[The text is quite long but you are able to quickly glean the most important points:]
This book is a collection of accounts from Loegrian soldiers sent to the Northlands to enforce the rule of the council. Their complaints are many: the food, the hostility of the locals, the weather. One group were stationed at a wooden fortress (Fort Bolton) on the border with the so-called "Frost tribes" in the far north, the second were stationed a day's march south of them at a fortified village (Grima's Farm). Much of the book lists their duties which include collecting taxes from the peasantry, patrols on horseback through the deep pine forests of the Northlands, ditties from which a deep mood of homesickness can be felt.