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

by Joe Abercrombie

  ‘Colonel Glokta, I swear! We could do with some of that dash here, eh, West? Some of that vim! That vigour! Shame that he’s dead.’

  West looked up. ‘He isn’t dead, your Highness.’

  ‘He isn’t?’

  ‘He was captured by the Gurkish, and then returned to the Union when the war ended. He . . . er . . . he joined the Inquisition.’

  ‘The Inquisition?’ The Prince looked horrified. ‘Why on earth would a man give up the soldiering life for that?’

  West groped for words, but then thought better of it. ‘I cannot imagine, your Highness.’

  ‘Joined the Inquisition! Well, I never.’ They rode in silence for a moment. Gradually, the Prince’s smile returned. ‘But we were talking of the honour of war, were we not?’

  West grimaced. ‘We were, your Highness.’

  ‘First through the breach at Ulrioch, weren’t you? First through the breach, I heard! There’s honour for you, eh? There’s glory, isn’t it? That must have been quite an experience, eh, Colonel? Quite an experience!’

  Struggling through a mass of broken stones and timbers, littered with twisted corpses. Half-blind with the smoke, half-choking on the dust, shrieks and wails and the clashing of metal coming at him from all around, hardly able to breathe for fear. Men pressing in on all sides, groaning, shoving, stumbling, yelling, running with blood and sweat, black with grime and soot, half-seen faces twisted with pain and fury. Devils, in hell.

  West remembered screaming ‘Forward!’, over and over until his throat was raw, even though he had no idea which way forward was. He remembered stabbing someone with his sword, friend or enemy, he did not know, then or now. He remembered falling and cutting his head on a rock, tearing his jacket on a broken timber. Moments, fragments, as if from a story he once heard someone else telling.

  West pulled his coat tighter round his chilly shoulders, wishing it was thicker. ‘Quite an experience, your Highness.’

  ‘Damn shame that bloody Bethod won’t be coming this way!’ Prince Ladisla slashed petulantly at the air with his riding crop. ‘Little better than damn guard duty! Does Burr take me for a fool, eh, West, does he?’

  West took a deep breath. ‘I couldn’t possibly say, your Highness.’

  The Prince’s fickle mind had already moved off. ‘What about those pets of yours? Those Northmen. The ones with the comical names. What’s he called, that dirty fellow? Wolfman, is it?’

  ‘Dogman.’

  ‘Dogman, that’s it! Capital!’ The Prince chuckled to himself. ‘And that other one, biggest damn fellow I ever saw! Excellent! What are they up to?’

  ‘I sent them scouting north of the river, your Highness.’ West rather wished he was with them. ‘The enemy are probably far away, but if they aren’t, we need to know about it.’

  ‘Of course we do. Excellent idea. So that we can prepare to attack!’

  A timely withdrawal and a fast messenger to Marshal Burr was more what West had in mind, but there was no point in saying so. Ladisla’s whole notion of war was of ordering a glorious charge, then retiring to bed. Strategy and retreat were not words in his vocabulary.

  ‘Yes,’ the Prince was muttering to himself, eyes fixed intently on the trees beyond the river. ‘Prepare an attack and sweep them back across the border . . .’

  The border was a hundred leagues away. West seized his moment. ‘Your Highness, if I may, there is a great deal for me to do.’

  It was no lie. The camp had been organised, or disorganised, without a thought for convenience or defence. An unruly maze of ramshackle canvas in a great clearing near the river, where the ground was too soft and had soon been turned into a morass of sticky mud by the supply carts. At first there had been no latrines, then they had been dug too shallow and much too close to the camp, not far from where the provisions were being stored. Provisions which, incidentally, had been badly packed, inadequately prepared, and were already close to spoiling, attracting every rat in Angland. If it had not been for the cold, West did not doubt that the camp would already have been riddled with disease.

  Prince Ladisla waved his hand. ‘Of course, a great deal to do. You can tell me more of your stories tomorrow, eh, West? About Colonel Glokta and so forth. Damn shame he’s dead!’ he shouted over his shoulder as he cantered off towards his enormous purple tent, high up on the hill above the stink and confusion.

