The First Law Trilogy Boxed Set: The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, Last Argument of Kings

by Joe Abercrombie

  That woman, watching over my shoulder? ‘But, Arch Lector—’

  ‘Don’t “but” me, Glokta!’ hissed Sult. ‘Don’t you dare “but” me, not today! You’re not half as crippled as you could be! Not half as crippled, you understand?’

  Glokta bowed his head. ‘I apologise.’

  ‘You’re thinking, aren’t you? I can see the cogs turning. Thinking you don’t want one of Goyle’s people getting in the way? Well, before she worked for him she worked for me. A Styrian, from Sipano. Cold as the snow, those people, and she’s the coldest of them, I can tell you. So you needn’t worry. Not about Goyle, anyway.’ No. Only about you, which is far worse.

  ‘I will be honoured to have her along.’ I will be damned careful.

  ‘Be as honoured as you damn well please, just don’t let me down! Make a mess of this and you’ll need more than that piece of paper to save you. A ship is waiting at the docks. Leave. Now.’

  ‘Of course, your Eminence.’

  Sult turned away and strode over to the window. Glokta quietly got up, quietly slid his chair under the table, quietly shuffled across the room. The Arch Lector was still standing, hands clasped behind him, as Glokta ever so carefully pulled the doors to. It was not until they clicked shut that he realised he had been holding his breath.

  ‘How’d it go?’

  Glokta turned round sharply, his neck giving a painful click.

  Strange, how I never learn not to do that. Practical Vitari was still flopped in her chair, looking up at him with tired eyes. She did not seem to have moved the whole time he was inside. How did it go? He ran his tongue around his mouth, over his empty gums, thinking about it. That remains to be seen. ‘Interesting,’ he said in the end. ‘I am going to Dagoska.’

  ‘So I hear.’ The woman did indeed have an accent, now he thought about it. A slight whiff of the Free Cities.

  ‘I understand you’re coming with me.’

  ‘I understand I am.’ But she did not move.

  ‘We are in something of a hurry.’

  ‘I know.’ She held out her hand. ‘Could you help me up?’

  Glokta raised his eyebrows. I wonder when I was last asked that question? He had half a mind to say no, but in the end he held his hand out, if only for the novelty. Her fingers closed round it, started to pull. Her eyes were narrowed, he could hear her breath hissing as she unfolded herself slowly from the chair. It hurt, having her pull on him like that, in his arm, in his back. But it hurts her more. Behind her mask, he was pretty sure, her teeth were gritted with pain. She moved her limbs one at a time, cautiously, not sure what would hurt and how much. Glokta had to smile. A routine I go through myself every morning. Strangely invigorating, to see someone else doing it.

  Eventually she was standing, her bandaged hand clutched against her ribs. ‘You able to walk?’ asked Glokta.

  ‘I’ll loosen up.’

  ‘What happened? Dogs?’

  She gave a bark of laughter. ‘No. A big Northman knocked the shit out of me.’

  Glokta snorted. Well, forthright at least. ‘Shall we go?’

  She looked down at his cane. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got one of those spare, have you?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. I only have the one, and I can’t walk without it.’

  ‘I know how you feel.’

  Not quite. Glokta turned and began to limp away from the Arch Lector’s office. Not quite. He could hear the woman hobbling along behind. Strangely invigorating, to have someone trying to keep up with me. He upped the pace, and it hurt him. But it hurts her more.

  Back to the South, then. He licked at his empty gums. Hardly a place of happy memories. To fight the Gurkish, after what it cost me last time. To root out disloyalty in a city where no one can be trusted, especially those sent to help me. To struggle in the heat and the dust, at a thankless task almost certain to end in failure. And failure, more than likely, will mean death.

  He felt his cheek twitch, his eyelid flicker. At the hands of the Gurkish? At the hands of plotters against the crown? At the hands of his Eminence, or his agents? Or simply to vanish, as my predecessor did? Has one man ever had such a range of deaths to choose from? The corner of his mouth twitched up. I can hardly wait to get started.

  That same question came into his head, over and over, and he still had no answer.

