Last Argument of Kings

into the sun, and watched the Union lads all
shuffling past the other way. There’s a certain look the beaten
get, after a fight. Slow-moving, hunched-up, mud-spattered, mightily
interested in the ground. Dogman had seen that look before often
enough. He’d had it himself more’n once. Sorrowful they’d
lost. Shamed they’d been beaten. Guilty, to have given up
without getting a wound. Dogman knew how that felt, and a gnawing
feeling it could be, but guilt was a sight less painful than a
sword-cut, and healed a sight quicker.
    Some of the hurt
weren’t so badly off. Bandaged or splinted, limping with a
stick or with their arm round a mate’s shoulders. Enough to get
light duty for a few weeks. Others weren’t so lucky. Dogman
thought he knew one. An officer, hardly old enough for a beard, his
smooth face all twisted up with white pain and shock, his leg off
just above the knee, his clothes, and the stretcher, and the two men
carrying him, all specked and spattered with dark blood. He was the
one who’d sat on the gate, when Dogman and Threetrees had first
come to Ostenhorm to join up with the Union. The one who’d
looked at ’em like they were a pair of turds. He didn’t
sound so very clever now, squealing with every jolt of his stretcher,
but it hardly made the Dogman smile. Losing a leg seemed like harsh
punishment for a sneering manner.
    West was down
there by the path, talking to an officer with a dirty bandage round
his head. Dogman couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he
could guess the gist. From time to time one of ’em would point
up towards the hills they’d come from. A steep and
nasty-looking pair, wooded mostly, with a few hard faces of bare rock
showing. West turned and caught the Dogman’s eye, and his face
was grim as a gravedigger’s. It hardly took a quick mind to see
that the war weren’t won quite yet.
    â€œShit,â€

Flowers and Plaudits
    Jezal still did
not have the slightest idea why it was necessary for him to wear his
best uniform. The damn thing was stiff as a board and creaking with
braid. It had been designed for standing to attention in rather than
riding, and, as a result, dug painfully into his stomach with every
movement of his horse. But Bayaz had insisted, and it was
surprisingly difficult to say no to the old fool, whether Jezal was
supposed to be in command of this expedition or not. It had seemed
easier, in the end, just to do as he was told. So he rode at the head
of the long column in some discomfort, constantly tugging at his
tunic and sweating profusely in the bright sun. The one consolation
was that he got to breathe fresh air. Everyone else had to eat his
dust.
    To further add
to his pain, Bayaz was intent on continuing the themes that had made
Jezal so very bored all the way to the edge of the World and back.
    â€œâ€¦it
is vital for a king to maintain the good opinion of his subjects. And
it is not so very hard to do. The lowly have small ambitions, and are
satisfied with small indulgences. They need not get fair treatment.
They need only think that they do…â€

Too Many Knives
    Logen sat on a
rock, twenty strides from the track that Crummock was leading them
up. He knew all the ways, Crummock-i-Phail, all the ways in the
North. That was the rumour, and Logen hoped it was a fact. He didn’t
fancy being led straight into an ambush. They were heading north,
towards the mountains. Hoping to draw Bethod down off his hills and
up into the High Places. Hoping the Union would come up behind him,
and catch him in a trap. An awful lot of hoping, that.
    It was a hot,
sunny day, and the earth under the trees was broken with shadow and
slashed with bright sunlight, shifting as the branches moved in the
wind, the sun slipping through and stabbing in Logen’s face
from time to time. Birds tweeted and warbled, trees creaked and
rustled, insects floated in the still air, and the forest floor was
spattered with clumps of flowers, white and blue. Summer, in the
North, but none of it made Logen feel any better. Summer was the best
season for killing, and he’d seen plenty more men die in good
weather than in bad. So he kept his eyes open, looking out into the
trees, watching hard and listening harder.
    That was the
task Dogman had given him. Staying out on the right flank, making
sure none of Bethod’s boys crept up while they were all