The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness, #2)

by Joe Abercrombie

Isern pushed the door creaking open and bright daggers glittered along its edge, stabbing, stabbing. Rikke closed one eye altogether and the other to a slit, groaning as they helped her through the doorway. She felt weak as a newborn calf. Everything hurt. The soles of her feet. The tips of her fingers. The inside of her arse. They helped her onto her father’s favourite bench in the overgrown garden, with the view of Uffrith’s steep streets sloping down to the glittering sea. “Oh, the sun’s a bastard,” she muttered, but she managed to smile as the salt breeze came up and kissed her clammy face. “But the wind’s a good friend.” “Other way around where we’re going,” said Isern, dumping a sheepskin about Rikke’s shoulders. “Up into the hills.” “Everything’s a matter of where you stand.”