Those Below: The Empty Throne Book 2 (15 page)

‘The most arrogant man that ever fought in another nation’s army, by the Sun God himself …’

‘And you, Caracal?’ Theophilus asked, turning towards him and smiling, knowing the answer even as he asked it. ‘Will you try your hand?’

‘Yes, God-Killer,’ she asked suddenly from behind, ‘why not bless the hatchlings with the benefit of your mastery?’

How had she managed to arrive so silently, he wondered, without alerting anyone? Foolish to travel through the city without her lifeguard, though she seemed to do it with more and more frequency these days. True, it would take half a dozen or a dozen men to kill her, but Oscan teemed with soldiers, and after a long winter of drink and rot some not inconsiderable percentage of them would have attempted it simply to break the monotony.

Bas found he was smiling. ‘It would hardly do for a Legatus to busy himself with a melee.’

‘That seemed of no concern to you outside the walls,’ she observed. Bas’s eyes were drawn to the single missing stalk of her hair, which had been removed and ritually burned when she had left the Roost to take up her post among men, a sign of sacrifice or shame. ‘But then again, there seems to be very little flavour with these long sticks.’

‘Do you not spar in the Roost, Sentinel?’ Theophilus asked. Perhaps it was because he was twenty years too young to have fought in the last war against the Others, perhaps simply because etiquette had been bred deep down into his bones, but Theophilus, almost alone among the camp, seemed to have no hate for Einnes.

‘In the Roost we practise with naked steel and full armour,’ she said. ‘It is the rare blow that will slip through.’

‘I’m afraid we have none of your Roost-forged plate to make use of.’

‘They would not fit you,’ Einnes observed, slow to get the joke as always. ‘Regardless, I am willing, in this at least, to abide by the customs of your land. Would you give me a match, Caracal?’

Pointless, foolish, nothing but risk and downside. Either he would lose and be humiliated or he would win and his name would grow louder, reinforcing that myth of invincibility that half the themas seemed to have fallen for. And he was old enough these days that he needed to pay for any serious physical activity; when he had been twenty he could have fought a battle every morning for a straight week and woken up at the end ready to wage another. He was nearly as strong as he had been as a youth, and perhaps only somewhat slower, but the ability of his body to recuperate from exertion had degraded dramatically, a misstep sufficient now to make his knee swell for a week, and a morning worth of vigorous movement was repaid with a sleepless and miserable evening.

‘As you like,’ Bas said, tossing his fur onto the ground, stretching out his broad shoulders.

She did not smile, she never smiled, but still he could tell when she was happy, or thought he could. They each grabbed a stave from the barrel, made their way over to the practice ground that Theophilus and his adjutant had vacated.

‘We can provide a shield,’ Theophilus offered, ‘should you wish one.’

‘This will do well enough,’ Einnes answered.

Bas grunted refusal, spent a moment getting a proper grasp on the stave. It was smaller than his own blade, the size of one of the cavalry swords, appropriate as Theophilus was now head of horse. He took a few aimless swings, got the weight of the thing in his hand, its reach. The practice ground was a matted circle of dead winter grass, and Einnes met him in the centre of it.

Theophilus took up a spot just outside its circumference. ‘First to three touches,’ he announced. ‘Am I an acceptable arbiter, Sentinel?’

‘As well as any of your kind,’ Einnes said, little concerned. ‘Are you feeling limber, Caracal?’

Bas grunted but didn’t answer. Even in the best of circumstances, his tongue had never been clever, nor he the type of person who needed to steady himself with talk. He dropped unthinkingly into position, the tip of his false blade stretching between them. Einnes brought her own horizontal to her body, which in a human Bas would have supposed a sign of complete ignorance, but in an Eternal he presumed was simply some curiosity of style.

‘Begin,’ Theophilus said.

Bas gave a step immediately and still it was barely enough, Einnes’s blunt stave just missing his chest. He had known she would be fast, but he could not have supposed – he simply had not remembered, it had been so long – how fast they were. He had never been so swift, not even in those distant days of youth, and certainly not with forty-five long years weighing down his body. But at least he had purchased something with those days and weeks and months, with torn tissue and scarred flesh and broken bone, something like wisdom or at least knowledge. She would wish to demonstrate her superiority quickly, and he played against that, circling right unceasingly, forcing her off balance. Thrice more she tried for a quick end and thrice more he avoided it, and after the last he feinted to her off side and came full-speed against her shoulder.

