[piosenniel]

"Do you blame me alone? Do neither of you have eyes in your head? Must I do all the thinking for us? But then, it has always been like that."

Archim spit on the ground at his brother’s words. ‘Hmmph!’ he grunted to himself. ‘If you had been doing any thinking at all we wouldn’t be in this mess.’ His thoughts ran in dark spirals as he let his horse pick its way along the track.

He hung at the back, letting his brothers take the lead. One of them turned back and shook his head at him, but Archim looked away as if he hadn’t seen the glance and the sneer. He could just imagine one of them whispering something about ‘Crow’ to the other. ‘Well, just let me be the “crow”,’ he muttered to himself, reining in Kokoroch to an even slower pace. I’ll be the one left to pick over the remains of their mangled bodies when they run into Brytta and his brother, and the three that were with them.’

The thought of Brytta sent him down another dark path, and he shifted uneasily in his saddle. Brytta had outed him once as a card cheat – he would hate to think the man would somehow out him as an accomplice to murder. Archim’s left hand toyed with the daggers that hung at the left of his belt. ‘Best we bring back the escaped murderer’s body,’ he thought to himself, a cold smile on his lips, ‘and those of the foul men who helped him to escape.’

Fréa had picked up the pace, and Archim’s horse shook his mane in frustration and whinnied, wanting to move up. ‘Have it your way,’ he said, loosening the reins and letting the black horse make up the distance. Korkoroch took his place at the tail of Graitwa’s mount and settled in to the pace. Archim, his brothers for the most part ignoring his presence, fell deeper into his dark thoughts.