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

by Joe Abercrombie

  ‘You bastard!’ And Threetrees came flying out of the trees, crashed into the giant’s armoured hip with his shield and knocked him sideways, the huge metal boot squelching into the dirt just beside the Dogman’s face and spattering him with mud. The old boy pressed in, hacking away at the Feared’s bare side while he was off balance, snarling and cursing at him while the Dogman gasped and squirmed, trying to get up and only making it as far as sitting, back to the tree.

  The giant threw his armoured fist hard enough to bring a house down, but Threetrees got round it and turned it off his shield, brought his sword up and over and knocked a fearsome dent in the Feared’s mask, snapping his great head back and making him stagger, blood splattering from the mouth hole. The old boy pressed in quick and slashed hard across the plates on the giant’s chest, blade striking sparks from the black iron and carving a great gash into the bare blue flesh beside it. A killing blow, no doubt, but only a few specks of blood flew off the swinging blade, and it left no wound at all.

  The giant found his balance now, and he gave a great bellow that left Dogman trembling with fear. He set his huge foot behind him, lifted his massive arm and hurled it forward. It crashed into Threetrees’ shield and ripped a chunk out of the edge, split the timbers and went on through, thudded into the old boy’s shoulder and flung him groaning onto his back. The Feared pressed in on top of him, lifting his big blue fist up high. Threetrees snarled and stabbed his sword clean through his tattooed thigh right to the hilt. Dogman saw the point slide bloody out the back of his leg, but it didn’t even slow him. That great hand dropped down and crunched into Threetrees’ ribs with a sound like dry sticks breaking.

  Dogman groaned, clawing at the dirt, but his chest was on fire and he couldn’t get up, and he couldn’t do anything but watch. The Feared lifted up his other fist now, covered in black iron. He lifted it up slow and careful, waited up high, then brought it whistling down, smashed it into Threetrees’ other side and crushed him sighing into the dirt. The great arm went up again, red blood on blue knuckles.

  And a black line came out of the mist and stabbed into the Feared’s armpit, shoving him over sideways. Shivers, with a spear, jabbing at the giant and shouting, pushing him across the slope. The Feared rolled and slithered up, faked a step back and flicked out his hand quick as a massive snake, slapped Shivers away like a man might swat a fly, squawking and kicking into the mist.

  Before the giant could follow him there was a roar like thunder and Tul’s sword crashed into his armoured shoulder and flung him down on one knee. Now Dow came out of the mist, slashed a great chunk out of his leg from behind. Shivers was up again, snarling and jabbing with his spear, and the three of ’em seemed to have the giant penned in.

  He should’ve been dead, however big he was. The wounds Threetrees, and Shivers, and Dow had given him, he should have been mud. Instead he rose up again, six arrows and Threetrees’ sword stuck through his flesh, and he let go a roar from behind his iron mask that made Dogman tremble to his toes. Shivers fell back on his arse, going white as milk. Tul blinked and faltered and let his sword drop. Even Black Dow took a step away.

  The Feared reached down and took hold of the hilt of Threetrees’ sword. He slid it out from his leg and let it drop bloody in the dirt at his feet. It left no wound behind. No wound at all. Then he turned and sprang away into the gloom, and the mist closed in behind him, and the Dogman heard the sounds of him crashing away through the trees, and he was never so glad to see the back of anything.

  ‘Come ’ere!’ Dow screamed, making ready to tear down the slope after him, but Tul got in his way with one big hand held up.

  ‘You’re going nowhere. We don’t know how many Shanka there are down there. We can kill that thing another day.’

  ‘Out o’ my way, big lad!’

  ‘No.’

  Dogman rolled forward, wincing all the way at the pain in his chest, started clawing his way up the slope. The mist was already spilling back, leaving the cold clear air behind. Grim was coming down the other way, bow string drawn back with an arrow nocked. There were a lot of corpses in the mud and the snow. Shanka mostly, and a couple of Carls.

  Seemed to take the Dogman an age to drag himself up to Threetrees. The old boy was lying on his back in the mud, one arm lying still with his broken shield strapped to it. Air was snorting in shallow through his nose, bubbling back out bloody from his mouth. His eyes rolled down to Dogman as he crawled up next to him, and he reached out and grabbed a hold of his shirt, pulled him down, hissing in his ear through clenched tight, bloody teeth.

