title: Dragons at Crumbling Castle: And Other Stories
author:  Terry Pratchett 
description: &#160;&#160;&#160;&bull;&#160;"So funny I dropped my spoon laughing!" --King Arthur
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  [Contents](0743435893_toc.htm)
  
  # **PART FOUR:**  
   ** _Bieme_**  
  
  ## **CHAPTER SIXTEEN**
  
  ### **_Prince Pirondael_**
  
  > _Our fathers and ourselves sowed the dragon's teeth._  
  >  _Our children know and suffer the armed men._
  >
  > __ Stephen Vincent Benet
  
  Biemestren, the capital city of Bieme, reeked of a long peace, now shattered.
  
  The castle itself was surrounded by two zigzagging stone walls, each barely
  shy of ten meters in height, the inner one with eight guard towers scattered
  around its circumference. The residence tower rose from inside the inner wall,
  resting on the flat top of a twenty-yard-high, almost perfectly circular hill.
  
  But the castle itself was only a handful of buildings that housed the prince,
  his court, and the House Guard; the vast majority of the population of
  Biemestren seemed to live in the newer buildings outside the wall, clinging to
  it as they fanned out like a tree ear on an old oak. Beyond them 