  West turned his mount with some relief and urged it down the slope into the camp. He passed men tottering through the half-frozen sludge, shivering, breath steaming, hands wrapped in dirty rags. He passed men sitting in sorry groups before their patched tents, no two dressed the same, as close to meagre fires as they dared, fiddling with cooking pots, playing miserable games of damp cards, drinking and staring into the cold air.

  The better-trained levies had gone with Poulder and Kroy to seek out the enemy. Ladisla had been left with the rump: those too weak to march well, too poorly equipped to fight well, too broken even to do nothing with any conviction. Men who might never have left their homes in all their lives, forced to cross the sea to a land they knew nothing of, to fight an enemy they had no quarrel with, for reasons they did not understand.

  Some few of them might have felt some trace of patriotic fervour, some swell of manly pride when they left, but by now the hard marching, the bad food and the cold weather had truly worn, starved, and frozen all enthusiasm out of them. Prince Ladisla was scarcely the inspirational leader to put it back, had he even been making the slightest effort to do so.

  West looked down at those grim, tired, pinched faces as he rode past, and they stared back, beaten already. All they wanted was to go home, and West could hardly blame them. So did he.

  ‘Colonel West!’

  There was a big man grinning over at him, a man with a thick beard, wearing the uniform of an officer in the King’s Own. West realised with a start that it was Jalenhorm. He slid down from his saddle and grabbed hold of the big man’s hand in both of his. It was good to see him. A firm, honest, trustworthy presence. A reminder of a past life, when West did not move among the great men of the world, and things were an awful lot simpler. ‘How are you, Jalenhorm?’

  ‘Alright, thank you, sir. Just taking a turn round the camp, waiting.’ The big man cupped his hands and blew into them, rubbed them together. ‘Trying to stay warm.’

  ‘That’s what war is, in my experience. A great deal of waiting, in unpleasant conditions. A great deal of waiting, with occasional moments of the most extreme terror.’

  Jalenhorm gave a dry grin. ‘Something to look forward to then. How’re things on the Prince’s staff?’

  West shook his head. ‘A competition to see who can be most arrogant, ignorant, and wasteful. How about you? How’s the camp life?’

  ‘We’re not so badly off. It’s some of these levies I feel sorry for. They’re not fit to fight. I heard a couple of the older ones died last night from the cold.’

  ‘It happens. Let’s just hope they bury them deep, and a good way from the rest of us.’ West could see that the big man thought him heartless, but there it was. Few of the casualties in Gurkhul had died in battle. Accidents, illness, little wounds gone bad. You came to expect it. As badly equipped as some of the levies were? They would be burying men every day. ‘Nothing you need?’

  ‘There is one thing. My horse dropped a shoe in this mud, and I tried to find someone to fit a new one.’ Jalenhorm spread his hands. ‘I could be wrong, but I don’t think there’s a smith in the whole camp.’

  West stared at him. ‘Not one?’

  ‘I couldn’t find any. There are forges, anvils, hammers and all the rest but . . . no one to work them. I spoke to one of the quartermasters. He said General Poulder refused to release any of his smiths, and so did General Kroy, so, well,’ and Jalenhorm shrugged his shoulders, ‘we don’t have any.’

  ‘No one thought to check?’

  ‘Who?’

  West felt the familiar headache tugging at the back of his eyes. Arrow
s need heads, blades need sharpening, armour and saddles and the carts that haul the supplies break, and need to be repaired. An army with no smiths is little better than an army with no weapons. And here they were, out in the frozen country, miles from the nearest settlement. Unless . . .

  ‘We passed a penal colony on the way.’

  Jalenhorm squinted as he tried to remember. ‘Yes, a foundry, I think. I saw smoke above the trees . . .’

  ‘They would have some skilled metal-workers.’

  The big man’s eyebrows went up. ‘Some criminal metal-workers. ’

  ‘I’ll take whatever we can get. Today your horse is short a shoe, tomorrow we might have nothing to fight with! Get a dozen men together, and a wagon. We’ll leave at once.’

  The prison loomed up out of the trees through the cold rain, a fence of great, mossy logs tipped with bent and rusted spikes. A grim-looking place with a grim purpose. West swung from his saddle while Jalenhorm and his men reined up behind him, then squelched across the rutted track to the gate and hammered on the weathered wood with the pommel of his sword.

