Tunny rubbed at his tired eyes with finger and thumb. How often had he had to explain this to a set of recruits? ‘Look. You think how stupid people are most of the time. Old men drunk. Women at a village fair. Boys throwing stones at birds. Life. The foolishness and the vanity, the selfishness and the waste. The pettiness, the silliness. You think in a war it must be different. Must be better. With death around the corner, men united against hardship, the cunning of the enemy, people must think harder, faster, be … better. Be heroic.’

He started to heave his packages down from his horse’s saddle. ‘Only it’s just the same. In fact, do you know, because of all that pressure, and worry, and fear, it’s worse. There aren’t many men who think clearest when the stakes are highest. So people are even stupider in a war than the rest of the time. Thinking about how they’ll dodge the blame, or grab the glory, or save their skins, rather than about what will actually work. There’s no job that forgives stupidity more than soldiering. No job that encourages it more.’

He looked at his recruits and found they were all staring back, horrified. Except for an oblivious Yolk, straining on tiptoe to get his spear down from his horse, perhaps the largest in the regiment. ‘Never mind,’ he snapped. ‘This bog won’t cross itself.’ He turned his back on them, patted his horse gently on the neck and sighed. ‘Oh well, old girl. Guess you’ll have to manage a little longer without me.’

Cry Havoc and …

Scorry was cutting hair when Craw got back to his dozen, or the seven who were left, leastways. Eight including him. He wondered if there’d ever been a dozen that actually had the full twelve. Sure as hell his never had. Agrick sat on a fallen tree trunk all coated with ivy, frowning into nowhere as the shears snip-snipped around his face.

Whirrun was leaning against a tree, the Father of Swords stood up on its point and the hilt cradled in his folded arms. He’d stripped his shirt off for some reason and stood there in a leather vest, a big grey stain of old sweat down the front and his long, sinewy arms sticking out. Seemed as if the more dangerous things got the more clothes he liked to lose. Probably have his arse out by the time they were finished with this valley.

‘Craw!’ he shouted, lifting his sword and shaking it around.

‘Hey, Chief.’ Drofd sitting on a branch above with back against trunk. Whittling a stick for an arrow shaft, shavings fluttering down.

‘Black Dow didn’t kill you, then?’ asked Wonderful.

‘Not right on the spot, anyway.’

‘Did he tell you what’s to do?’ Yon nodded towards the men crowding the woods all around. He had a lot less hair than when Craw left and it made him look older somehow, creases around his eyes and grey in his brows Craw never noticed before. ‘I get the feeling Dow’s planning to go.’