The First Law Trilogy

by Joe Abercrombie

Once you’ve got a task to do, it’s better to do it than to live with the fear of it.

‘I’ve fought in three campaigns,’ he began. ‘In seven pitched battles. In countless raids and skirmishes and desperate defences,

and bloody actions of every kind. I’ve fought in the driving snow, the blasting wind, the middle of the night. I’ve been fighting all my life, one enemy or another, one friend or another. I’ve known little else. I’ve seen men killed for a word, for a look, for nothing at all. A woman tried to stab me once for killing her husband, and I threw her down a well. And that’s far from the worst of it. Life used to be cheap as dirt to me. Cheaper. ‘I’ve fought ten single combats and I won them all, but I fought on the wrong side and for all the wrong reasons. I’ve been ruthless, and brutal, and a coward. I’ve stabbed men in the back, burned them, drowned them, crushed them with rocks, killed them asleep, unarmed, or running away. I’ve run away myself more than once. I’ve pissed myself with fear. I’ve begged for my life. I’ve been wounded, often, and badly, and screamed and cried like a baby whose mother took her tit away. I’ve no doubt the world would be a better place if I’d been killed years ago, but I haven’t been, and I don’t know why.’ He looked down at his hands, pink and clean on the stone. ‘There are few men with more blood on their hands than me. None, that I know of. The Bloody-Nine they call me, my enemies, and there’s a lot of ’em. Always more enemies, and fewer friends. Blood gets you nothing but more blood. It follows me now, always, like my shadow, and like my shadow I can never

be free of it. I should never be free of it. I’ve earned it. I’ve deserved it. I’ve sought it ...

‘I’ve saved a man this year, and only killed four. I’m born again.’

Do you have any cash, Severard?’ ‘I did have some. I gave it to a girl, down in the slums.’ ‘Ah. Shame.’ ‘Not really, she fucks like a madman. I’d thoroughly recommend her, if you’re interested.’ Glokta winced as his knee clicked. ‘What a thoroughly heart-warming tale, Severard, I never had you down for a romantic. I’d sing a ballad if I wasn’t so short of funds.’

‘Then you’ve got the chance to do better next time.’ ‘Next time?’ ‘Course. Doing better next time. That’s what life is.’

‘Alright then. I daresay I can squeeze one extra friend into the social whirl that is my life. I’ll see what I can do for you.’

brows. ‘Honour, eh? What the hell is that anyway? Every man thinks it’s something different. You can’t drink it. You can’t fuck it. The more of it you have the less good it does you, and if you’ve got none at all you don’t miss it.’ He shook his head. ‘But some men think it’s the best thing in the world.’

The Northman whistled softly through pursed lips. ‘Well, that’s the end of that, I reckon. You know what, Furious?’ And he grinned sideways at West. ‘I’m getting to like you, boy.’

‘Happy?’ He shrugged. ‘About as close as I get, since you ask.’ Ardee dumped herself into a chair opposite, staring sourly down at one shoe. ‘What happens now?’ ‘Now? Now we will delight each other with humorous observations for a lazy hour, then a stroll into town?’ He winced. ‘Slowly, of course. Then a late lunch, perhaps, I was thinking of—’ ‘I meant about the succession.’ ‘Oh,’ muttered Glokta. ‘That.’

Seemed he’d let himself forget what the North was like. Or he’d let himself pretend it would be different. Now he saw his mistake. He’d made a trap for himself, years ago. He’d made a great heavy chain, link by bloody link, and he’d bound himself up in it. Somehow he’d been offered the chance to get free, a chance he didn’t come near to deserving, but instead he’d blundered back in, and now things were apt to get bloody.

‘Can’t say that I do.’ Logen wasn’t altogether sure he wanted to hear it now, but he was in the long habit of not getting what he wanted.

‘Life is a series of things we would rather not do.’

Maybe now those Easterners would give it a second thought before they came again at night and fucked up everyone’s breakfast.

He filled the air with blood, and broken weapons, and the parts of men, and these good things wrote secret letters, and described sacred patterns that only he could see and understand.

‘I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes.’ Cosca stretched his chin up and scratched at his scabby neck. ‘The one thing I never learn is to stop making them.’ ‘Huh,’ grunted Glokta as he laboured up the steps. A curse we all have to bear. Round and round in circles we go, clutching at successes that we never grasp, endlessly tripping over the same old failures. Truly, life is the misery we endure between disappointments.

‘I hope you weren’t planning to take up the violin, Severard. You’ll be lucky if you can play a fucking gong by the time we’re done here.’

First it is done to us, then we do it to others, then we order it done. Such is the way of things.