  ‘Listen to me, Dogman! Listen!’

  ‘What, chief?’ croaked Dogman, hardly able to talk for the pain in his chest. He waited, and he listened, and nothing came. Threetrees’ eyes were wide open, staring up at the branches. A drop of water splattered on his cheek, ran down into his bloody beard. Nothing else.

  ‘Back to the mud,’ said Grim, face hanging slack as old cobwebs.

  West chewed at his fingernails as he watched General Kroy and his staff riding up the road, a group of dark-dressed men on dark horses, solemn as a procession of undertakers. The snow had stopped, for now, but the sky was angry black, the light so bad it felt like evening, and an icy wind was blowing through the command post making the fabric of the tent snap and rustle. West’s borrowed time was almost done.

  He felt a sudden impulse, almost overpowering, to turn and run. An impulse so ludicrous that he immediately had another, equally inappropriate, to burst out laughing. Luckily, he was able to stop himself from doing either. Lucky to stop himself laughing, at least. This was far from a laughing matter. As the clattering hooves came closer, he was left wondering whether the idea of running was such a foolish one after all.

  Kroy pulled his black charger up savagely and climbed down, jerked his uniform smooth, adjusted his sword belt, turned sharply and came on towards the tent. West intercepted him, hoping to get the first word in and buy a few more moments. ‘General Kroy, well done, sir, your division fought with great tenacity!’

  ‘Of course they did, Colonel West.’ Kroy sneered the name as though he were delivering a mortal insult, his staff gathering into a menacing half circle behind him.

  ‘And might I ask our situation?’

  ‘Our situation?’ snarled the General. ‘Our situation is that the Northmen are driven off, but not routed. We gave them a mauling, in the end, but my units were fought out, every man. Too weary to pursue. The enemy have been able to withdraw across the fords, thanks to Poulder’s cowardice! I mean to see him cashiered in disgrace! I mean to see him hanged for treason! I will see it done, on my honour!’ He glowered around the headquarters while his men muttered angrily amongst themselves. ‘Where is Lord Marshal Burr? I demand to see the Lord Marshal!’

  ‘Of course, if you could just give me . . .’ West’s words were smothered by the mounting noise of more rushing hooves, and a second group of riders careered around the side of the Marshal’s tent. Who else but General Poulder, accompanied by his own enormous staff. A cart pulled into the headquarters along with them, crowding the narrow space with beasts and men. Poulder vaulted down from his saddle and hastened through the dirt. His hair was in disarray, his jaw was locked tight, there was a long scratch down his cheek. His crimson entourage followed behind him: steels rattling, gold braid flapping, faces flushed.

  ‘Poulder!’ hissed Kroy. ‘You’ve some nerve showing your face in front of me! Some nerve! The only damn nerve you’ve shown all day!’

  ‘How dare you!’ screeched Poulder. ‘I demand an apology! Apologise at once!’

  ‘Apologise? Me, apologise? Hah! You’ll be the one saying sorry, I’ll see to it! The plan was for you to come in from the left wing! We were hard pressed for more than two hours!’

  ‘Almost three hours, sir,’ chipped in one of Kroy’s staff, unhelpfully.

  ‘Three hours, damn it! If that is not cowardice I fumble for the definition!’

  ‘Cowardice? ’ shrieked Pou
lder. A couple of his staff went as far as to place their hands on their steels. ‘You will apologise to me immediately! My division came under a brutal and sustained attack upon our flank! I was obliged to lead a charge myself! On foot!’ And he thrust forward his cheek and indicated the scratch with one gloved finger. ‘It was we who did all the fighting! We who won the victory here today!’

  ‘Damn you, Poulder, you did nothing! The victory belongs to my men alone! An attack? An attack from what? From animals of the forest?’

  ‘Ah-ha! Exactly so! Show him!’