  Why do I do this?

  Why?

  Acknowledgments

  Four people without whom . . .

  Bren Abercrombie, whose eyes are

  sore from reading it

  Nick Abercrombie, whose ears are

  sore from hearing about it

  Rob Abercrombie, whose fingers are

  sore from turning the pages

  Lou Abercrombie, whose arms are

  sore from holding me up

  And also . . .

  Matthew Amos, for solid advice

  at a shaky time

  Gillian Redfearn, who read past

  the beginning and made me change it

  Simon Spanton, who bought it

  before he got to the end

  For the Four Readers

  You know who you are

  THE FIRST LAW: BOOK TWO

  JOE

  ABERCROMBIE

  BEFORE THEY ARE HANGED

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Dedication

  Title Page

  PART I

  The Great Leveller

  Best Laid Plans

  Questions

  The Wounds of the Past

  The Condition of the Defences

  The Thing About Trust

  Allies

  Campfire Politics

  Small Crimes

  Rain

  Bloody Company

  Long Shadows

  And Next . . . My Gold

  Fear

  One Hundred Words

  The Blind Lead the Blind

  Prince Ladisla’s Stratagem

  Until Sunset

  Long Odds

  The Road to Victory

  Necessary Evils

  Among the Stones

  The Fruits of Boldness

  One for Dinner

  One of Them

  PART II

  Heading North

  Scant Mercy

  So This is Pain

  One Step at a Time

  The Rest is Wasted Breath

  A Matter of Time

  Scars

  Furious

  To the Last Man

  Jewel of Cities

  Luck

  Beneath the Ruins

  No Good for Each Other

  The Hero’s Welcome

  Cold Comfort

  The High Places

  Coming Over

  Cheap at the Price

  To the Edge of the World

  Before the Storm

  Questions

  Holding the Line

  A Fitting Punishment

  The Abode of Stones

  Back to the Mud

  Acknowledgements

  PART I

  ‘We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.’

  Heinrich Heine

  The Great Leveller

  Damn mist. It gets in your eyes, so you can’t see no more than a few strides ahead. It gets in your ears, so you can’t hear nothing, and when you do you can’t tell where it’s coming from. It gets up your nose, so you can’t smell naught but wet and damp. Damn mist. It’s a curse on a scout.

  They’d crossed the Whiteflow a few days before, out of the North and into Angland, and the Dogman had been nervy all the way. Scouting out strange land, in the midst of a war that weren’t really their business. All the lads were jumpy. Aside from Threetrees, none of ’em had ever been out of the North. Except for Grim maybe. He weren’t saying where he’d been.

  They’d passed a few farms burned out, a village all empty of people. Union buildings, big and square. They’d seen the tracks of horses and men. Lots of tr
acks, but never the men themselves. Dogman knew Bethod weren’t far away, though, his army spread out across the land, looking for towns to burn, food to steal, people to kill. All manner o’ mischief. He’d have scouts everywhere. If he caught Dogman or any of the rest, they’d be back to the mud, and not quickly. Bloody cross and heads on spikes and all the rest of it, Dogman didn’t wonder.

  If the Union caught ’em they’d be dead too, most likely. It was a war, after all, and folk don’t think too clearly in a war. Dogman could hardly expect ’em to waste time telling a friendly Northman from an unfriendly one. Life was fraught with dangers, alright. It was enough to make anyone nervy, and he was a nervy sort at the best of times.

  So it was easy to see how the mist might have been salt in the cut, so to speak.

  All this creeping around in the murk had got him thirsty, so he picked his way through the greasy brush, over to where he could hear the river chattering. He knelt down at the water’s edge. Slimy down there, with rot and dead leaves, but Dogman didn’t reckon a little slime would make the difference, he was about as dirty as a man could be already. He scooped up water in his hands and drank. There was a breath of wind down there, out beyond the trees, pushing the mist in close one minute, dragging it out the next. That’s when the Dogman saw him.

  He was lying on his front, legs in the river, top half up on the bank. They stared at each other a while, both fully shocked and amazed. He’d got a long stick coming out of his back. A broken spear. That’s when the Dogman realised he was dead.

