Road Brothers. Mark Lawrence

      

      

       Copyright

      HarperVoyager

      an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in ebook in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2017

      Copyright © Mark Lawrence

      Map © Andrew Ashton

      Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

      Cover illustration © Jason Chan

      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.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it 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: 2020-07-15

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

Copyright

Map

Introduction

A Rescue

Sleeping Beauty

       Bad Seed

       The Nature of the Beast

       The Weight of Command

       Select Mode

       Mercy

       A Good Name

       Choices

       No other Troy

       The Secret

       Escape

       Know Thyself

       Three is the Charm

       Keep Reading …

       Acknowledgements

       Also by Mark Lawrence

       About the Author

       About the Publisher

       Map

       Introduction

      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!

       A Rescue

      ‘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