“Bones is the theme, I reckon,” muttered Sholla.

“One to which he has committed,” said Flick, wider-eyed than ever.

A wretched group were dragged after, chained to the wagon’s seat by collars around their necks. Boys and girls, men and women, half-naked and spattered with filth to their hair, beaten and bloody, stumbling and slipping. They sent up a miserable music of moans to which the clunking of the wagon’s soiled axles was the percussion.

“Will you look at this fucking pantomime,” muttered Clover, as if anyone could’ve looked away. He was a hard man to disgust, but this spectacle had managed it.

A crowd of spiked and scarred and war-painted savages trotted behind, with their jagged weapons and their strange standards and their pierced faces, eyes rolling in ecstasy at the thought of the blood to be spilled. There were dogs with them, great dogs straining at iron-toothed leads, cruel dogs treated cruelly, big as wolves and far meaner, teeth filed to points, snarling and snapping at whoever was fool enough to stray near.

Carls and Thralls scrambled from the path of this visitation from hell—

or beyond the Crinna, which was about the same thing—with various expressions of grim hate, shock, fear, outrage and disgust.

Downside noisily hawked up phlegm and spat roughly in the savages’ direction. “It’s arseholes like this give the North a bad name.”

“For once we agree,” said Sholla.

Stand-i’-the-Barrows reined in his bone-covered horses, not moved one bit by the disgust of his supposed allies, and Clover saw Black Calder nudge his own black mount up beside the wagon. You expected a jagged howl to rip from that ghost-pale corpse face. It was almost worse to hear an ordinary sort of voice, saying ordinary sorts of things.

“Black Calder, my friend. Good to see the sun. It may dry things up.”

“We can hope,” said Calder, voice a little tight. “The scouts are looking down on Carleon, just over those hills.” He squinted up at the clouds shifting. “Reckon there’ll be a battle tomorrow.”

“Lovely.” Stand-i’-the-Barrows’ colourless eyes were fixed on the horizon. “I still have empty wagons and Bayaz told me you would help me fill them. Should we stop for dinner soon?” He turned around to talk to one of his slaves. “What do we have for dinner?”

Her split lips moved. She whispered something.

Stand-i’-the-Barrows caught her chain from the bunch and dragged her towards him so sharply, the corner of the cart dug into her shoulder and she was knocked down in the mud. He wound the chain around his fist, hauling her bruised face up towards his, her bare toes scraping at the ground. “Did you not hear me? I asked what’s for dinner.”

She had her fingers squeezed into her collar, skin all white around it from the pressure. “Mutton,” she gasped out.

Stand-i’-the-Barrows let her drop and she knelt in the mud, spitting and gasping. “I like mutton. We will have a nice gravy with it, too.” He smacked his lips. “I insist always on a good gravy.”