Contents

Contents

Part I

The Great Leveller
Best Laid Plans
Questions
The Wounds of the Past
The Condition of the Defences
The Tiling About Trust
Allies
Campfire Politics
Small Crimes
Rain
Bloody Company
Long Shadows
And Next… My Gold
Fear
One Hundred Words
The Blind Lead the Blind
Prince Ladisla's Stratagem
Until Sunset
Long Odds
The Road to Victory
Necessary Evils
Among the Stones
The Fruits of Boldness
One for Dinner
One of Them

Part II

Heading North
Scant Mercy
So This is Pain
One Step at a Time
The Rest is Wasted Breath
A Matter of Time
Scars
Furious
To the Last Man
Jewel of Cities
Luck
Beneath the Ruins
No Good for Each Other
The Hero's Welcome
Cold Comfort
The High Places
Coming Over
Cheap at the Price
To the Edge of the World
Before the Storm
Questions
Holding the Line
A Fitting Punishment
The Abode of Stones
Back to the Mud

Acknowledgments

The right of Joe Abercrombie to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Gollancz

An imprint of the Orion Publishing Group

Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin's Lane, London WC2H 9EA

This edition published in Great Britain in 2008 by Gollancz 13579 10 8642

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 9780575082014

Typeset at The Spartan Press Ltd, Lymington, Hants

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham plc, Chatham, Kent

The Orion Publishing Group's policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

For the Four Readers

You know who you are

PART I

PART I

'We should forgive our
enemies, but not before
they are hanged.'

Heinrich Heine

The Great Leveller

The Great Leveller

^ »

Damn mist. It gets in your eyes, so you can't see no more than a few strides ahead. It gets in your ears, so you can't hear nothing, and when you do you can't tell where it's coming from. It gets up your nose, so you can't smell naught but wet and damp. Damn mist. It's a curse on a scout.

They'd crossed the Whiteflow a few days before, out of the North and into Angland, and the Dogman had been nervy all the way. Scouting out strange land, in the midst of a war that weren't really their business. All the lads were jumpy. Aside from Threetrees, none of 'em had ever been out of the North. Except for Grim maybe. He weren't saying where he'd been.