Before They Are Hanged

by Joe Abercrombie

  Bayaz shook his head. 'Taking forms. A dread and insidious trick.' Logen remembered a woman, in the cold darkness, who had spoken with the voice of his dead wife, and he frowned and hunched his shoulders.

  'A dread trick indeed,' said Quai, his sickly grin growing even wider. 'For who can be trusted if one cannot trust one's own eyes, one's own ears, to tell friend from foe? But worse was to come. Glustrod summoned demons from the Other Side, bound them to his will and sent them to destroy those who might resist him.'

  'Summoning and sending,' hissed Bayaz. 'Cursed disciplines. Dire risks. Terrible breaches of the First Law.'

  '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.'

  A gust of wind sighed through the chinks in the ancient stonework around them, and Logen shivered and pulled his blanket tight around him. Damn story was making him nervous. Stealing faces, and sending devils, and eating men. But Quai did not stop. '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.'

  'A terrible war,' muttered Bayaz, 'with terrible weapons, and terrible casualties.'

  '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 First of the Magi nodded slowly to himself. 'But he was cheated once more.'

  'Poor fool! The creatures of the Other Side are made of lies. To deal with them is to grasp the most awful peril. Glustrod made ready his rituals, but in his haste he made some small mistake. Only a grain of salt out of place, perhaps, but the results were horrible indeed. 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.' The apprentice glanced up at Bayaz. 'Do I speak the truth, master?'

  'You do,' murmured the Magus. 'I know. I saw it. A young fool with a full and lustrous head of hair.' He ran a hand over his bald scalp. 'A young fool who was as ignorant of magic, and wisdom, and the ways of power as you are now, Master Quai.'

  The apprentice inclined his head. 'I live only to learn.'

  'And in that regard, you seem much improved. How did you like that tale, Master Ninefingers?'

  Logen puffed out his cheeks. 'I'd been hoping for something with a few more laughs, but I guess I'll take what's offered.'

  'A pack of nonsense, if you ask me,' sneered Luthar.

  'Huh,' snorted Bayaz. 'How fortunate for us that no one did. Perhaps you ought to get the pots washed, Captain, before it gets too late.'

  'Me?'

  'One of us caught the food, and one of us cooked it. One of us has entertained the group with a tale. You are the only one among us who has as yet contributed nothing.'

  'Apart from you.'

  'Oh, I am far too old to be sloshing around in streams at this time of night.' Bayaz' face grew hard. 'A great man must first learn humility. The pots await.'

  Luthar opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, pushed himself angrily up from his place and threw his blanket down in the grass. 'Damn pots,' he cursed as he snatched them up from around the fire and stomped off towards the brook.

  Ferro watched him go, a strange expression on her face that might even have been her version of a smile. She looked back at the fire, and licked her lips. Logen pulled the stopper from the water skin and held it out to her.

  'Uh,' she grunted, snatched it from his hand, took a quick swallow. While she was wiping her mouth on her sleeve, she glanced sideways at him, and frowned. 'What?'

  'Nothing,' he said quickly, looking away and holding up his empty palms. 'Nothing at all.' He was smiling on the inside, though. Small gestures and time. That was how he'd get it done.

  * * *

  Small Crimes

  « ^ »

  'Cold, eh, Colonel West?'

  'Yes, your Highness, winter is nearly upon us.' There had been a kind of snow in the night. A cold, wet sleet that covered everything in icy moisture. Now, in the pale morning, the whole world seemed half-frozen. The hooves of their horses crunched and slurped in the half-frozen mud. Water dripped sadly from the half-frozen trees. West was no exception. His breath smoked from his runny nose. The tips of his ears tingled unpleasantly, numb from the cold.

  Prince Ladisla hardly seemed to notice, but then he was swathed in an enormous coat, hat and mittens of shining black fur, no doubt several hundred marks worth of it. He grinned over. 'The men seem good and fit, though, in spite of it all.'

  West could scarcely believe his ears. The regiment of the King's Own that had been placed under Ladisla's command seemed happy enough, it was true. Their wide tents were pitched in orderly rows in the middle of the camp, cooking fires in front, horses tethered nearby in good order.

  The position of the levies, who made up a good three quarters of their strength, was less happy. Many were shamefully ill-prepared. Men with no training or no weapons, some who were plainly too ill or too old for marching, let alone for battle. Some had little more than the clothes they stood up in, and those were in a woeful state. West had seen men huddled together under trees for warmth, nothing but half a blanket to keep the rain off. It was a disgrace.

  'The King's Own are well provided for, but I'm concerned about the situation of some of the levies, your—'

  'Yes,' said Ladisla, talking over him precisely as if he had not spoken, 'good and fit! Chomping at the bit! Must be the fire in their bellies keeps 'em warm, eh, West? Can't wait to get at the enemy! Damn shame we have to wait here, kicking our heels behind this damn river!'

  West bit his lip. Prince Ladisla's incredible powers of self-deception were becoming more frustrating with every passing day. His Highness had fixed upon the idea of being a great and famous general, with a matchless force of fighting men under his command. Of winning a famous victory, and being celebrated as a hero back in Adua. Rather than exerting a single particle of effort to make it happen, however, he behaved as if it already had, utterly regardless of the truth. Nothing which was distasteful, or displeasing, or at odds with his cock-eyed notions could be permitted to be noticed. Meanwhile, the dandies on his staff, without a month's military experience between them, congratulated him on his fine judgement, slapped each other on the back, and agreed with his every utterance, no matter how ludicrous.

  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, West supposed, and here was the proof, riding along beside him, smiling away as though the care of ten thousand men was a light responsibility. The Crown Prince and the real world, as Lord Marshal Burr had observed, were entire strangers to one another.

  'Cold,' Ladisla murmured. 'Not much like the deserts of Gurkhul now, eh, Colonel West?'

  'No, your High
ness.'

  'But some things are the same, eh? I'm speaking of war, West! War in general! The same everywhere! The courage! The honour! The glory! You fought with Colonel Glokta, didn't you?'

  'Yes, your Highness, I did.'

  'I used to love to hear stories of that man's exploits! One of my heroes, when I was young. Riding round the enemy, harassing his lines of communication, falling on the baggage train and whatnot.' The Prince's riding crop rode around, harassed, and fell on imaginary baggage in the air before him. 'Capital! And I suppose you saw it all?'

  'Some of it, your Highness, yes.' He had seen a great deal of saddle-soreness, sunburn, looting, drunkenness, and vainglorious showing-off.

  '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. Arrows 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 metalworkers.'

  '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.