“I do not, witch.” Stand-i’-the-Barrows took a step forwards, feet falling heavy in the silence. “Remove it.”

“As you wish.”

Like water from a broken bowl, the mist drained from the clearing, but Scunlich felt no joy at its passing. He saw figures among the trees at its edge. Ghosts at first, all around, but turning more horribly real with every moment, and Scunlich found he was wishing that the mist would come again.

“Gods,” he whispered, his blood turning cold.

They were twisted things. Unholy things. Things of flesh and metal. Of tusks and teeth and rivets. Of rusted plates and criss-crossed scars. Things with flattened heads and bent limbs, cut apart and stitched together. Clutched in their claws they had cruel spears, cruel bows, cruel knives and axes and daggers.

“These I made, too,” sang the witch, stroking the hairless head of one of them. They slipped forwards, a tightening ring, dozens of them, hundreds, eyes gleaming in the gloom of the greenwood.

“What do you want?” And Scunlich heard a thing he had never heard before in the voice of Stand-i’-the-Barrows and had never thought to hear. The quaver of fear.

The witch smiled, skin twisting and puckering around the golden stitches.

“Your bones,” she said.

Satisfaction and Regret

“It’s all done,” said Calder.

He sounded puzzled. But, for a man watching all his dreams dissolve, very calm. Handled defeat a lot better than most great warriors Clover had known. He looked almost amused by the sudden turn towards disaster. “My son’s dead. The North’s lost. It’s all done.”

No one was disagreeing, and Clover least of all.

Calder’s guards had made a crescent-shaped wall around that little green hill with the one flat rock on top, their shields locked and their weapons ready. Might well have been the only order left in the whole army. The right wing crumbled when the men of Uffrith came pouring down. The centre was shattered when the men of the West Valleys ripped through the baggage into their rear. The hillmen had come howling from the trees and taught those Crinna bastards who the real savages were. Then the gates opened and Caul Shivers caught the last resistance between hammer and anvil. All managed with a few blasts of his horn as neatly as a spring dance. But with a lot more corpses.

Not far off one of those great dogs bounced and rolled and barked, its side somehow on fire, frisking madly across the grass, trying to escape from itself. Something Clover had been trying to do for years, with as little success.

“We’ve got to run,” he muttered, giving the trees a wistful glance. “Run, or give up.”

“Run or give up.” Calder gave him a withering look. “Ever the counsel of Jonas Clover. I’m surprised you’re not advising me to switch sides.”

Clover winced. “Fear it’s a bit late for that.”

“Aye. Just one thing I have to do first. Meant to do it after I won.” He breathed in, and sighed out. “But I guess it’ll have to be now.”