Road Brothers. Mark Lawrence
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HarperVoyager
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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.
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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