  One of Poulder’s staff ripped back the oilskin on the cart, displaying what seemed at first to be a heap of bloody rags. He wrinkled up his nose and shoved it forward. The thing flopped off onto the ground, rolled onto its back and stared up at the sky with beetling black eyes. A huge, misshapen jaw hung open, long, sharp teeth sticking every which way. Its skin was a greyish brown colour, rough and calloused, its nose was an ill-formed stub. Its skull was flattened and hairless with a heavy ridge of brow and a small, receding forehead. One of its arms was short and muscular, the other much longer and slightly bent, both ending in claw-like hands. The whole creature seemed lumpen, twisted, primitive. West gawped down at it, open-mouthed.

  Plainly, it was not human.

  ‘There!’ squealed Poulder in triumph. ‘Now tell us my division didn’t fight! There were hundreds of these . . . these creatures out there! Thousands, and they fight like mad things! We only just managed to hold our ground, and it’s damn lucky for you that we did! I demand!’ he frothed, ‘I demand!’ he ranted, ‘I demand !’ he shrieked, face turning purple, ‘an apology!’

  Kroy’s eyes twitched with incomprehension, with anger, with frustration. His lips twisted, his jaw worked, his fists clenched. Clearly there was no entry in the rule book for a situation such as this. He rounded on West.

  ‘I demand to see Marshal Burr!’ he snarled.

  ‘As do I!’ screeched Poulder shrilly, not to be outdone.

  ‘The Lord Marshal is . . .’ West’s lips moved silently. He had no ideas left. No strategies, no ruses, no schemes. ‘He is . . .’ There would be no retreat across the fords for him. He was finished. More than likely he would end up in a penal colony himself. ‘He is—’

  ‘I am here.’

  And to West’s profound amazement, Burr was standing in the entrance to his tent. Even in the half-light, it seemed obvious that he was terribly ill. His face was ashen pale and there was a sheen of sweat across his forehead. His eyes were sunken and ringed with black. His lip quivered, his legs were unsteady, he clutched at the tent-pole beside him for support. West could see a dark stain down the front of his uniform that looked very much like blood.

  ‘I am afraid I have been . . . somewhat unwell during the battle,’ he croaked. ‘Something I ate, perhaps.’ His hand trembled on the pole and Jalenhorm lurked near his shoulder, ready to catch him if he fell, but by some superhuman effort of will the Lord Marshal stayed on his feet. West glanced nervously at the angry gathering, wondering what they might make of this walking corpse. But the two Generals were far too caught up in their own feud to pay any attention to that.

  ‘Lord Marshal, I must protest about General Poulder—’

  ‘Sir, I demand that General Kroy apologise—’

  The best form of defence seemed to West to be an immediate attack. ‘It would be traditional!’ he cut in at the top of his voice, ‘for us first to congratulate our commanding officer on his victory!’ He began to clap, slowly and deliberately. Pike and Jalenhorm joined him without delay. Poulder and Kroy exchanged an icy glance, then they too raised their hands.

  ‘May I be the first to—’

  ‘The very first to congratulate you, Lord Marshal!’

  Their staffs joined in, and others around the tent, and then more further away, and soon a rousing cheer was going up.

  ‘A cheer for Lord Marshal Burr!’

  ‘The Lord Marshal!’

  ‘Victory!’

  Burr himself twitched and quivered, one hand clutched to his stomach, his face a mask of anguish. West slunk backwards, away from the attention, away from the glory. He had not the slightest interest in it. That had been close, he knew, impossibly close. His hands were trembling, his mouth tasted sour, his vision was swimming. He could still hear Poulder and Kroy, already arguing again, like a pair of furious ducks quacking.

  ‘We must move on Dunbrec immediately, a swift assault while they are unwary and—’

  ‘Pah! Foolishness! The defences are too strong. We must surround the walls and prepare for a lengthy—’

  ‘Nonsense! My division could carry the place tomorrow!’

  ‘Rubbish! We must dig in! Siegecraft is my particular area of expertise!’

  And on, and on. West rubbed his fingertips in his ears, trying to block out the voices as he stumbled through the churned-up mud. A few paces further on and he clambered around a rocky outcrop, pressed his back to it and slowly slid down. Slid down until he was sitting hunched in the snow, hugging his knees, the way he used to do when he was a child, and his father was angry.

