Before They Are Hanged (The First Law, #2)

by Joe Abercrombie

“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.

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.

“They put up a good fight though,” interrupted Prince Ladisla, “eh, Marshal Burr?” Burr glared down the table. “A good fight is one you win, Your Highness. They were slaughtered.

“So we should fear these barbarians, Lord Marshal? Would that be your advice?” “What was it that Stolicus wrote, General Kroy? ‘Never fear your enemy, but always respect him.’ I suppose that would be my advice, if I gave any.” Burr frowned across the table. “But I don’t give advice. I give orders.”

There is no method here. No purpose. Brutality, for its own sake. I might almost be sickened, had I eaten anything today. “How old is she?”

The mistakes of old,” intoned Bayaz with the highest pomposity, “should be made only once. Any worthwhile education, therefore, must be founded on a sound understanding of history.”

Above all, he has learned the trick of saying a great deal less than he knows.”

The history of the Old Empire stretches back for many centuries.” “Must be why they call it old.” “Don’t try to be clever with me, Captain Luthar, you have not the equipment.

“A great ruler must be ruthless,” intoned Bayaz. “When he perceives a threat against his person or authority, he must move swiftly, and with no space left for regret.

An excessive and a brutal act, but better to act with too much force than too little. Better to be held in fear, than in contempt. Shilla knew this. There is no place for sentiment in politics,

“Not that a great King need be a tyrant, of course! To gain the love of the common man should always be a ruler’s first aim, for it can be won with small gestures, and yet can last a lifetime.” Jezal was not about to let that pass, however dangerous the old man might be. It was clear that Bayaz had no practical experience in the arena of politics. “What use is the love of commoners? The nobles have the money, the soldiers, the power.” Bayaz rolled his eyes at the clouds. “The words of a child, easily tricked by flim-flam and quick hands. Where does the nobles’ money come from but from taxes on the peasants in the fields? Who are their soldiers but the sons and husbands of common folk? What gives the lords their power? Only the compliance of their vassals, nothing more. When the peasantry become truly dissatisfied, that power can vanish with terrifying speed.

Such is the love of nobles. The best that one can do is to divide them and work on their jealousies, make them compete for small favours, claim the credit for their successes, and most of all ensure that no one of them should grow too powerful, and rise to challenge one’s own majesty.”

great men have great faults.”

“Superior Glokta, I feel we have got off on the wrong foot—” “I only have one that works.”

She hated fine-looking people even more than ugly ones. Beauty was never to be trusted. You would have had to look far

“A stricture that Euz placed on his sons, the first rule made after the chaos of ancient days. It is forbidden to touch the Other Side direct. Forbidden to communicate with the world below, forbidden to summon demons, forbidden to open gates to hell. Such is the First Law, the guiding principle of all magic.”

A strange and frightening thing, cold. She hated it. But she preferred cold to company.

Trust was a word for fools. It was a word people used when they meant to betray you.

“Time comes you got to stick at something, don’t you? That’s the thing about trust, sooner or later you just got to do it, without good reasons.” “Why?” “Otherwise you end up like us, and who wants that?”

Is it ever too late to be… a good man?

“Ask your questions, I will do my best to answer!” “Good.” Glokta perched himself on the edge of the table just beside his tightly bound prisoner and looked down at him. “Excellent.” Harker’s hands were tanned deep brown, his face was tanned deep brown, the rest of his body was pale as a white slug, with thick patches of dark hair. Hardly a fetching look. But it could be worse. “Answer me this, then. Why is it that men have nipples?”

“It still seems a strange decision, though, for the tortured to turn torturer.” “On the contrary, nothing could be more natural. In my experience, people do as they are done to. You were sold by your father and bought by your husband, and yet you choose to buy and sell.”

“I would have thought your pain would give you empathy.” “Empathy? What’s that?” Glokta winced as he rubbed at his aching leg. “It’s a sad fact, but pain only makes you sorry for yourself.”

“In ancient days, before history, so the legends say, our world and the Other Side were joined. One world. Demons walked the land, free to do as they pleased. Chaos, beyond dreaming. They bred with humans, and their offspring were half-breeds. Part man, part demon. Devil-bloods. Monsters. One among them took the name Euz. He delivered humanity from the tyranny of devils, and the fury of his battle with them shaped the land. He split the world above from the world below, and he sealed the gates between. To prevent such terror ever coming again, he pronounced the First Law. It is forbidden to touch the Other Side direct, or to speak with devils.”

“From the start the First Law was filled with contradictions. All magic comes from the Other Side, falling upon the land as the light falls from the sun. Euz himself was part devil, and so were his sons—Juvens, Kanedias, Glustrod—and others besides. Their blood brought them gifts, and curses. Power, and long life, and strength or sight beyond the limits of simple men. Their blood passed on into their children, growing ever thinner, into their children’s children, and so on through the long centuries. The gifts skipped one generation, then another, then came but rarely. The devil-blood grew thin, and died out. It is rare indeed now, when our world and the world below have drifted so far apart, to see those gifts made flesh. We truly are privileged to witness it.”

“Shall I start from the beginning?” “Where else should a man ever start?”

