Before They Are Hanged

beginning to bend,
squealing softly.
    Far enough for
her to slither between.
    She pushed her
bow, and quiver, and sword through first, holding them up in one
hand. She hooked her head between the bars, turning sideways, sucking
in her stomach and holding her breath, wriggling her shoulders, then
her chest, then her hips through the narrow gap, feeling the rough
metal scraping at her skin through her wet clothes.
    She dragged
herself onto the other side, tossing her weapons onto the bank. She
braced her shoulders in the archway and planted her boots against the
next bar, every muscle straining while Ninefingers dragged on it from
the other side. It gave all of a sudden, snapping in half and
showering flakes of rust into the stream, dumping her on her back,
over her head in the freezing water.
    Ninefingers
started to haul himself through, face twisted with effort. Ferro
floundered up, gasping with the cold, grabbed him under the arms and
started pulling, felt his hands grip round her back. She grunted and
wrestled and finally dragged him out. They flopped together onto the
muddy bank and lay there, side by side. Ferro stared up at the
crumbling walls of the ruined city rising sheer above her in the grey
dusk, breathing hard and listening to Ninefingers do the same. She
had not expected to get out of that place alive.
    But they were
not away quite yet.
    She rolled and
clambered up, dripping wet and trying to stop herself shivering. She
wondered if she had ever been so cold in her whole life.
    â€œThat’s
it,â€

The Hero’s Welcome
    It was raining
as Superior Glokta hobbled back into Adua. A mean, thin, ugly sort of
rain on a hard wind off the sea, that rendered the treacherous wood
of the gangplank, the squealing timbers of the wharf, the slick
stones of the quay, all slippery as liars. He licked at his sore
gums, rubbed at his sore thigh, swept his grimace up and down the
grey shoreline. A pair of surly-looking guardsmen were leaning
against a rotten warehouse ten paces away. Further on a party of
dockers were involved in a bitter dispute over a heap of crates. A
shivering beggar nearby took a couple of paces towards Glokta,
thought better of it, and slunk away.
    No crowds of
cheering commoners? No carpet of flower petals? No archway of drawn
swords? No bevy of swooning maidens? It was hardly too great a
surprise. There had been none the last time he returned from the
South. Crowds rarely cheer too loudly for the defeated, no matter
how hard they fought, how great their sacrifices, how long the odds.
Maidens might wet themselves over cheap and worthless victories, but
they don’t so much as blush for “I did my bestâ€

Cold Comfort
    West peered out
of the bushes, through the drifting flakes of snow, down the slope
toward the Union picket. The sentries were sat in a rough circle,
hunched round a steaming pan over a miserable tongue of fire on the
far side of the stream. They wore thick coats, breath smoking,
weapons almost forgotten in the snow around them. West knew how they
felt. Bethod might come this week, he might come next week, but the
cold they had to fight every minute of every day.
    â€œRight
then,â€

The High Places
    â€œThe
Broken Mountains,â€

Coming Over
    The road curved
down from the west, down the bare white valley between two long
ridges, all covered in dark pines. It met the river at the ford, the
Whiteflow running high with meltwater, fast flowing over the rocks
and full of spit and froth—earning its name alright.
    â€œSo that’s
it then,â€

Cheap at the Price
    â€œYou have
a visitor, sir,â€

To the Edge of the World
    On the morning
of their ninth day in the mountains, Logen saw the sea. He dragged
himself to the top of yet another painful scramble, and there it was.
The track dropped steeply away into a stretch of low, flat country,
and beyond was the shining line on the horizon. He could almost smell
it, a salty tang on the air with each breath. He would have grinned
if it hadn’t reminded him of home so much.
    â€œThe sea,â€

Before the Storm
    â€œWelcome,
gentlemen. General Poulder, General Kroy. Bethod has retreated as far
as the Whiteflow, and it does not seem likely that he will find any
more favourable ground on which to face us.â€

Questions
    Colonel Glokta
charged into his dining room in a tremendous hurry, wrestling
manfully with the buckle on his sword belt.
    â€œDamn it!â€

Holding the