Dow was trotting away, arms up, dragging out the show, a half-circle of leering, gurning, sneering faces showing above the shields behind him, all shouting. ‘Black … Dow … Black … Dow …’ Tenways chanting gleefully along, and Golden, and Shivers just frowning, weapons thrusting at the air behind them in time.

Calder worked his hand trembling out of the mud. From what he could tell as red-black spots pattered onto it from his chin, not all of his finger-joints were where they used to be.

‘Get up!’ An urgent voice behind him. Pale-as-Snow, maybe. ‘Get up!’

‘Why?’ he whispered at the ground. The shame of it. Butchered by an old thug for the amusement of baying morons. He couldn’t say it was undeserved, but that made it no more appealing, and no less painful either. His eyes flickered around the circle, desperately seeking a way out. But there was no way through the thicket of stomping boots, punching fists, twisted mouths, rattling shields. No way out but blood.

He took a few breaths until the world stopped spinning, then fished his sword from the mud with his left hand and got ever so slowly to his feet. Probably he should’ve been feigning weakness, but he didn’t know how he could look any weaker than he felt. He tried to shake the fuzz from his head. He had a chance, didn’t he? Had to attack. But by the dead, he was tired. Already. By the dead, his broken hand hurt, cold all the way to his shoulder.

Dow flicked his sword spinning into the air with a flourish. Left himself open for a moment in a show of warrior’s arrogance. The moment for Calder to strike, and save himself, and earn a place in the songs besides. He tensed his leaden legs to spring, but by then Dow had already snatched the sword from the air with his left hand and was standing ready, his warrior’s arrogance well deserved. They faced each other as the crowd slowly quieted, and the blood ran from Calder’s slit chin and worked its way tickling down his neck.

‘Your father died badly, as I remember,’ Dow called to him. ‘Head smashed to pulp in the circle.’ Calder stood in silence, saving his breath for another lunge, trying to judge the space between them. ‘Hardly had a face at all once the Bloody-Nine was done with him.’ A big step and a swing. Now, while Dow was busy boasting. Two men fight, there’s always a chance. Dow grinned. ‘A bad death. Don’t worry, though—’

Calder sprang, teeth rattling as his left boot thumped down and sprayed wet dirt, his sword going high and slicing hard towards Dow’s skull. There was a slapping of skin as Dow caught Calder’s left hand in his right, crushing Calder’s fist around the hilt of his sword, blade wrenched up to waggle harmlessly at the sky.

‘—I’ll make sure yours is worse,’ Dow finished.

Calder pawed at Dow’s shoulder with his broken hand, fingers flopping uselessly at his father’s chain. The thumb still worked, though, and he scraped at Dow’s pitted cheek with the nail, drawing a little bead of blood, growling as he tried to force it into the hole where Dow’s ear used to be along with all his disappointment, and his desperation, and his anger, finding that flap of scar with the tip, baring his teeth as—