‘Pull back!’ he bellowed at the last of his men, urging ’em between the planted stakes and up towards the Heroes. A shameful thing to show your back to the enemy, but better their eyes on your back than their spears in your front. If Black Dow wanted to fight for this worthless hill and these worthless stones he could do it his worthless self.

He strode up frowning through the thickening rain, through the gap in the mossy wall that ringed the Heroes. He walked slow, shoulders back and head high, hoping folk would think this was all well planned and he’d done nothing the least bit cowardly—

‘Well, well, well. Who should I find running away from the Union but Cairm Ironhead?’ Who else but Glama Golden, the swollen prick, leaning against one of the great stones with a big, fat smile on his big, bruised face.

By the dead, how Ironhead hated this bastard. Those big puffy cheeks. That moustache, like a pair of yellow slugs on his fat top lip. Ironhead’s skin crawled at the sight of him. The sight of him smug made him want to tear his own eyes out. ‘Pulling back,’ he growled.

‘Showing back, I’d call it.’

That got a few laughs, but they sputtered out as Ironhead came forwards, baring his teeth. Golden took a careful step back, narrowed eyes flickering down to Ironhead’s drawn sword, hand dropping to his own axe, making ready.

Then Ironhead stopped himself. He hadn’t got his name by letting anger tug him about by the nose. There was a right time to settle this, and a right way, and it wasn’t now, standing on even terms with all kinds of witnesses. No. He’d wait for his moment, and make sure he enjoyed it too. So he forced his face into a smile of his own. ‘We can’t all have your record of bravery, Glama Golden. Takes some bones to batter a man’s fist with your face the way you did.’

‘Least I fucking fought, didn’t I?’ snarled Golden, his Carls bristling up around him.

‘If you can call it fighting when a man just falls off his horse then runs away.’

Golden’s turn to bare his teeth. ‘You dare talk to me about running away, you cowardly—’

‘Enough.’ Black Dow had Curnden Craw on his left, Caul Shivers on his right and Cracknut Whirrun just behind. That and a whole crowd of heavy-armed, heavy-scarred, heavy-scowled Carls. A fearsome company, but the look on Dow’s face was more fearsome still. He was rigid with rage, eyes bulging as if they might burst. ‘This what you call Named Men these days? A pair o’ great big names with a pair o’ sulking children hiding inside?’ Dow curled his tongue and blew spit onto the mud between Ironhead and Golden. ‘Rudd Threetrees was a stubborn bastard, and Bethod a sly bastard, and the Bloody-Nine an evil bastard, the dead know that, but there are times I miss ’em. Those were men!’ He roared the word in Ironhead’s face, spraying spit and making everyone flinch. ‘They said a thing, they did a fucking thing!’