  He spat the water out and crept over, checking careful all around to make sure no one was waiting to give him a blade in the back. The corpse was a man of about two dozen years. Yellow hair, brown blood on his grey lips. He’d got a padded jacket on, bloated up with wet, the kind a man might wear under a coat of mail. A fighting man, then. A straggler maybe, lost his crew and been picked off. A Union man, no doubt, but he didn’t look so different to Dogman or to anyone else, now he was dead. One corpse looks much like another.

  ‘The Great Leveller,’ Dogman whispered to himself, since he was in a thoughtful frame of mind. That’s what the hillmen call him. Death, that is. He levels all differences. Named Men and nobodies, south or north. He catches everyone in the end, and he treats each man the same.

  Seemed like this one had been dead no more ’n a couple of days. That meant whoever killed him might still be close, and that got the Dogman worried. The mist seemed full of sounds now. Might’ve been a hundred Carls, waiting just out of sight. Might’ve been no more than the river slapping at its banks. Dogman left the corpse lying and slunk off into the trees, ducking from one trunk to another as they loomed up out of the grey.

  He nearly stumbled on another body, half buried in a heap of leaves, lying on his back with his arms spread out. He passed one on his knees, a couple of arrows in his side, face in the dirt, arse in the air. There’s no dignity in death, and that’s a fact. The Dogman was starting to hurry along, too keen to get back to the others, tell them what he’d seen. Too keen to get away from them corpses.

  He’d seen plenty, of course, more than his share, but he’d never quite got comfortable around ’em. It’s an easy thing to make a man a carcass. He knew a thousand ways to do it. But once you’ve done it, there’s no going back. One minute he’s a man, all full up with hopes, and thoughts, and dreams. A man with friends, and family, and a place where he’s from. Next minute he’s mud. Made the Dogman think on all the scrapes he’d been in, all the battles and the fights he’d been a part of. Made him think he was lucky still to be breathing. Stupid lucky. Made him think his luck might not last.

  He was halfway running now. Careless. Blundering about in the mist like an untried boy. Not taking his time, not sniffing the air, not listening out. A Named Man like him, a scout who’d been all over the North, should’ve known better, but you can’t stay sharp all the time. He never saw it coming.

  Something knocked him in the side, hard, ditched him right on his face. He scrambled up but someone kicked him down. Dogman fought, but whoever this bastard was he was fearsome strong. Before he knew it he was down on his back in the dirt, and he’d only himself to blame. Himself, and the corpses, and the mist. A hand grabbed him round his neck, started squeezing his windpipe shut.

  ‘Gurgh,’ he croaked, fiddling at the hand, thinking his last moment was on him. Thinking all his hopes were turned to mud. The Great Leveller, come for him at last . . .

  Then the fingers stopped squeezing.

  ‘Dogman?’ said someone in his ear, ‘that you?’

  ‘Gurgh.’

  The hand let go his throat and he sucked in a breath. Felt himself pulled up by his coat. ‘Shit on it, Dogman! I could ha’ killed you!’ He knew the voice now, well enough. Black Dow, the bastard. Dogman was half annoyed at being throttled near to dying, half stupid-happy at still being alive. He could hear Dow laughing at him. Hard laughter, like a crow calling. ‘You alright?’

  ‘I’ve had warmer greetings,’ croaked Dogman, still doing his best to get the air in.

  ‘Count yourself lucky, I could’ve given you a colder one. Much colder. I took you for one of Bethod’s scouts. Thought you was out over yonder, up the valley.’

  ‘As you can see,’ he whispered, ‘no. Where’s the others at?’

  ‘Up on a hill, above this fucking mist. Taking a look around.’

  Dogman nodded back the way he’d come. ‘There’s corpses over there. Loads of ’em.’

  ‘Loads of ’em is it?’ asked Dow, as though he didn’t think Dogman knew what a load of corpses looked like. ‘Hah!’

  ‘Aye, a good few anyway. Union dead, I reckon. Looks like there was a fight here.’

