Last Argument of Kings

Just as he had all the
long way across the plain and back, with small results.
    Jezal dan
Luthar, the King of the Union. Ninefingers would have laughed long
and hard at that, if he could have heard it. Ferro smiled to think of
him laughing. Then she realised that she was smiling, and made
herself stop. Bayaz had promised her vengeance, and given her
nothing, and left her mired here, powerless. There was nothing to
smile at.
    She sat, and
watched the boats for Yulwei.
    She did not
watch for Ninefingers. She did not hope to see him slouch onto the
docks. That would have been a foolish, childish hope, belonging to
the foolish child she had been when the Gurkish took her for a slave.
He would not change his mind and come back. She had made sure of it.
Strange, though, how she kept thinking that she saw him, in amongst
the crowds.
    The dockers had
come to recognise her. They had shouted at her, for a while. “Come
down here, my lovely, and give me a kiss!â€

Questions
    Colonel Glokta
was a magnificent dancer, of course, but with his leg feeling as
stiff as it did it was difficult for him to truly shine. The constant
buzzing of flies was a further distraction, and his partner was not
helping. Ardee West looked well enough, but her constant giggling was
becoming quite the irritation.
    â€œStop
that!â€

The Fourth Day
    He was an ugly
bastard, this Easterner. A huge big one, dressed all in stinking,
half-tanned furs and a bit of rusted chain-mail, more ornament than
protection. Greasy black hair, bound up here and there with
rough-forged silver rings, dripped with the thin rain. He had a great
scar down one cheek and another across his forehead, and the
countless nicks and pittings of lesser wounds and boils as a lad,
nose flattened and bent sideways like a dented spoon. His eyes were
screwed up tight with effort, his yellow teeth were bared, the front
two missing, his grey tongue pressed into the gap. A face that had
seen war all its days. A face that had lived by sword, and axe, and
spear, and counted every day alive a bonus.
    For Logen, it
was almost like looking in a mirror.
    They held each
other as tight as a pair of bad lovers, blind to everything around
them. They lumbered back and forward, lurching like feuding
drunkards. They plucked and tugged, bit and gouged, gripped and tore,
strained in frozen fury, blasting sour breath in each other’s
faces. An ugly, and a wearying, and a fatal dance, and all the while
the rain came down.
    Logen took a
painful dig in the gut and had to twist and wriggle to smother a
second. He gave a half-hearted head-butt and did nothing more then
scuff Ugly’s face with his forehead. He nearly got tripped,
stumbled, felt the Easterner shift his weight, trying to find a set
to throw him. Logen managed to dig him in the fruits with his thigh
before he could do it, enough to make his arms go weak for a moment,
enough so he could slide his hand up onto Ugly’s neck.
    Logen forced
that hand up, inch by painful inch, his stretched-out forefinger
creeping over the Easterner’s pitted face while he peered down
at it, cross-eyed, trying to tip his head out of the way. His hand
gripped painful tight round Logen’s wrist, trying to haul it
back, but Logen had his shoulder dipped, his weight set right. The
finger edged past his grimacing mouth, over his top lip, into Ugly’s
bent nose, and Logen felt his broken nail digging at the flesh
inside. He crooked his finger, and bared his teeth, and twisted it
about as best he could.
    The Easterner
hissed and thrashed around, but he was hooked. He’d no choice
but to grab at Logen’s wrist with his other hand and try to
drag that tearing finger out of his face. But that left Logen one
hand free.
    He snatched a
knife out and grunted as he stabbed, his arm jerking in and out.
Quick punches, but with steel on the end of them. The blade squelched
in the Easterner’s gut, and his thigh, and his arm, and his
chest, blood coming out in long streaks, splattering them both and
trickling into the puddles under their boots. Once he was stabbed
enough Logen caught him by his coat, hauled him into the air with a
jaw-clenched effort, and roared as he flung him over the battlements.
He plummeted away, limp as a carcass and soon to be one, crashed to
the ground in among his fellows.
    Logen bent over
the parapet, gasping at the wet air, the rain drops flitting down
away from him. There were hundreds of them, it