‘Touch!’ Theophilus said.

Isaac howled. Hamilcar laughed loudly and passed him a tertarum, seeming happy with the loss. Theophilus’s adjutant whose name Bas had never learned or already forgotten watched the proceedings with slavish intensity, as if he had staked his life on the outcome. Nor was he the only one, the crowd swelling with passers-by, a half-dozen now though it would soon grow to more than that. He could hardly blame them – the God-Killer facing off against a god, a preliminary for the act to come.

Einnes retreated to their starting position. ‘That would never have gotten through my armour.’

‘Best not to let it get to that point.’

‘Indeed,’ she said, raising her weapon. ‘It was a fine blow.’

This time when Theophilus gave the signal she remained as she was. Indeed there was a long moment when it seemed as if neither would make a move, and then she did and he was lost completely. She was fast, by the gods she was fast, faster than she had displayed during the first pass; between the reshuffling of her feet and the blow against his chest had been some half-fractured second, and he had barely seen the blow fall.

‘Touch,’ Theophilus announced unhappily, as if the spreading swell of pain across Bas’s breast was not sufficient evidence.

‘I think I grow used to the size of this,’ Einnes declared.

Bas didn’t answer. His breath was coming shallowly and he gave in to it, let his chest heave back and forth, wiped sweat away from his brow, scowled. Back to their starting positions and Theophilus opened his mouth to speak and Bas was off his back foot and full-force forward, Einnes unprepared and still managed to deflect the first blow and the second but not the third, her stave going spinning off into the dust, the gathered crowd giving a cheer.

‘Very clever, Caracal,’ she began, unconcerned with the reaction of the mob, indeed almost seeming to share it, ‘here I had supposed this thing called age had finally gained a hold.’

He should not have smiled but he did, not at the cheering or at the enthusiasm of his soldiers, but at her response, at her eyes which were on his. And in fact just then he was feeling every one of his years, and also something else, some dim sense of gratitude for this last one, and indeed for this very moment.

Their fourth exchange was not as close as it looked, and though it lasted several long minutes, and though the onlookers held their breath and flinched every time wood rattled against wood, the contest was never in doubt. A slight error in judgement had set Bas behind at the outset, and from there on he was entirely on the defensive, working desperately to acquire equilibrium. To no avail – they locked staves for a moment and then she shifted and he went stumbling onward, with a blow against his back to speed him along.

Bas spent a long time catching his breath, Einnes retreating to her starting position without losing a moment, still and perfect as a statue, as if the previous four passes had not exhausted a single drop of her energy, as if she could so continue all evening and into the morning beyond. She was dressed in simple robes of deepest black, and the long tendrils of her hair, wrapped tight in silver cord, reached down past the backs of her knees. And below her hair those eyes, which were like purple perhaps, or darker than purple.

‘We lose the light,’ Theophilus announced, staring at the sun dimming itself beyond the mountains to the west. ‘Will you call it a draw?’

‘No,’ Einnes said.

‘No,’ Bas agreed, nearly in the same instant.

Hamilcar laughed loudly from the sidelines, though to Bas’s ears it had something fearful to it.

‘Two and two, Caracal,’ Einnes said, ‘and the last to decide the matter.’

This did not require a response and Bas did not bother to offer one. He stretched his shoulders and twisted his neck back. He felt the sweat drip down off his forehead and the blood run fierce and free in his veins, he felt the last rays of the winter sun beat down on his face and his arms and his chest.

‘Begin,’ Theophilus said.

Her style was as dissimilar to his own as was every other thing about her, each strike a staccato movement, unrelated to the previous motion or the one that would succeed it. Their staves rapped an uneven tattoo. On the sidelines, noticed by neither warrior, the crowd had gone silent, tense with anticipation. Hamilcar was leaning forward on his stool, long pipe forgotten in the dust beside him, and Isaac was upright, leaning past the Dycian as if about to tumble over him. The crowd of pentarches and tourmarches and hoplitai that now surrounded the practice ground had grown to several dozen, though none made a sound, as if frightened to interrupt. They thought so much of him – even those who shouldn’t, who knew better, who had spent years watching him in flesh and folly, seen Bas shit himself when sick with the flux, seen his bad decisions lead to the deaths of men in his charge, seen him sleep and dream and bleed; still they could never quite believe that he was a man, as they were men.