  Down in the valley, in the gathering gloom, he could see men moving over the battlefield. Already starting to dig the graves.

  A Fitting Punishment

  It had been raining, not long ago, but it had stopped. The paving of the Square of Marshals was starting to dry, the flagstones light round the edges, dark with damp in the centres. A ray of watery sun had finally broken through the clouds and was glinting on the bright metal of the chains hanging from the frame, on the blades, and hooks, and pincers of the instruments on their rack. Fine weather for it, I suppose. It should be quite the event. Unless your name is Tulkis, of course, then it might be one you’d rather miss.

  The crowd were certainly anticipating a thrill. The wide square was full of their chattering, a heady mixture of excitement and anger, happiness and hate. The public area was packed shoulder to shoulder, and still filling, but there was ample room here in the government enclosure, fenced in and well guarded right in front of the scaffold. The great and the good must have the best view, after all. Over the shoulders of the row in front he could see the chairs where the members of the Closed Council were sitting. If he went up on his toes, an operation he dared not try too often, he could just see the Arch Lector’s shock of white hair, stirred gracefully by the breeze.

  He glanced sideways at Ardee. She was frowning grimly up at the scaffold, chewing slowly at her lower lip. To think. The time was I would take young women to the finest establishments in the city, to the pleasure gardens on the hill, to concerts at the Hall of Whispers, or straight to my quarters, of course, if I thought I could manage it. Now I take them to executions. He felt the tiniest of smiles at the corner of his mouth. Ah well, things change.

  ‘How will it be done?’ she asked him.

  ‘He’ll be hung and emptied.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He will be lifted up by chains around his wrists and neck, not quite tight enough to kill him through strangulation. Then he will be opened with a blade, and gradually disembowelled. His entrails will be displayed to the crowd.’

  She swallowed. ‘He’ll be alive?’

  ‘Possibly. Hard to say. Depends whether the executioners do their job properly. Anyway, he won’t live long.’ Not without his guts.

  ‘Seems . . . extreme.’

  ‘It is meant to be. It was the most savage punishment our savage forebears could dream up. Reserved for those who attempt harm to the royal person. Not carried out, I understand, for some eighty years.’

  ‘Hence the crowd.’

  Glokta shrugged. ‘It’s a curiosity, but you always get a good showing for an execution. People love to see death. It reminds them that however mean, however low, however horrible their lives become . . . at least they have one.’

  Glokta felt a tap on his shoulder and looked round, with some pain, to see Severard’s masked face hovering just behind him. ‘I dealt with that thing.
That thing about Vitari.’

  ‘Huh. And?’

  Severard’s eyes slid suspiciously sideways to Ardee, then he leaned forward to whisper in Glokta’s ear. ‘I followed her to a house, down below Galt’s Green, near the market there.’

  ‘I know it. And?’

  ‘I took a peek in through a window.’

  Glokta raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? What was in there?’

  ‘Children.’

  ‘Children?’ muttered Glokta.

  ‘Three little children. Two girls and a boy. And what colour do you suppose their hair was?’

  You don’t say. ‘Not flaming red, by any chance?’

  ‘Just like their mother.’

  ‘She’s got children?’ Glokta licked thoughtfully at his gums. ‘Who’d have thought it?’

  ‘I know. I thought that bitch had a block of ice for a cunt.’

  That explains why she was so keen to get back from the South. All that time, she had three little ones waiting. The mothering instinct. How terribly touching. He wiped some wet from beneath his stinging left eye. ‘Well done, Severard, this could be useful. What about that other thing? The Prince’s guard?’

  Severard lifted his mask for a moment and scratched underneath it, eyes darting nervously around. ‘That’s a strange one. I tried but . . . it seems he’s gone missing.’

  ‘Missing?’

  ‘I spoke to his family. They haven’t seen him since the day before the Prince died.’

  Glokta frowned. ‘The day before?’ But he was there . . . I saw him. ‘Get Frost, and Vitari too. Get me a list of everyone who was in the palace that night. Every lord, every servant, every soldier. I am getting to the truth of this.’ One way or another.