The Scavenger Trilogy: Shadow - K.J. Parker

This story starts with a man lying in mud and blood, half in and half out of a small river, surrounded by corpses and, thanks to a knock on the head, missing his memory. Acting on instinct, cautious to a fault, and with absolutely no sense of direction or intention, he makes his way as best he can into the brush. His prospects don't look good, and indeed, they aren't. The protagonist lurches from one minor calamity to another, with a fair number of major calamities mixed in for seasoning. All he wants is peace, quiet, and some hint as to who he is. But almost every encounter ends (if it doesn't begin) with violence, and though he keeps blundering into people ...  Read the complete review