love killing folk. I shouldn’t, but a man has to stick to what he’s good at. So how’s this for a recipe …’ He worked the bone around between finger and thumb, then flicked it at Tenways so it bounced off his chain mail coat. ‘You go back to fucking sheep and I’ll fill the graves.’

Tenways licked his bloody top lip. ‘My fight ain’t with you, Whirrun.’

And it all came together. Beck had heard songs enough about Whirrun of Bligh, and even hummed a few himself as he fought his way through the logpile. Cracknut Whirrun. How he’d been given the Father of Swords. How he’d killed his five brothers. How he’d hunted the Shimbul Wolf in the endless winter of the utmost North, held a pass against the countless Shanka with only two boys and a woman for company, bested the sorcerer Daroum-ap-Yaught in a battle of wits and bound him to a rock for the eagles. How he’d done all the tasks worthy of a hero in the valleys, and so come south to seek his destiny on the battlefield. Songs to make the blood run hot, and cold too. Might be his was the hardest name in the whole North these days, and standing right there in front of Beck, close enough to lay a hand on. Though that probably weren’t a good idea.