"Get your fuckin' horse shut up before I shut it up for good and you have to walk your fat-ass the rest of the way to Moat Cailin."
"He's spooked," Todd argued, jerking the old palfrey's reins on one side. "Been that way ever since we started into the Barrowlands. He don't like it here, and neither do I."
Although he wouldn't tell Rog about it, he knew it was the ghosts that disquieted the horse. He felt disquieted, too. His grandmam used to tell him stories about the Barrows when he was just a boy outside Torrhen's square. Spirits of the First Men would walk the rolling hills when the moon was full, stealing children to pull down to their graves with them as revenge against the Children of the Forest. She even saw a ghost of a giant once on the Great Barrow, and said it was shaggier than an aurochs and smelled worse than aurochs shit, even as a ghost. The moon was bright tonight, but not a full moon. Todd figured some spirits walked around all the time, not just on a full moon.
"Rog?" The fat boy pulled his horse to a stop then. He peered out over the plains of stick-grass. It blew like water in the wind and the moonlight played tricks on his eyes. Even so, something dark caught his eye in the field a way off. "Rog, I think there's something out there. I saw something."
"Are you scared of the ghosties?" Rog said mockingly, grunting out a chuckle and making his gruff voice high. "Maybe it's the ghost of that little northern girl you fucked to death. Maybe she liked it so much she followed you and is gonna cut your cock off in your sleep and turn it into a ghost cock she can carry with her." He guffawed then, too loudly.
Rog always called Todd stupid and simple, but he knew Rog was the stupid one. Todd knew that you couldn't make a cock into a ghost, and plus that little girl hadn't even liked what he'd given her. He knew that for a fact because that was why he liked it so much.
Todd was barely listening, though. He'd swung down from the horse, unable to coax it any closer to the grass. He kept the rein in one hand and crept closer to the eye-tall brambles. He felt goose-pimples rising on his arms and the reins tightened as the horse lifted its head and snorted.
First Men, cursed men, squirming in the dirt men….
He couldn't say why that children's rhyme had come into his head at that moment, but it left just as quickly as it came. The palfrey suddenly screamed and took off, nearing taking Todd's arm with it. He landed with a splat in the wet dirt, his hands shooting out to catch himself but slipping into the mud up to the elbow.
"You fucking idiot! Go catch my fuckin' horse!" Rog shouted, swinging off his own mount and storming toward the young man splayed in the mud. Todd looked up at him, wide-eyed, still catching up to what was happening. He's going to kick me. He's going to kick my crooked teeth right out of my fat face. But suddenly Rog stopped and stared at him, which frightened him even more than a kick.
"Rog?"
Todd moved to stand up, the mud releasing his pale arms with a sucking sound. Before he could rise, though, there was a soft whistle through the air, then a faint thump. Rog's mouth fell open, and even in the moonlight the blood that creeped out of his mouth was darker than a shadow. Todd's bladder released as the older boy fell to his knees, then forward onto his face in the mud where Todd's own hands had just been.
When he finally lifted his eyes from the body, the spirit was right there, sleight and dark and featureless except for eyes that glowed like clouds in front of the moon.
Grandmam was a liar was the last thing he thought, before the spirit turned into a wolf and leapt.