HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2014
Copyright © Mark Lawrence 2014
Jacket layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014
Jacket illustration © Jason Chan
Map © Andrew Ashton
Mark Lawrence asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007531530
Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007531554
Version: 2017-05-31
Iâm a liar and a cheat and a coward, but I will never, ever, let a friend down. Unless of course not letting them down requires honesty, fair play, or bravery.
Iâve always found hitting a man from behind to be the best way to go about things. This can sometimes be accomplished by dint of a simple ruse. Classics such as, âWhatâs that over there?â work surprisingly often, but for truly optimal results itâs best if the person doesnât ever know you were there.
âOw! Jesu! What the hell did you do that for?â Alain DeVeer turned, clamping his hand to the back of his head and bringing it away bloody.
When the person you hit doesnât have the grace to fall over itâs generally best to have a back-up plan. I dropped what remained of the vase, turned and ran. In my mind heâd folded up with a pleasing âoofffâ and left me free to leave the mansion unobserved, stepping over his prone and senseless form on the way. Instead his senseless form was now chasing me down the hall bellowing for blood.
I crashed back through Lisaâs door and slammed it behind me, bracing myself for the impact.
âWhat the hell?â Lisa sat in the bed, silken sheets flowing off her nakedness like water.
âUh.â Alain hammered into the door, jolting the air from my lungs and scraping my heels over the tiles. The trick is to never rush for the bolt. Youâll be fumbling for it and get a face full of opening door. Brace for the impact, when thatâs done slam the bolt home while the other party is picking himself off the floor. Alain proved worryingly fast in getting back on his feet and I nearly got the doorhandle for breakfast despite my precautions.
âJal!â Lisa was out of bed now, wearing nothing but the light and shade through the shutters. Stripes suited her. Sweeter than her elder sister, sharper than her younger sister. Even then I wanted her, even with her murderous brother held back by just an inch of oak and with my chances for escape evaporating by the moment.
I ran to the largest window and tore the shutters open. âSay sorry to your brother for me.â I swung a leg over the casement. âMistaken identity or something â¦â The door started to shudder as Alain pounded the far side.
âAlain?â Lisa managed to look both furious with me and terrified at the same time.
I didnât stop to reply but vaulted down into the bushes, which were thankfully the fragrant rather than thorny variety. Dropping into a thorn bush can lead to no end of grief.
Landing is always important. I do a lot of falling and itâs not how you start that matters so much as how you finish. In this instance, I finished concertinaed, heels to arse, chin to knees, half an azalea bush up my nose and all the air driven from my lungs, but with no bones broken. I fought my way out and limped toward the garden wall, gasping for breath and hoping the staff were too busy with pre-dawn chores to be poised and ready to hunt me down.
I took off, across the formal lawns, through the herb garden, cutting a straight path through all the little diamonds of sage, and triangles of thyme and whatnot. Somewhere back at the house a hound bayed, and that put the fear in me. Iâm a good runner any day of the week. Scared shitless Iâm world class. Two years ago, in the âborder incidentâ with Scorron, I ran from a patrol of Teutons, five of them on big old destriers. The men I had charge of stayed put, lacking any orders. I find the important thing in running away is not how fast you run but simply that you run faster than the next man. Unfortunately my lads did a piss-poor job of slowing the Scorrons down and that left poor Jal running for his life with hardly twenty years under his belt and a great long list of things still to do â with the DeVeer sisters near the top and dying on a Scorron lance not even making the first page. In any event, the borderlands arenât the place to stretch a warhorseâs legs and I kept a gap between us by running through a boulderfield at breakneck speed. Without warning I found myself charging into the back of a pitched battle between a much larger force of Scorron irregulars and the band of Red March skirmishers Iâd been scouting on behalf of in the first place. I rocketed into the midst of it all, flailed around with my sword in blind terror trying to escape, and when the dust settled and the blood stopped squirting, I discovered myself the hero of the day, breaking the enemy with a courageous attack that showed complete disregard for my own safety.