One of Logen's Named Men - the best scout in the North, a man who can track anything across any terrain and who has survived longer than most by knowing when to run. The Dogman is quieter and more thoughtful than most Northern warriors, less interested in reputation than in keeping himself and the people he cares about alive. He becomes a POV character in the later books and proves to be one of Abercrombie's most sympathetic perspectives on the North - someone who has seen what the endless fighting produces and has clear-eyed views about its value.

A Northman who tries to go south and be a better man - to leave the violence of the North behind and become something else. He fails, but the manner of his failure and what it costs him make him one of the most interesting characters in the series. Shivers appears first in Best Served Cold as Monza's hired muscle and grows into a recurring presence across the standalones and Age of Madness, each appearance showing him further from who he wanted to be. His arc is the purest expression of the series' central theme: people do not change, and the things that happen to them tend to make them more themselves rather than less.

The daughter of the Dogman, chieftain of the North, with the Long Eye - the ability to see the future in fits that leave her incapacitated and uncertain what is vision and what is fear. Rikke is the most unconventional of the Age of Madness protagonists: funny, self-aware, and navigating a world of Northern politics that has no obvious place for a woman whose father is dying and whose gift is as much a curse as an asset. Her arc involves learning to use what she has - the Long Eye, her father's name, her own judgment - in a world that prefers its leaders to be straightforward and male.

The self-styled King of the Northmen and Logen Ninefingers' former master. Bethod clawed his way from nothing to unite the fractious North through a combination of military genius, ruthless politics, and men like Logen doing his killing. By the time the trilogy begins he is the main antagonist driving events in the North - a cold, calculating ruler who has discarded everyone who helped him rise.

A Named Man from the North and one of Bethod's most feared warriors, Black Dow is everything the North respects - brutal, honest about what he is, and capable of surviving anything. His arc extends through the standalones and Age of Madness, where he becomes a significant power in his own right. The North's opinion of him is complicated: he is hated and followed in roughly equal measure.

A Named Man from the North and one of Black Dow's chiefs, Curnden Craw is a veteran of more battles than he can count and has been trying to do the right thing in them for longer than most men live. His chapters in The Heroes are the moral centre of the book - a man who has spent a lifetime in violence asking whether it has amounted to anything, surrounded by younger men who haven't yet asked the question.

Bethod's younger son, with none of his father's reputation for violence and all of his father's appetite for power. Calder survives by scheming where other Northmen survive by fighting - he is contemptuous of the heroic ideal and considerably more effective for it. His arc across The Heroes and into the Age of Madness is one of the series' more satisfying long games.

A young Northman who comes to the battle at the Heroes seeking glory and a name. Beck's arc is the series' clearest articulation of the gap between the stories men tell about war and what war actually is - by the end of three days he has his answer, and it is not the one he wanted.