“Almighty Euz, vanquisher of demons, closer of gates, father of the World, had four sons, and to each he gave a gift. To his eldest, Juvens, he gave the talent of High Art, the skill to change the world with magic, tempered by knowledge. To his second son, Kanedias, went the gift of making, of shaping stone and metal to his own purposes. To his third son, Bedesh, Euz gave the skill of speaking with spirits, and of making them do his bidding.”

“We have forgotten Glustrod, just as his father did. The ignored son. The shunned son. The cheated son. He begged all three brothers for a share of their secrets, but they were jealous of their gifts, and all three refused him. He looked upon what Juvens had achieved, and was bitter beyond words. He found dark places in the world, and in secret he studied those sciences forbidden by the First Law. He found dark places in the world, and he touched the Other Side. He found dark places, and he spoke in the tongue of devils, and he heard their voices answer him.” Quai’s voice dropped down to a whisper. “And the voices told Glustrod where to dig…”

“Strange and sinister was the host that Glustrod gathered. He waited for Juvens to leave the Empire, then he crept into the capital at Aulcus and set his well-laid schemes in motion. It seemed as if a madness swept the city. Son fought with father, wife with husband, neighbour with neighbour. The Emperor was cut down on the steps of his palace by his own sons and then, maddened with greed and envy, they turned upon each other. Glustrod’s twisted army had slithered into the sewers beneath the city and rose up, turning the streets into charnel pits, the squares into slaughter yards. Some among them could take forms, stealing the faces of others.”

“But Glustrod recognised no law beyond his own strength. Soon he sat in the Emperor’s throne room upon a pile of skulls, sucking the flesh of men as a baby sucks milk, basking in his awful victory. The Empire descended into chaos, the very slightest taste of the chaos of ancient days, before the coming of Euz, when our world and the world below were one.”

“When he found out what Glustrod had done, Juvens’ fury was terrible, and he sought the aid of his brothers. Kanedias would not come. He stayed sealed in his house, tinkering with his machines, caring nothing for the world outside. Juvens and Bedesh raised an army without him, and they fought a war against their brother.”

“The fighting spread across the continent from one end to the other, and drew in every petty rivalry, and gave birth to a host of feuds, and crimes, and vengeances, whose consequences still poison the world today. But in the end Juvens was victorious. Glustrod was besieged in Aulcus, his changelings unmasked, his army scattered. Now, in his most desperate moment, the voices from the world below whispered to him a plan. Open a gate to the Other Side, they said. Pick the locks, and crack the seals, and throw wide the doors that your father made. Break the First Law one last time, they said, and let us back into the world, and you will never again be ignored, be shunned, be cheated.”

The great power that Glustrod had gathered, strong enough to tear a hole in the fabric of the world, was released without form or reason. Glustrod destroyed himself. Aulcus, great and beautiful capital of the Empire, was laid waste, the land around it forever poisoned. No one ventures within miles of the place now. The city is a shattered graveyard. A blasted ruin. A fitting monument to the folly and the pride of Glustrod and his brothers.”

“A pack of nonsense, if you ask me,” sneered Luthar. “Huh,” snorted Bayaz. “How fortunate for us that no one did.

He was smiling on the inside, though. Small gestures and time. That was how he’d get it done.

Cold, eh, Colonel West?” “Yes, Your Highness, winter is nearly upon us.”

Man, West really is in Westeros…WINTER IS COMING.

Never to want for anything, or work for anything, or show the tiniest grain of self-discipline in a whole life must give a man a strange outlook on the world,

“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!”

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.

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.

A great leader must share the hardships of his followers, of his soldiers, of his subjects. That is how he wins their respect. Great leaders do not complain. Not ever.”

“Who asked your opinion?” “A man who doesn’t want opinions should keep his own mouth shut.”

“I’ll bet you’ve never even drawn a blade in anger.”

the colour of her eyes, the set of her mouth, one side twisted up. Just thinking of it made him have to swallow that familiar lump in his throat. The lump he swallowed twenty times a day. First thing in the morning, when he woke, and last thing at night, as he lay on the hard ground.

The rain had finally stopped when they came upon the place, but the air was still full of heavy damp, the sky above was still full of strange colours. The evening sun pierced the swirling clouds with pink and orange, casting an eerie glow over the grey plain.

I’ve walked too far, and fought too long, and heard enough shit from you to fill a lifetime, and all at an age when I should have my feet up with sons to take care o’ me. So you can see I got bigger problems than that life hasn’t turned out the way you hoped. You can harp on the past all you please, Dow, like some old woman upset ’cause her tits used to stay up by themselves, or you can shut your fucking hole and help me get on with things.”

Spiders had spun great glistening webs in leaning doorways, heavy with sparkling beads of dew. Tiny lizards sunned themselves in patches of light on the fallen blocks, swarming away as they came near.

“Strange, eh? How the plants outlast the greatest works of men.”

Logen grinned to himself. An argument between the two most arrogant men he had ever met was well worth watching, in his opinion.

Laughing with a man was a good step forward. First comes the laughter, then the respect, then the trust.