Before They Are Hanged (The First Law, #2)

by Joe Abercrombie

Running errands for these Southerners? These fucking women in men’s trousers? These damn salad-eaters with their big words and their thin little swords?’

A wide, dark pool, slowly mingling with the dust and the loose soil on the valley floor. No second touch. No best of three.

‘A naming wound, you know,’ and Ninefingers waggled the stump of his finger. ‘A wound you could get named after.

The long blade whispered its secret and the Shanka split apart, clean down the middle like a flower opening,