“Time’s kind to no one,” said Shivers, pressing the bottle into her limp hand.

They flung him down in front of the dais Skarling’s Chair was set on. So Rikke stood over him. Stood in judgement, where he’d stood over so many others, the stones he lay on stained with the blood he’d ordered spilled.

“Welcome back to your throne room, Great Wolf,” she said, and took a long pull at the bottle, and winced as it burned right down her gullet, while her warriors strove manfully to out-gloat each other.

Stour tried to push himself up, arms trembling, making a blubbing whimper all the way. Then Hardbread stepped up and kicked him in the guts, and knocked him flat again.

“Grovel, you fucker!” he spat. Harsher than Rikke was used to from her father’s old white-haired War Chief, but men’s mercy often runs out the very moment they’re called upon to use it.

“What’s wrong with his legs?” she asked.

“Didn’t want him running off.” Shivers shrugged. “Slit the tendons behind his knees.”

Isern stuck her bottom lip out approvingly. “That’ll do it. Here’s where cocky gets you.” And she gave Rikke a meaningful glance from under her brows.

Stour managed to get as far as his knees this time but looking like he might fall any moment. Rikke hardly knew him, his nose was so broke and his mouth so bloated and his cheeks so scabbed and swollen. Kept licking at his bloody top lip with this little slurp. He stared about like he didn’t recognise the place, one of his eyes near swollen shut and the other with a great red stain on the white. Rikke found she was rubbing gently at her own blind eye and had to force her hand away from it.

“You took Carleon,” croaked Stour. Even his voice sounded broken.

Gloating felt like something of an effort, but folk were expecting it. “Aye, well,” said Rikke, “Leo’s little jaunt to the Union seemed like more of a boy’s trip. Thought I’d invite King Orso to join you while I stayed here. Make better use o’ my time. Got me a new chair out of it.” Her warriors laughed, but Stour was in no state to appreciate a joke.

“My father alive?” he whispered.

“For now,” said Isern. “Hiding away in the High Valleys.”

Stour hung his head. “He’d give anything… to get me back.” Something dripped on the floor. Bastard was crying. To suffer bravely takes practice, and he’d never had any. “I’m the future o’ the North,” he mumbled, like even he could hardly believe it might ever have been true. No matter how much pride a man has, it don’t take much, in the end, to beat it all out of him. To make him want nothing but for the beating to stop. “Please.”

Rikke had a real bruiser of a speech all worked out, about the wrongs he’d done the North and the price he’d have to pay and how we all build our own gallows and he was about to hang from his and blah, blah, fucking blah. She’d been polishing it up for days like a champion might his feast-day helmet. But she felt no joy in crowing over such a broken thing as this. She took another pull on the bottle and nearly gagged on it.