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twig. That would
hardly fill the gap, but it was all he had. He tore at it with his teeth, tough
as old boot leather, and choked it down with some snow.
    Logen shielded his eyes with his arm and looked
northward down the valley, the way he’d come the day before. The ground dropped
slowly away, snow and rock giving way to the pine-covered fells of the high
valleys, trees giving way to a crinkled strip of grazing land, grassy hills
giving way to the sea, a sparkling line on the far horizon. Home. The thought
of it made Logen feel sick.
    Home. That was where his family was. His father—wise
and strong, a good man, a good leader to his people. His wife, his children.
They were a good family. They deserved a better son, a better husband, a better
father. His friends were there too. Old and new together. It would be good to
see them all again, very good. To speak to his father in the long hall. To play
with his children, to sit with his wife by the river. To talk of tactics with
Threetrees. To hunt with the Dogman in the high valleys, crashing through the
forest with a spear, laughing like a fool.
    Logen felt a sudden painful longing. He nearly choked
on the pain of it. Trouble was, they were all dead. The hall was a ring of
black splinters, the river a sewer. He’d never forget coming over the hill,
seeing the burnt-out ruin in the valley below. Crawling through the ashes,
fumbling for signs that someone got away, while the Dogman pulled at his shoulder
and told him to give it up. Nothing but corpses, rotted past knowing. He was
done looking for signs. They were all dead as the Shanka could make them, and
that was dead for sure. He spat in the snow, brown spit from the dry meat. Dead
and cold and rotted, or burned to ashes. Gone back to the mud.
    Logen set his jaw and clenched his fists under the rotten
shreds of blanket. He could go back to the ruins of the village by the sea,
just one last time. He could charge down with a fighting roar in his throat,
the way he had done at Carleon, when he’d lost a finger and won a reputation.
He could put a few Shanka out of the world. Split them like he’d split Shama
Heartless, shoulder to guts so his insides fell out. He could get vengeance for
his father, his wife, his children, his friends. That would be a fitting end
for the one they called the Bloody-Nine. To die killing. That might be a song
worth the singing.
    But at Carleon he’d been young and strong, and with
his friends behind him. Now he was weak, and hungry, and alone as could be.
He’d killed Shama Heartless with a long sword, sharp as anything. He looked
down at his knife. It might be a good one, but he’d get precious little vengeance
with it. And who’d sing the song anyway? The Shanka had poor singing voices and
worse imaginations, if they even recognised the stinking beggar in the blanket
after they’d shot him full of arrows. Perhaps the vengeance could wait, at
least until he had a bigger blade to work with. You have to be realistic, after
all.
    South then, and become a wanderer. There was always
work for a man with his skills. Hard work perhaps, and dark, but work all the
same. There was an appeal in it, he had to admit. To have no one depending on
him but himself, for his decisions to hold no importance, for no one’s life or
death to be in his hands. He had enemies in the south, that was a fact. But the
Bloody-Nine had dealt with enemies before.
    He spat again. Now that he had some spit he thought he
might make the most of it. It was about all he did have—spit, an old pot, and
some stinking bits of blanket. Dead in the north or alive in the south. That
was what it came down to, and that was no choice at all.
    You carry on. That’s what he’d always done. That’s the
task that comes with surviving, whether you deserve to live or not. You
remember the dead as best you can. You say some words for them. Then you carry
on, and you hope for better.
    Logen took in a long, cold breath, and blew it