  Black Dow laughed again. ‘A fight? You reckon?’ Dogman wasn’t sure what he meant by that.

  ‘Shit,’ he said.

  They were standing up on the hill, the five of them. The mist had cleared up, but the Dogman almost wished it hadn’t. He saw what Dow had been saying now, well enough. The whole valley was full of dead. They were dotted high up on the slopes, wedged between the rocks, stretched out in the gorse. They were scattered out across the grass in the valley bottom like nails spilled from a sack, twisted and broken on the brown dirt road. They were heaped up beside the river, heaped on the banks in a pile. Arms and legs and broken gear sticking up from the last shreds of mist. They were everywhere. Stuck with arrows, stabbed with swords, hacked with axes. Crows called as they hopped from one meal to the next. It was a good day for the crows. It had been a while since Dogman saw a proper battlefield, and it brought back some sour memories. Horrible sour.

  ‘Shit,’ he said again. Couldn’t think of aught else to say.

  ‘Reckon the Union were marching up this road.’ Threetrees was frowning hard. ‘Reckon they were hurrying. Trying to catch Bethod unawares.’

  ‘Seems they weren’t scouting too careful,’ rumbled Tul Duru. ‘Seems like it was Bethod caught them out.’

  ‘Maybe it was misty,’ said Dogman, ‘like today.’

  Threetrees shrugged. ‘Maybe. It’s the time of year for it. Either way they were on the road, in column, tired from a long day’s tramp. Bethod came on ’em from here, and from up there, on the ridge. Arrows first, to break ’em up, then the Carls, coming down from the tall ground, screaming and ready to go. The Union broke quick, I reckon.’

  ‘Real quick,’ said Dow.

  ‘And then it was a slaughter. Spread out on the road. Trapped against the water. Nowhere much to run to. Men trying to pull their armour off, men trying to swim the river with their armour on. Packing in and climbing one on top o’ the other, with arrows falling down all round. Some of ’em might’ve got as far as those woods down there, but knowing Bethod he’d have had a few horsemen tucked away, ready to lick the plate.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Dogman, feeling more than a bit sick. He’d been on the wrong end of a rout himself, and the memory weren’t at all a happy one.

  ‘Neat as good stitching,’ said T
hreetrees. ‘You got to give Bethod his due, the bastard. He knows his work, none better.’

  ‘This the end of it then, chief?’ asked Dogman. ‘Bethod won already?’

  Threetrees shook his head, nice and slow. ‘There’s a lot of Southerners out there. An awful lot. Most of ’em live across the sea. They say there’s more of ’em down there than you can count. More men than there are trees in the North. Might take ’em a while to get here, but they’ll be coming. This is just the beginning.’

  The Dogman looked out at the wet valley, at all them dead men, huddled and sprawled and twisted across the ground, no more ’n food for crows. ‘Not much of a beginning for them.’

  Dow curled his tongue and spat, as noisy as he could. ‘Penned up and slaughtered like a bunch o’ sheep! You want to die like that, Threetrees? Eh? You want to side with the likes of these? Fucking Union! They don’t know anything about war!’

  Threetrees nodded. ‘Then I reckon we’ll have to teach ’em.’

  There was a great press round the gate. There were women, gaunt and hungry-looking. There were children, ragged and dirty. There were men, old and young, stooped under heavy packs or clutching gear. Some had mules, or carts they were pushing, loaded up with all kinds of useless looking stuff. Wooden chairs, tin pots, tools for farming. A lot had nothing at all, besides misery. The Dogman reckoned there was plenty of that to go round.

  They were choking up the road with their bodies and their rubbish. They were choking up the air with their pleading and their threatening. Dogman could smell the fear, thick as soup in his nose. All running from Bethod.

  They were shouldering each other pretty good, some pushing in, some pushed out, here and there one falling in the mud, all desperate for that gate like it was their mother’s tit. But as a crowd, they were going nowhere. Dogman could see spear tips glinting over the heads of the press, could hear hard voices shouting. There were soldiers up ahead, keeping everyone out of the city.