Scenn saw Isern spit one through the face. Saw Scofen hack another’s chest open with their father’s axe, his red insides popping out. There was a silly bastard with a silly helmet made from jawbones and Scenn dropped his father’s hammer on it like a falling boulder and crushed his head into his shoulders in a great fountain of blood.

Smashing left and right, he was, and roaring and spinning the hammer and sending men screaming and reeling and flying. He was a bloody whirlwind, like his father at his best. Or his worst. Beloved o’ the moon, he was, and smiled upon by chances. He thought someone might’ve cut him but it didn’t seem to make much difference. He was still swinging the hammer so he reckoned he’d live and if he didn’t, well, here was a death the moon would smile upon.

A tall one was pointing, screeching at his men in a jagged tongue, but Isern bounded up on a wagon in a shower of bones and sprang down on him, spear darting out and taking him in the breastbone and he sprayed blood from his mouth and fell on his knees and Scofen split his head in half with their father’s axe.

They might’ve competed over which of ’em hated their da more, but for better or worse he’d given ’em this, made ’em ready for this, brought ’em to the moon’s notice.

A Crinna bastard covered in bones came gibbering at him and Scenn roared, and swung, and the hammer caught him in the side with all its weight, brushed him away like cobwebs, shattered the bones in him and the bones on him and flung him spinning in a shower of red specks and white splinters. A great maddened dog ran past with an arrow in its side. Another came at Scenn but Scofen caught it in the belly with a great sweep of his axe and sent it tumbling away to roll and mewl and wriggle.

There was death smeared all over and the good grass watered with good blood and the moon could not but smile on this day’s work. Rikke-o’-the-Long-Eye in particular, who’d looked but a pale and stringy streak when she was carried into the hills but had seen this come, made this come, laid out the good gifts so they could all take their fill.

Scenn laughed as he kicked a limping savage in the back and smashed his arse in with the hammer, smashed his head in as he crawled. Swung for another as he ran and missed, and stumbled around in a circle and was nearly dragged right over.

It was a fearsome weapon, the hammer, but heavy as mountains. He rather wished he’d got the spear, now, then maybe he could’ve flitted about the battlefield like his sister, darting in and out like a toad’s tongue. Mind you, he hadn’t the belly for that slippery business, nor honestly the wits, nor honestly the puff.

He set the hammer head-down and leaned on it, catching his breath, watching Scofen hack at the dead and Isern stand on a man’s back and stab him through the throat and the rest of the hillmen stream into the back of the Crinna bastards and send them scattering like starlings.