Made him proud to see the hillfolk fighting as one. Hadn’t happened in many a long year. Not since the Battle in the High Places, maybe, where the Bloody-Nine had killed his brother Rond. Thanks to his father’s endless appetite for wives, though, he had brothers and sisters in plenty, so not too much lost. It’s a poor life ploughed that hasn’t left a few dead siblings in its furrow. The weak are winnowed out to leave the strong. The chaff is taken by the wind, so the seed beloved of the moon can flourish.

He frowned over at a set of great pots, man high, fires banked underneath ’em, steam pouring from inside.

“What the bloody hell are the pots for?” asked Scenn. “Soup or something?”

“They’re for rendering down the corpses, d’you see.” Isern frowned at her spear’s bloody head. “So they can get at the bones.”

Scenn shook his head in disbelief. “What a pack of arseholes.”

Rance held his axe tight and tried to work up the anger. They’d come to burn his city, hadn’t they? Come to kill his people. Time to be a man.

At a fourth blast from Shivers’ horn, ear-splitting from being so close, two big Carls hefted the bar from its brackets, and two others shoved the doors wide, and they sallied from the gates of Carleon and out into the fields in front.

By the dead, the noise. At the last moment, Rance’s feet seemed stuck to the cobbles but he was carried along anyway, among the warriors spilling from the city like a cork in a flood.

Calder’s men weren’t ready. Panicked by the attacks from behind, now panicked by an attack from in front. They wavered, spears wobbling, but Rance didn’t fancy running at ’em. Didn’t fancy it at all. It came to him, of a sudden, how hard and unforgiving is a spearhead, and how soft and easily torn is a man’s belly.

He stumbled from the flow of howling, screaming, charging men. He flinched as someone toppled from the walls a few strides away, a ladder flung down in ruin on top of him. The world smelled of blood and smoke. Bodies everywhere. Wounded crawling, moaning, clutching.

His uncle had warned him it was no business for a boy o’ twelve. Now he saw it wasn’t only man’s work, but madman’s work. Someone barged him from behind and he nearly fell, tangled in his uncle’s old oversized mail. He nearly tripped over a corpse. A young man, his helmet fallen off to show blond hair matted with blood. One eye open, staring at nothing much.

He saw Caul Shivers cutting his way through the enemy, grey sword going up and whipping down with such terrible speed, with such horrible force, and it came to him how razor-sharp and ruthless is a sword-blade, and how fragile a man’s skull. Calder’s men were falling back. Falling apart. Hardly seemed like he was needed, really. Most likely there’d be time to be a man later.