The Blade Itself (The First Law, #1)

by Joe Abercrombie

The point of the shovel bit into the ground with the sharp scrape of metal on earth. An all too familiar sound. It didn’t bite in far, for all the effort put behind it, as the soil was rocky hard and baked by the sun. But she wasn’t to be deterred by a little hard soil. She had dug too many holes, and in ground worse for digging than this. When the fighting is over, you dig, if you’re still alive. You dig graves for your dead comrades. A last mark of respect, however little you might have had for them. You dig as deep as you can be bothered, you dump them in, you cover them up, they rot away and are forgotten. That’s the way it’s always been.