And a great drip came from the tree above and spattered on the knife, breaking the shaving in bits and scattering ’em across the muddy ground.

“Fucking shit!” she barked, and Downside threw his head back and laughed.

“Just goes to show,” said Clover, “how fate can smash all our plans in an instant.”

“You’ve got plans?” asked Flick, looking genuinely surprised.

“I’ve got plans like I’ve got boots.” Clover frowned down at his waterlogged footwear. “Honestly, I could always do with better ones.”

Sholla had stood, cheese in one hand, knife in the other, watching the weary men stirring about their fires, striking their tents, gathering their gear, as Black Calder’s orders spread. “What happens when we get to Carleon?”

“That is a question I’m still grappling with.” Rikke would be wondering why he’d sent no word back about her offer to Calder and, with good reason, likely thought he’d betrayed her. Calder, meanwhile, knew Clover had betrayed him once already and handed his beloved son over for rough handling by his enemies. Putting it nicely. He might be telling the truth when he said he liked Clover. But Black Calder had killed men he liked more for lesser offences. And that was without considering the outcome if the Great Wolf ever did get his freedom.

Clover winced. Something he did whenever he considered the current situation. “Seems we might be trapped ’twixt the mountains and the sea, so to speak.”

“You are,” said Sholla. “Doubt anyone much cares about the rest of us.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised how vengeance, falling from a great height, can spatter the most innocent o’ bystanders. And you, my cheese-shaving beauty, by no means qualify.”

“Hmmm.” She glanced over at Trapper, who was happening past with the remnants of his dozen, and pushed her tangled hair off her dirty

face so she could try out a smile. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it won nothing from him. “Running away might be an option,” she murmured through her fixed grin.

“By all means take to your heels, but running’s for the young. I need to sit down. Somewhere dry. And I reckon my best chance of that is to stay close to the action and try to nudge things my way.” Clover scratched gently at his scar. “Close to the action, by the dead. You make every effort to steer clear o’ something, and all you do is end up mired to your fucking neck in it.”

“We’ll all be mired soon enough.” Flick stared at the bog in the valley bottom and gave a gloomy sniff.

Sholla leaned close. “D’you reckon there comes a time when you’ve betrayed folk so often that there’s no one left to betray?”

Clover gave a weary sigh. “We may find out.”

Love, Hate, Fear

The palace wasn’t at all how he remembered it from his last visit, but King Jezal had still been alive then, and Leo had been a loyal Lord Governor with all his limbs, and the Lords’ Round had held a high-minded brotherhood of noblemen rather than a bloodthirsty rabble under the sway of an insane witch.