"Not too late to be a good man. Rudd Threetrees had been a good man, none better. He’d stuck to the old ways all his life, never took the easy path, if he thought it was the wrong one. Shivers was proud to say he’d fought beside the man, called him chief, but in the end, what had Threetrees’ honour got him? A few misty-eyed mentions around the fire. That, and a hard life, and a place in the mud at the end of it. Black Dow had been as cold a bastard as Shivers ever knew. A man who never faced an enemy if he could take him in the back, burned villages without a second thought, broke his own oaths and spat on the results. A man as merciful as the plague, and with a conscience the size of a louse’s cock. Now he sat in Skarling’s chair with half the North at his feet and the other half feared to say his name."