The Blade Itself (The First Law, #1)

by Joe Abercrombie

But who needs taste when you have money?

You don’t even know what side you’re on! You don’t even know what the sides are!’

Fear, or excitement? They sound the same.

If he did well there was no telling where he might go.

‘Jezal,’ she said, ‘I haven’t seen you in a while.’

‘A spring?’ he whispered. ‘But how?’

A stupid man. Small, scared, ugly, and confused.

It’s better to do them than to live with the fear of them.

They sat in boats on the miniature lake, rowing gently round and round, going nowhere.

A thoughtful kind of slowness. As if he could move quickly but doesn’t see the point.

He thinks before he speaks, then says no more than he has to. This is a dangerous man.

Being part of the audience is a world away from being part of the show.

‘He doesn’t need luck!’ snapped Varuz. ‘This Broya’s a nobody! Just watch his reach! Press him, Jezal, press him!’

Broya shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, raised his steels. Jezal needed to piss. Needed to piss so badly. What if he pissed himself right now?

pretend that he wanted to be her friend? A friendship between a man and a woman was what you called it when one had been pursuing the other for a long time, and had never got anywhere.

‘But you came anyway. I suppose I should be flattered.’ She walked slowly around him, looking him up and down, from feet to forehead and back again. ‘You took your time, though. It’s late. I’ll have to be getting home soon.’ There was something about the way she was looking at him which was not helping to calm his thumping heart.

‘Shit,’ he said.

You fight with a man for long enough, you get an understanding.

glancing up at him with eyes infinitely tired.

Repetition – the curse of the old.

‘Journeys are always pleasant to me!

Logen found her pretty, in a desperate sort of a way. Prettier than he was anyway,

That had been lucky, he knew. It’s a fool who thinks that any fight is too small to be the death of him, however tough he is.

Neither one of you will leave this place alive.’

‘Kill him! Just kill him!’

It made him want to change her mind.

He looked like a man having a piss: involved in a mundane and faintly distasteful task that must simply be done with as quickly as possible.

The thought of doing it all again next year made him want to vomit.

He was fearless, peerless, unstoppable. The applause thundered around him and yet he could hear every word of it, see every detail of every face in the crowd.

Drunk on victory. Drunk on yourself.

Bring your Practicals with you. Our friends might become violent when they realise the game is up. Barbarians of this sort, who can tell what they might be capable of?’

Logen had already drunk a deal of it, and the bright room had taken on a pleasant glow.

And Jezal thought it best always to do what the important people said.

Soft things make you soft, and she wanted no part of that.

He stared miserably down at the table and an ugly spasm ran across his face. I know that one. One of my own favourites. Self-loathing.

They’d all gathered now, and Forley smiled round at ’em. ‘Well then, lads, it’s been something ain’t it?’ ‘Shut up, Weakest,’ scowled Dow. ‘Bethod ain’t got nothing against you. You’re coming back.’ ‘In case I don’t, though. It’s been something.’

Sometimes weakness is a better shield than strength, the Dogman reckoned.

Well that was it, o’ course. Fuck the signal.

It was raining. Thin rain, making the whole world damp. Soft as a maiden’s kiss, as they say, though the Dogman could hardly remember what one of those felt like.

‘Fare you well, Forley,’ said the Dogman. ‘No more fear.’

He had practised this speech twenty times at least, staring in his mirror until he got just the right expression: serious, confident, slightly wheedling. Now, though, the words came out in a foolish rush. ‘I hope that, I mean, perhaps, I hope that you’ll wait for me?’

Pitiful. ‘But I’ll wait.’ Joy. It swelled in his chest and burst out in a little girlish sob. He was helpless. It was ridiculous the power she had over him. The difference between misery and happiness was the right word from her.

Others did not care: spectators come simply to witness the madness.

Horror crept slowly through his body, from his gut to the very tips of his fingers. ‘Me?’ he croaked.

Logen ambled over to him. If you’re going to travel with a man, and maybe fight alongside him, it’s best to talk, and laugh if you can. That way you can get an understanding, and then a trust. Trust is what binds a band together, and out there in the wilds that can make the difference between living or dying. Building that kind of trust takes time, and effort. Logen reckoned it was best to get started early, and today he had good humour to spare, so he stood next to Luthar and looked out at the park, trying to dream up some common ground in which to plant the seeds of an unlikely friendship. ‘Beautiful, your home.’ He didn’t think it was, but he was short on ideas.

He reeled around and the sword followed him in a furious, beautiful, irresistible arc.

Logen might have pitied him, but Logen was far away and the Bloody-Nine had no more pity in him than the winter. Less even.

It meant less than nothing to the Bloody-Nine though – he was made to break such men.

anger. He fingered the hilt of his sword uncertainly, feeling in terrible need of someone to tell him what to

Then the door to the bathroom banged against the wall. Bayaz stood there, entirely naked,