  It took a while, but eventually a small hatch snapped open. A pair of grey eyes frowned at him through the slot. Grey eyes above a black mask. A Practical of the Inquisition.

  ‘My name is Colonel West.’

  The eyes regarded him coldly. ‘So?’

  ‘I am in the service of Crown Prince Ladisla, and I need to speak to the commandant of this camp.’

  ‘Why?’

  West frowned, doing his very best to look impressive with his hair plastered to his scalp and the rain dripping off his chin. ‘There is a war on and I do not have time to bandy words with you! I need to speak to the commandant most urgently!’

  The eyes narrowed. They looked at West for a while, and then at the dozen bedraggled soldiers behind him. ‘Alright,’ said the Practical. ‘You can come in, but only you. The rest will have to wait.’

  The main street was a stretch of churned-up mud between leaning shacks, water trickling from the eaves, spattering into the dirt. There were two men and a woman in the road, wet through, struggling to move a cart laden with stones, up to the axles in mush. All three had heavy chains on their ankles. Ragged, bony, hollow faces, as empty of hope as they were empty of food.

  ‘Get that fucking cart shifted,’ the Practical growled at them, and they stooped back to their unenviable task.

  West struggled through the muck towards a stone building at the far end of the camp, trying to hop from one dry patch to another, without success. Another dour Practical was standing on the threshold, water running from a stained oilskin over his shoulders, hard eyes following West with a mixture of suspicion and indifference. He and his guide stepped past without a word and into the dim hall beyond, full of the noise of drumming rain. The Practical knocked at an ill-fitting door.

  ‘Come in.’

  A small, spare room with grey walls, cold and smelling slightly of damp. A mean fire flickered in the grate, a sagging shelf was stacked with books. A portrait of the King of the Union stared regally down from one wall. A lean man in a black coat sat writing at a cheap desk. He looked at West for a while, then carefully put down his pen and rubbed at the bridge of his nose with an inky thumb and forefinger.

  ‘We have a visitor,’ grunted the Practical.

  ‘So I see. I am Inquisitor Lorsen, commandant of our little camp.’

  West gave the bony hand the most perfunctory of squeezes. ‘Colonel West. I am here with Prince Ladisla’s army. We are camped a dozen miles to the north.’

  ‘Of course. How might I be of assistance to his Highness?’

  ‘We are desperately in need of skilled metal-workers. You run a foundry here, correct?’

  ‘A mine, a foundry, and a smithy for the manufacture of farming tools, but I fail to see what—’

  ‘Excellent. I will take a dozen or so men back with me, the most skilled men you have available.’

  The commandant frowned. ‘Out of the question. The prisoners here are guilty of the most serious crimes. They cannot be released without a signed order from the Arch Lector himself.’

  ‘Then we have a problem, Inquisitor Lorsen. I have ten thousand men with weapons that need sharpening, armour that needs mending, horses that need shoeing. We might be called into action at any moment. I cannot wait for orders from the Arch Lector or anyone else. I must leave with smiths, and there it is.’

  ‘But you must understand that I cannot allow—’

  ‘You fail to realise the gravity of the situation!’ barked West, his temper already fraying. ‘By all means send a letter to the Arch Lector! I will send a man back to my camp for a company of soldiers! We can see who gets help first!’

  The commandant thought about that for a while. ‘Very well,’ he said eventually, ‘follow me.’

  Two dirty children stared at West from the porch of one of the shacks as he stepped out of the commandant’s building, back into the incessant drizzle.

  ‘You have children here?’

  ‘We have whole families, if they are judged a danger to the state.’ Lorsen glanced sideways at him. ‘A shame, but holding the Union together has always required harsh measures. I gather from your silence that you disapprove.’

  West watched one of the shabby children limping through the muck, doomed, perhaps, to spend their whole life in this place. ‘I think it’s a crime.’

  The commandant shrugged. ‘Don’t deceive yourself. Everyone is guilty of something, and even the innocent can be a threat. Perhaps it takes small crimes to prevent bigger ones, Colonel West, but it’s up to bigger men than us to decide. I only make sure they work hard, don’t prey upon each other, and don’t escape.’

