The Broken Empire Series Books 1 and 2: Prince of Thorns, King of Thorns. Mark Lawrence
Olidan requires only your presence, Prince Jorg,’ the gate captain said. ‘And that of Father Gomst, and Captain Bortha if he is with you?’
Makin raised a mailed hand. Both the gate captain’s eyebrows vanished up beneath his helm at that. ‘Makin Bortha? No …?’
‘One and the same,’ Makin said. He gave the man a broad grin, showing altogether too many teeth. ‘Been a while, Relkin, you old bastard.’
King Olidan requires … no room for manoeuvre there. A polite little ‘get your road-scum down to the slums’. At least Relkin made it clear enough from the start, rather than letting me lose face by arguing the odds before overruling me with King Olidan requires.
‘Elban, take the brothers down to the river and find some rooms. There’s a tavern, The Falling Angel, should be big enough for you all,’ I said.
Elban looked surprised at having been chosen, surprised but pleased. He smacked his lips over his toothless gums and glared back at the rest of them. ‘You heard Jorth! Prince Jorth I mean. Move it out!’
‘Killing peasants is a hanging offence,’ I said as they turned their horses. ‘Hear me, Little Rikey? Even one. So no killing, no pillage, and no raping. You want a woman, let the Count of Renar buy you one with his coin. Hell, let him buy you three.’
All three gates stood open. ‘Captain Coddin, a pleasure. Enjoy your ride back to the Ford,’ I said.
Coddin bowed in the saddle and led his troops off. That left just me, Gomst and Makin. ‘Lead on,’ I said. And Gate Captain Relkin led us through the West Gate into the High City.
We had no crowds to contend with. The hour was well past midnight and the moon rode high now. The wide streets of the High City lay deserted save for the occasional servant scurrying from one great house to the next. Maybe a merchant’s daughter or two watched us from behind the shutters, but in the main the noble houses slept sound and showed no interest in a returning prince.
Gerrod’s hooves sounded too loud on the flagstones leading up to Tall Castle. Four years ago I left in velvet slippers, quieter than any mouse. The clatter of iron shoes on stone hurt my ears. Inside, a small voice still whispered that I’d wake Father. Be quiet, be quiet, don’t breathe, don’t even let your heart beat.
Tall Castle is of course anything but tall. In four years on the road I had seen taller castles, even bigger castles, but never anything quite like Tall Castle. The place seemed at once familiar and strange. I remembered it as bigger. The castle may have shrunk from the unending vastness I’d carried with me in memory, but it still seemed huge. Tutor Lundist told me the whole place once served as foundations for a castle so tall it would scrape the sky. He said that when men first built this, all we see now lay under the ground. The Road-men didn’t build Tall Castle, but those who did had artifice almost to equal that of the Road-men. The walls weren’t quarry-hewn, but seemingly crushed rock that had once poured like water. Some magic set metal bars through the stone of the wall, twisted bars of a metal tougher even than the black iron from the East. So Tall Castle brooded squat and ancient, and the King sat within its metal-veined walls, watching over the High City, the Old City, the Low City. Watching over the city of Crath and all the dominions of his line. My line. My city. My castle.
15
Four years earlier
We left the Tall Castle by the Brown Gate, a small door on the lower slopes of the mount, out past the High Wall. I came last, with the ache of all those steps in my legs.
Faint red footprints marked the top stair. The owners of that blood were probably still bleeding, far behind us.
For a moment I saw Lundist, lying as I’d left him.
We’d climbed from the very bowels of the castle vaults, to the least ostentatious of all the castle’s exits. Dung men came this way a dozen times a day, carrying off the treasures of the privy. And I’ll tell you, royal shit stinks no less than any other.
The brother ahead of me turned at the archway, and showed me his teeth by way of a grin. ‘Fresh air! Take a breath o’ that, Castle Boy.’
I’d heard the Nuban call this one Row, a wire of a man, gristle and bone, old scars and a mean eye. ‘I’ll lick a leper’s neck before I take a lung-full o’ your stench, Brother Row.’ I pushed past him. It’d take more than talking like a road-brother to earn a place with these men, and giving an inch wasn’t the way to start.
Ancrath stretched out on our right. To the left, the smoke and spires of Crath City rose behind the Old Wall. A storm light covered it all. The kind that falls when thunderclouds gather in the day. A flat light that makes a stranger of even the most familiar landscape. It felt appropriate.
‘We travel fast and we travel hard,’ Price said.
Price and Rike, the only true brothers among us, stood shoulder to shoulder at the head of the column, Rike beetling his brow while Price told us how it would be. ‘We put as many miles between us and this shit-hole as it takes. The storm will hide our tracks. We’ll find horses as we go, roust a village or two if need be.’
‘You think the King’s hunters can’t track two dozen men through a bit of rain?’ I wished my voice didn’t ring so pure and high as I said it.
They all turned round at that. The Nuban flashed me a look, eyes wide, and patted down at the air as if to shut me up.
I pointed to the sprawl of roofs edging toward the river where Father’s loving citizens had built beyond the safety of the city walls in their passion to be near him.
‘By ones and twos a brother could find his way to a warm hearth, bit of roast beef, and an ale maybe,’ I said. ‘I hear there’s a tavern or three to be found down there. A brother could be toasting by a fire before the rain even got to washing his trail away.
‘The King’s men would be riding back and forth on those fine horses of theirs, getting wet, looking for the kind of rut that twenty men put in a road or across a field, looking for the kind of trouble a band of brothers stir up. And we’d be sitting comfortable in the shadow of the Tall Castle, waiting for the weather to clear.
‘You think there’s a man we left behind who could tell the Criers what we look like? You think the good folk of Crath City will notice a score added to their thousands?’
I could see I’d won them. I could see the light of that warm hearth reflecting in their eyes.
‘And how the feck are we to pay for roast beef and a roof to hide under?’ Price shoved through the brothers, setting the redhead, Gemt, on his rear. ‘Start robbing in the shadow of the Tall Castle?’
‘Yeah, how we a-gonna pay, Castle Boy?’ Gemt scrambled to his feet, finding me a better target than Price for his anger. ‘How we gonna?’
I brought up two ducats from my purse, and rubbed them together.
‘I’ll take that!’ A sharp-faced man to my left lunged for the purse, still fat with coin.
I flipped the dagger from my belt and stuck it through his outstretched hand.
‘Liar,’ I said. I shoved a little more, until the hilt slapped up against his palm, the blade glistening red behind.
‘Out the way, Liar.’ Price grabbed him by the neck and tossed him down the slope.
Price loomed over me. Any full-grown man loomed over me, but Price added a new dimension to it. He took a handful of my jerkin and hauled me up, eye to eye, careless of the bloody knife I still had hold of.
‘You’re not scared of me, are you, boy?’ The stink of him was something awful. Dead dog comes close.
I thought about stabbing him, but I knew there wasn’t a wound that would stop him breaking me in two before he died.
‘Are you scared of me?’ I asked him.
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