Mark Lawrence_The Broken Empire 01 by Prince of Thorns Read Free Book Online Page B

tunic, with a knife at his hip, can do against a decent swordsman in plate armour. And even Burlow was more than decent.
    Three of the riders reached us. We didn’t stay on the street to meet them. We fell back into the skeleton of what used to be Decker’s Smithy. So they rode in, slowly, ash crunching under hoof. Elban leapt the first one from an alcove over the furnaces. Took that rider down sweet as sweet he did, his sharp little knife hitting home over and over. If you recall, I said Elban had a bite to him.
    Two brothers pulled the second rider down, feinting in and out until they got an opening. He had no room to move his horse around. Should have got off.
    That left me and Scar-face. He had a bit more to him, and had dismounted before he followed us. He came at me slow and easy, the tip of his sword waving before him. He wasn’t in a hurry: there’s no rush when the best part of fifty men are hard on your heels.
    â€œFlag o’ truce?” I said, trying to goad him.
    He didn’t speak. His lips pressed together in a tight line and he stepped forward, real slow. That’s when Brother Roddat stepped up behind him and stuck a sword through the back of his neck.
    â€œShould have taken your moment, Scar-face,” I said.
    I got back onto the street just in time to meet some huge red-faced bastard of a house-trooper who’d run his way up the hill. He pretty much exploded as the Nuban’s bolts hit him. Then they were on us. The Nuban picked up his mattock and Red Kent grabbed his axe. Roddat came past me with his spear and found a man to pin with it.
    They came in two waves. There were the dozen or so who’d kept up with Marclos’s bodyguard and then behind them, another twenty coming at a slower pace. The rest lay strewn along the main street or dead in the ruins.
    I ran past Roddat and the man he’d skewered. Past a couple of swordsmen who didn’t want me bad enough, and I was through the first wave. I could see that skinny bastard with the boils on his cheeks, there in the second wave, the one who’d joked about me on the fire.
    Me charging the second wave, howling for Boil-cheeks’s blood. That’s what broke them. And the men from the ridge? They never reached us. Little Rikey thought they might be carrying loot.
    I reckon more than half of the Count’s men ran. But they weren’t the Count’s men any more. They couldn’t go back.
    Makin came up the hill, blood all over him. He looked like Red Kent the day we found him! Burlow came with him, but he stopped to loot the dead, and of course that involves turning the injured into the dead.
    â€œWhy?” Makin wanted to know. “I mean, superb victory, my prince . . . but why in the name of all the hells run such a risk?”
    I held my sword up. The brothers around me took a step back, but to his credit, Makin didn’t flinch. “See this sword?” I said. “Not a drop of blood on it.” I showed it around, then waved it at the ridge. “And out there there’s fifty men who’ll never fight for the Count of Renar again. They work for me now. They’re carrying a story about a prince who killed the Count’s son. A prince who would not retreat. A prince who never retreats. A prince who didn’t have to blood his sword to beat a hundred men with thirty.
    â€œThink about it, Makin. I made Roddat here fight like a madman because I told him if they think you’re not going to give up, they’ll break. Now I’ve got fifty enemies who’re out there telling everyone who’ll listen, ‘That Prince of Ancrath, he’s not going to break.’ It’s a simple sum. If they think we won’t break, they give up.”
    All true. It wasn’t the reason, but it was all true.

9
    Four years earlier
    The baton struck my wrist with a loud crack. My other hand caught hold as it rose. I tried to twist it free, but Lundist held tight. Even