He planted his left foot, he shifted, he shifted back the other way, he saw her recognise his feint for what it was and decided in the instant before the final instant that it would not be a feint at all, and she saw the same and reacted, and the tips of their mock weapons fell against flesh, near simultaneous.

‘Touch, Caracal,’ Theophilus said, and the crowd erupted. Isaac raised his fists to the sky, bellowing, and rising with enthusiasm Hamilcar overturned his pipe, embers dying in the dust. The pentarches hooted, the tourmarches hollered, the hoplitai cheered, five-fingered hands gripped each other with happy enthusiasm.

Near enough for honest error, though Bas would not have supposed it such; rather that Theophilus, a long way from the guileless youth Bas had met on the Marches, was wiser than to announce anything else. And it had been close, after all. But Bas knew, and Einnes knew.

In the long moment afterward, as the spectators roared and beat their chests, the two locked eyes. ‘You give good sport, God-Killer,’ she said, tossing the stick to Theophilus and striding off. ‘Too bad it was not more than that.’

‘Too bad for you,’ said a voice from the mob, some ignorant soldier believing what he wished to believe, Einnes ignoring him and Bas ignoring him also.

W
hen Pyre walked into the whorehouse on the Second Rung late one evening in early spring, he looked neither to his right nor his left; not at the mahogany floors or the silver-plated water pipes, not at the walls, which were hardwood and draped with tapestry, not at the supple leather couches, not at the pale and rounded flesh of the courtesans who lounged on them, not at the silk that failed to cover that flesh. Behind him, as was generally now the case, Hammer loomed tall and broad and silent – another child of the Fifth, and equally disinterested in the view, a strangely passionate sort of dispassion.

The woman in the entrance was well practised in waiting for men. She offered the smile that she gave all of them, that she had been giving since she was too young to understand what it offered – though she had learned quickly enough, no woman can remain long in such ignorance. For once at least it failed to earn a response, Pyre and his follower as indifferent as eunuchs. She led them through a curtain, and then through another curtain, and then into a room that was not pretending to be anything but what it was, and four men doing the same. Pyre did not need to see the brands on their necks, stars and webs and geometric patterns of no clear purpose, to know them as members of the Brotherhood Below. He had never met any of them before but he knew them well all the same, knew the savagery that had been required to attain their position, knew the desperation that had driven them to that savagery, knew they would draw blood without regret or pity or enthusiasm, would draw blood because that was their purpose and they knew nothing else. Pyre pitied them, as he pitied the whores, though it was a distant sort of pity, one that would have no impact on the event to come.

The leader, or at least the man who then spoke, was bulky and pockmarked and heavily bearded. His robes were expensive, ugly and fashionable, and a long, curved blade rested outside them. ‘Against the wall,’ he said. Their guide had disappeared without a word, her purpose completed.

‘We are unarmed,’ Pyre said. ‘As per the agreement.’

‘This the first time you ever been patted down, Fifth Rung trash like you?’ The man’s sneer tore a hole through the sweat-matted fur of his face. ‘Against the wall or into the ground, your choice.’

Pyre looked at Hammer for a moment, then shrugged and set his palms against the wall. Hammer did the same. The bearded man ran his hands swiftly down Pyre’s legs and waist and hips, then did the same to Hammer. When it was over he led them down another hallway, out of sight of the rest of his guards. He paused at the last door, spent a long moment staring at Pyre before nodding and opening it.

The room was small and sparsely appointed. Two guards waited scowling beside the door, and one at the back did the same. At a wooden table sat four chairs and two men. The first was, Pyre knew, the head of the Brotherhood Below, the vast criminal organisation that had long been the effective power on the Fifth Rung and most of the Fourth. It smuggled goods up from the docks, it ran whores, it cribbed protection money, it left fathers dead and mothers weeping. It had done all of these things, at least, in the years before the Five-Fingers had come to power, had begun to push them steadily upslope. His name was Ink, and in his dress and composure he seemed little affected by the steady erosion of his base of power. He wore rich robes of coloured silk and a line of golden bracelets on arms not free of muscle. Ink could still count on the knives of some two hundred hardened killers, men who made a living from cruelty, whose daily bread was leavened with blood. He took in a thousand eagles a year, a sum that was quite literally inconceivable in the neighbourhood in which Pyre had been born, and in much of the Roost entire.