  ‘You only do your job, eh? A well-trodden way to avoid responsibility.’

  ‘Which of us is it who lives among them, out here in the middle of nowhere? Which of us is it who watches over them, dresses them, feeds them, cleans them, fights the endless, pointless war against their damn lice? Is it you who stops them beating, and raping, and killing each other? You’re an officer in the King’s Own, eh, Colonel? So you live in Adua? In fine quarters in the Agriont, among the rich and well groomed?’ West frowned, and Lorsen chuckled at him. ‘Which of us has truly avoided the responsibility, as you put it? My conscience has never been cleaner. Hate us if you like, we’re used to it. No one likes to shake hands with the man who empties the latrine pits either, but pits have to be emptied all the same. Otherwise the world fills up with shit. You can have your dozen smiths, but don’t try to take the high ground with me. There is no high ground here.’

  West didn’t like it, but he had to admit the man made a good case, so he set his jaw and struggled on in silence, head down. They squelched towards a long, windowless, stone-built shed, thick smoke roiling up into the misty air from tall chimneys at each corner. The Practical slid back the bolt on the heavy door and heaved it open, and West followed him and Lorsen into the darkness.

  The heat was like a slap in the face after the freezing air outside. Acrid smoke stung at West’s eyes, nipped at his throat. The din in the narrow space was frightening. Bellows creaked and wheezed, hammers clanged on anvils sending up showers of angry sparks, red hot metal hissed furiously in water barrels. There were men everywhere, packed in tight together, sweating, and groaning, and coughing, hollow faces half lit by the orange glow from the forges. Devils, in hell.

  ‘Stop your work!’ roared Lorsen. ‘Stop and form up!’

  The men slowly set down their tools, lurched and stumbled and rattled forward to form a line while four or five Practicals looked on from the shadows. A shabby, broken, stooping, sorrowful line. A couple of the men had irons on their wrists as well as their ankles. They scarcely looked like the answer to all of West’s problems, but he had no choice. This was all there was.

  ‘We have a visitor, from outside. Say your piece, Colonel.’

  ‘My name is Colonel West,’ he croaked, voice cracking on the stinging air. ‘There are t
en thousand soldiers camped a dozen miles down the road, under Crown Prince Ladisla. We have need of smiths.’ West cleared his throat, tried to speak louder without coughing his lungs out. ‘Who among you can work metals?’

  No one spoke. The men stared at their threadbare shoes or their bare feet, with the odd sidelong glance at the glowering Practicals.

  ‘You need not be afraid. Who can work metals?’

  ‘I can, sir.’ A man stepped forward from the line, the irons on his ankles rattling. He was lean and sinewy, slightly stooped. As the lamplight fell across his head West found himself wincing. He was disfigured by hideous burns. One side of his face was a mass of livid, slightly melted-looking scars, no eyebrow, scalp patchy with pink bald spots. The other side was little better. The man scarcely had a face at all. ‘I can work a forge, and I did some soldiering too, in Gurkhul.’

  ‘Good,’ muttered West, doing his best to swallow his horror at the man’s appearance. ‘Your name?’

  ‘Pike.’

  ‘Are any of these others good with metal, Pike?’

  The burned man shuffled and clanked his way down the line, pulling men forward by their shoulders while the commandant looked on, his frown growing deeper with every passing moment.

  West licked his dry lips. Hard to believe that in so little time he could have gone from so horribly cold to so horribly hot, but here he was, more uncomfortable than ever. ‘I’ll need keys to their irons, Inquisitor.’

  ‘There are no keys. The irons are melted shut. They are not intended ever to be removed and I would strongly advise you not to. Many of these prisoners are extremely dangerous, and you should bear in mind that you will be returning them to us as soon as you can make alternative arrangements. The Inquisition is not in the business of early releases.’ He stalked off to speak to one of the Practicals.

  Pike sidled up, pulling another convict by the elbow. ‘Pardon me, sir,’ he murmured, growling voice kept low. ‘But could you find a place for my daughter?’

  West shrugged his shoulders, uncomfortable. He would have liked to take everyone and burn the damn place to the ground, but he was already pushing his luck. ‘It’s not a good idea, a woman in amongst all those soldiers. Not a good idea at all.’