Abercrombie Joe - The First Law 01 - The Blade Itself.pdf - ALL - franzm666

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Contents

The End

Part I

The Survivors

Questions

No Choice at All

Playing With Knives

Teeth and Fingers

The Wide and Barren North

Fencing Practice

The Morning Ritual

First of the Magi

The Good Man

On the List

An Offer and a Gift

The King of the Northmen

A Road Between Two Dentists

Flatheads

The Course of True Love

How Dogs are Trained

Tea and Vengeance

Part II

What Freedom Looks Like

The King's Justice

Means of Escape

Three Signs

The Theatrical Outfitter's

Barbarians at the Gate

Better than Death

Sore Thumb

Questions

Nobility

Dark Work

Words and Dust

The Remarkable Talents of Brother Longfoot

Her Kind Fight Everything

She Loves Me… Not

The Seed

Never Bet Against a Magus

The Ideal Audience

The House of the Maker

Nobody's Dog

Each Man Worships Himself

Old Friends

Back to the Mud

Misery

The Bloody-Nine

The Tools we Have

Acknowledgments

The right of Joe Abercrombie to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in

accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Gollancz

An imprint of the Orion Publishing Group Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin's Lane, London WC2H 9EA

An Hachette Livre UK Company

This edition published in Great Britain in 2007 by Gollancz

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 57507 979 3

7 9 10 8

Typeset by Deltatype Ltd, Birkenhead, Merseyside

Printed in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham plc, Chatham, Kent

The Orion Publishing Group's policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products

and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are

expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

www.orionbooks.co.uk

For the Four Readers

You know who you are

The End

^ »

Logen plunged through the trees, bare feet slipping and sliding on the wet earth, the

slush, the wet pine needles, breath rasping in his chest, blood thumping in his head.

He stumbled and sprawled onto his side, nearly cut his chest open with his own axe,

lay there panting, peering through the shadowy forest.

The Dogman had been with him until a moment before, he was sure, but there

wasn't any sign of him now. As for the others, there was no telling. Some leader,

getting split up from his boys like that. He should've been trying to get back, but the

Shanka were all around. He could feel them moving between the trees, his nose was

full of the smell of them. Sounded as if there was some shouting somewhere on his

left, fighting maybe. Logen crept slowly to his feet, trying to stay quiet. A twig

snapped and he whipped round.

There was a spear coming at him. A cruel-looking spear, coming at him fast with

a Shanka on the other end of it.

'Shit,' said Logen. He threw himself to one side, slipped and fell on his face,

rolled away thrashing through the brush, expecting the spear through his back at any

moment. He scrambled up, breathing hard. He saw the bright point poking at him

again, dodged out of the way, slithered behind a big tree trunk. He peered out and

the Flathead hissed and stabbed at him. He showed himself on the other side, just

for a moment, then ducked away, jumped round the tree and swung the axe down,

roaring loud as he could. There was a crack as the blade buried itself deep in the

Shanka's skull. Lucky that, but then Logen reckoned he was due a little luck.

The Flathead stood there, blinking at him. Then it started to sway from side to

side, blood dribbling down its face. Then it dropped like a stone, dragging the axe

from Logen's fingers, thrashing around on the ground, at his feet. He tried to grab

hold of his axe-handle but the Shanka still somehow had a grip on its spear and the

point was flailing around in the air.

'Gah!' squawked Logen as the spear cut a nick in his arm. He felt a shadow fall

across his face. Another Flathead. A damn big one. Already in the air, arms

outstretched. No time to get the axe. No time to get out of the way. Logen's mouth

opened, but there was no time to say anything. What do you say at a time like that?

They crashed to the wet ground together, rolled together through the dirt and the

thorns and the broken branches, tearing and punching and growling at each other. A

tree root hit Logen in the head, hard, and made his ears ring. He had a knife

somewhere, but he couldn't remember where. They rolled on, and on, downhill, the

world flipping and flipping around, Logen trying to shake the fuzz out of his head

and throttle the big Flathead at the same time. There was no stopping.

It had seemed a clever notion to pitch camp near the gorge. No chance of anyone

sneaking up behind. Now, as Logen slid over the edge of the cliff on his belly, the

idea lost much of its appeal. His hands scrabbled at the wet earth. Only dirt and

brown pine needles. His fingers clutched, clutched at nothing. He was beginning to

fall. He let go a little whimper.

His hands closed around something. A tree root, sticking out from the earth at the

very edge of the gorge. He swung in space, gasping, but his grip was firm.

'Hah!' he shouted. 'Hah!' He was still alive. It would take more than a few

Flatheads to put an end to Logen Ninefingers. He started to pull himself up onto the

bank but couldn't manage it. There was some great weight around his legs. He

peered down.

The gorge was deep. Very deep with sheer, rocky sides. Here and there a tree

clung to a crack, growing out into the empty air and spreading its leaves into space.

The river hissed away far below, fast and angry, foaming white water fringed by

jagged black stone. That was all bad, for sure, but the real problem was closer to

hand. The big Shanka was still with him, swinging gently back and forth with its dirty

hands clamped tight around his left ankle.

'Shit,' muttered Logen. It was quite a scrape he was in. He'd been in some bad

ones alright, and lived to sing the songs, but it was hard to see how this could get

much worse. That got him thinking about his life. It seemed a bitter, pointless sort of

a life now. No one was any better off because of it. Full of violence and pain, with

not much but disappointment and hardship in between. His hands were starting to

tire now, his forearms were burning. The big Flathead didn't look like it was going to

fall off any time soon. In fact, it had dragged itself up his leg a way. It paused,

glaring up at him.

If Logen had been the one clinging to the Shanka's foot, he would most likely

have thought, 'My life depends on this leg I'm hanging from—best not take any

chances.' A man would rather save himself than kill his enemy. Trouble was that the

Shanka didn't think that way, and Logen knew it. So it wasn't much of a surprise

when it opened its big mouth and sank its teeth into his calf.

'Aaaargh!' Logen grunted, and squealed and kicked out as hard as he could with

his bare heel, kicked a bloody gash in the Shanka's head, but it wouldn't stop biting,

and the harder he kicked, the more his hands slipped on the greasy root above.

There wasn't much root left to hold on to, now, and what there was looked like

snapping off any moment. He tried to think past the pain in his hands, the pain in his

arms, the Flathead's teeth in his leg. He was going to fall. The only choice was

between falling on rocks or falling on water, and that was a choice that more or less

made itself.

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

That's what Logen's father would have said. So he planted his free foot firmly on the

rock face, took one last deep breath, and flung himself out into empty space with all

the strength he had left. He felt the biting teeth let go of him, then the grasping hands,

and for a moment he was free.

Then he began to fall. Fast. The sides of the gorge flashed past—grey rock,

green moss, patches of white snow, all tumbling around him.

Logen turned over slowly in the air, limbs flailing pointlessly, too scared to

scream. The rushing wind whipped at his eyes, tugged at his clothes, plucked the

breath out of his mouth. He saw the big Shanka hit the rock face beside him. He saw

it break and bounce and flop off, dead for sure. That was a pleasing sight, but

Logen's satisfaction was short-lived.

The water came up to meet him. It hit him in the side like a charging bull, punched

the air out of his lungs, knocked the sense out of his head, sucked him in and down

into the cold darkness…

PART I

'The blade itself

Abercrombie Joe - The First Law 01 - The Blade Itself.pdf

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