Road Brothers
A volume of short stories by the bestselling author of THE BROKEN EMPIRE series, Mark LawrenceThis is a collection of fourteen stories of murder, mayhem, pathos, and philosophy, all set in the world of the Broken Empire.Within these pages, you will find tales of men such as Red Kent, Sir Makin, Rike, Burlow and the Nuban, telling of their origins and the events that forged them. There is Jorg himself, striding the page as a child of six, as a teenage wanderer and as a young king. And then there is a tale about Prince Jalan Kendeth – liar, cheat, womaniser and coward.To the new reader, welcome to a lawless world where wit and sword are the most useful weapons, and danger lurks as much in candle-lit palaces as in dark alleys and dense woodland. To those who have already journeyed with Jorg, we hope you will enjoy renewing old acquaintances with your favourite characters.
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HarperVoyager
an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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London SE1 9GF
First published in ebook in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2017
Copyright © Mark Lawrence 2017
Map © Andrew Ashton
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Jacket illustration © Kim Kincaid
Mark Lawrence asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
These works are entirely works of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in them are the work of the author’s 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: 9780008221386
Ebook Edition © September 2017 ISBN: 9780008221393
Version: 2017-10-04
Contents
I learned most of what I know about writing from writing short stories. They’re a great place to practise the art. They are also a fine means by which to revisit a character or a world, illuminating a corner of the original tale that perhaps deserves more attention. In addition, they can be used to look back over the years, allowing us to see how our heroes and villains … well mainly villains if we’re honest … came to be where we found them and what shaped them along the way.
The stories in this anthology were written over the space of a few years, mostly for other projects. They offer a mix of murder, mayhem, pathos, and philosophy, and stand on their own without the need to have read the books that inspired them. The events occur before or around the edges of those described in the Broken Empire trilogy and will contain a variety of spoilers.
I hope you’ll enjoy dipping into the lives of Jorg and his brothers one more time. It was a grand tale and I was sorry to leave it behind.
Mark Lawrence
Bristol, 2017
Oh, and I’ve added a brief footnote at the end of each story … because I wanted to!
‘I spent a year hunting down the men who burned my home. I followed them across three nations.’
‘I see.’ The old man laid down his quill and looked up across the desk at Makin.
Makin returned the stare. The king’s man had a long white beard, no wider than his narrow chin and reaching down across his chest to coil on the desk before him. He’d asked no question but Makin felt the need to answer.
‘I wanted them to pay for the lives of my wife and my child.’ Even now the anger rose in him, a sharpness twitching his hands towards violence, a yammering in his ears that made him want to shout.
‘And did it help?’ Lundist studied him with dark eyes.
The guards had told Makin the man had journeyed from the Utter East and King Olidan had hired him to tutor his children, but it seemed his duties extended further than that.
‘Did it help?’ Makin tried to keep the snarl from his voice.
‘Yes.’ Lundist set his hands before him, the tips of his long fingers meeting in front of his chest. ‘Did taking your revenge ease your pain?’
‘No.’ When he took to his bed, when he closed his eyes, it was blue sky Makin saw, the blue line of sky he had watched from the ditch he had lain in, run through, bleeding out his lifeblood. A line of china blue fringed with grass and weeds, black against the brightness of the day. The voices would return to him – the harsh cries of the footmen set to chase down his household. The crackle of the flames finding the roof. Cerys hid from the fire as her mother had told her to. A brave girl, three years in the world. She hid well and no one found her, save the smoke, strangling her beneath her bed before the flames began their feast.
‘… your father.’
‘Your pardon?’ Makin became aware that Lundist was speaking again.
‘The captain of the guard accepted you for wall duty because I know your father has ties with the Ancrath family,’ Lundist said.
‘I thought the test …’
‘It was important to know that you can fight – and your sword skills are very impressive – but to serve within the castle there must be trust, and that means family. You are the third son of Arkland Bortha, Lord of Trent, a region that one might cover a fair portion of with the king’s tablecloth. You yourself are landless. A widower at one and twenty.’
