Before They Are Hanged characters

Also known as The Bloody-Nine, Ninefingers

Appears from the start

The Northman warrior now travels west with Bayaz's company, far from his own country, one uneasy member of a fractious band bound for the edge of the World. Away from the constant fighting of his old life he tries again to be a better man, and finds a wary tenderness with the equally guarded Ferro. But the thing that lives in him when the killing starts - the Bloody-Nine, the reason the North both reveres and fears his name - is never as far below the surface as he wishes, and the hard road they travel offers plenty of chances for it to wake.

Also known as Superior Glokta

Appears from the start

The crippled Inquisitor is sent far from Adua to the besieged Union city of Dagoska, clinging to the southern edge of the Gurkish Empire, to discover what became of his vanished predecessor and to hold the city against an overwhelming army. Racked with pain and short of everything but enemies, Glokta plays the city's merchants, mercenaries, and native townsfolk against one another, forever aware that the debts he is running up may be called in by patrons more frightening than the Gurkish. His mordant wit and his refusal to simply lie down remain his only real weapons.

Appears from the start

The vain young officer, so pleased with himself at home, is dragged along on Bayaz's grueling journey through a ruined and war-torn land, stripped of the comforts and admiration he took for granted. Cold, hungry, frightened, and often useless, Jezal is forced for the first time to measure himself against real hardship and against companions who care nothing for his rank. Slowly, and painfully, the shallow young man begins to change, and he finds himself drawn to the fierce and unwelcoming Ferro.

Appears from the start

Still burning for revenge on the Gurkish who enslaved her, Ferro travels west with Bayaz, told that the weapon they seek may be the tool of the vengeance she craves. Suspicious of every kindness and braced always for betrayal, she is unsettled to find the Northman Logen refusing to give up on her, and more unsettled by the strangeness Bayaz keeps hinting at in her own blood. She does not trust the wizard's purposes, but his road runs toward her enemies, so she follows it.

Also known as The First of the Magi

Appears from the start

The First of the Magi leads his company across the desolate Old Empire toward the ruined city at the edge of the World, hunting an ancient thing he calls the Seed - a relic of a war among his own kind ages past, which he means to turn against the Gurkish prophet Khalul. Impatient and secretive, Bayaz doles out his history and his reasons a fragment at a time, and the flashes of raw power he shows when pressed make plain that the legends about the Magi are not entirely stories. What he actually intends, and what it will cost the people following him, he keeps to himself.

Also known as Colonel West

Appears from the start

Promoted and posted to the North, West serves on the staff of Crown Prince Ladisla's army in the war against King Bethod - a campaign hamstrung by the vanity and incompetence of its royal commander. A capable, conscientious man watching fools throw away lives, West struggles to keep his temper in check as disaster looms, and when the army meets catastrophe he is thrown together with a band of hard Northern scouts and must find his own steel to survive the wilderness.

Appears from the start

Having given up the search for Logen, the Dogman and the survivors of his old crew - Threetrees, Tul Duru, Grim, and Black Dow - throw in with the Union's northern army, offering their skills as scouts against Bethod, whom they hate as much as any Union man does. Wry and watchful as ever, the Dogman finds himself increasingly relied upon as the campaign unravels, and forms an unlikely bond with the Union officer West when the two are cast together in the wreckage.

First appears in chapter 6

A famous and infamous soldier of fortune, Nicomo Cosca commands a mercenary company hired into the defence of Dagoska. Flamboyant, unreliable, and usually drunk, he treats war as a business and loyalty as a matter of the current price, which makes him both useful and profoundly dangerous to Glokta, who must decide how far a man like this can be trusted when the coin runs short and the walls are breached. Beneath the theatrics is a shrewd and surprisingly resilient operator.

Also known as Prince Ladisla

First appears in chapter 4

The Crown Prince of the Union, heir to the throne and nominal commander of the army sent north against Bethod. Ladisla is a preening, foppish young man with grand notions of martial glory and no capacity whatsoever to lead, surrounded by flatterers and contemptuous of the professional soldiers, like West, who actually understand the war. His hunger for a heroic victory, untempered by any sense, steers the northern campaign toward calamity.