Mark Lawrence_The Broken Empire 01 by Prince of Thorns Page B

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.
    â€œWe 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.”
    â€œYou 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.
    â€œBy 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.
    â€œThe 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 stirs up. And we’d be sitting comfortable in the shadow of the Tall Castle, waiting for the weather to clear.
    â€œYou 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