Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1
Read Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1 Online
Authors: Daniel Polansky
Contents
The Straight Razor Cure
Tomorrow, the Killing
She Who Waits
Book 1 of The Empty Throne
Daniel Polansky
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © Daniel Polansky 2015
The right of Daniel Polansky to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 444 77992 9
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
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London NW1 3BH
To Julian – the world awaits.
S
een from the view of a bird, or of a god – which of course are not the same thing – the landscape might have been beautiful. A clear day in early summer, stalks high in the fields, the scattered currant bushes crowned with small red flowers. Far to the east a river ran fast and clear, a translucent snake of blue churning south-west towards the bay and the sea beyond. In half an hour it would be so thick with blood as to choke the perch, bubble the salmon to the surface.
To the west many thousands of men stood in tightly packed ranks, the sunlight off the tips of their spears and the straight hard lines of their swords blinding, a small mass of cavalry on each wing. Further west, towards the low foothills of the mountains, you would have seen the whole vast apparatus that had facilitated their progress, tents and wagons and great stocks of supplies. You would likely not have been able to hear the buzz of anticipation, the muttered oaths and curses, but you might have been able to sense it, the way the skin tingles before a hard rain.
Facing them to the east was a smaller coterie of heavy cavalry, still and silent, the only flicker of movement coming from their coloured banners and the trailing of gossamer streamers that the wind stretched out behind them. From such a height you might have made the mistake of thinking them the same species as their foes – but this would have been a very great mistake indeed, and a closer perspective would swiftly have disabused you of such foolishness. They wore closed helms with visages strange and terrible, chimerical amalgamations of animals and monsters, exquisite craftsmanship put to the service of inducing fear. They carried pronged lances the length of a young elm tree, jewelled great axes of improbable size, tapered swords and multi-headed flails, an arsenal varied and dazzling.
Neither sound nor signal heralded their charge, only the sudden rapid beat of hooves, the particoloured host of cavalry surging forward in perfect unison, as a skein of geese wheel in flight, as a hawk descends upon a marmot. The distance between the two sides narrowed and narrowed until there was nothing between them.
Then it would have been impossible not to hear the screams of the men and the horses, a caterwaul of fear and pain and despair. A disharmonious chorus, for the things which were not quite men remained mute, silent even when skewered on the end of a pike or hacked apart like cordwood, dying without noise or complaint. For a moment the contest seemed in some doubt, as if the vast weight of metal and flesh might balance into equilibrium, and then the heavy cavalry continued on, the infantry giving way like wheat, or water.
Had you been a vulture you would have crowed joyously at the feast. And had you been a god? Who can say? The gods give little credence to the deaths of men, or of those other things so like them.
B
as could not remember a time when it didn’t hurt to wake.
Age alone would have been enough to make it an exercise in misery, but well before sprouting its first grey hairs his body had been a catalogue of injury. Those halcyon days before pain had ended after he had taken an arrow in the knee during a skirmish in Dycia, and that was closer to twenty years past than fifteen. Bas had preferred a possible future on two legs over a certain existence on one, and though he’d had to threaten the sawbones with his boot knife, and to refuse water for fear it had been drugged, Bas had had his way. Bas was a man who often had his way. The knee still pained him when it rained, and when he stood, and when it was dry, and when he sat, but he got around on it well enough.
That had been the first serious injury, but far from the last. A Marcher had crushed two fingers of his left hand some years back, and this time after a look at the ruptured flesh Bas had allowed the doctor to go ahead with his hacksaw. Sometimes they ached, the ghosts of these digits, though Bas did not understand why their absence would be a source of pain. There were others, many others: a scar on his chest from where a hand axe had cut through his armour, another just below his hip where a disgruntled subordinate had tried to make good on some real or perceived slight, an array of nicks and gouges and half-healed contusions the source, even the existence, of which Bas had all but forgotten. Bas was not one to waste time on rumination.
Nor did his injuries noticeably affect his comportment. From the first words of his attendant – from before really, from when he had heard the folds of his tent being opened – the Legatus had been fully cognisant, or close to it. A short moment and he rolled up from his mat, prepared to face another day.
He had slept in a long shirt and thick wool trousers. Winter came early here on the plains, and summer was no great joy either. The rain had died off before dawn but left behind a thick patina of mist that carried the cold inside the tent and inside Bas’s bones. He turned to the corner and took a long, slow piss into a tin bedpan, taking his time with it, the only luxury he’d be allowed that day. Then he washed his face in the basin of fresh rainwater, paying no more mind to the cold than he had to the ache in his knee. ‘Any movement?’
‘A few more may have trickled in. Nothing that will affect the balance.’
‘And our emissary?’ Bas had told Isaac to send out a rider to the Marchers’ camp at first light. It was a mark of respect for his subordinate that he hadn’t bothered to enquire whether it had been done, simply assumed it and moved on to the resolution.
‘Still out.’
Bas pulled on his armour, supple leather overlaid with strong chain links – good against a blade or arrow, all but useless for the chill. Over the top he belted a long dirk and a short war hammer. Leaning against the wall, covered with a scarred leather scabbard and a thick layer of cloth, was a long blade. He swung the baldric over his shoulder, an awkward motion accomplished without thought or strain. ‘Best have a look,’ he said.
Issac had worked as Bas’s number two for near on fifteen years. Whether his character had fitted itself to the position from the start or whether he had moulded himself to it Bas couldn’t quite remember. He was short and dark and hard as the knob of an oak tree. His eyes were flat and brown and roamed about like a stray dog, searching for a loose strap or a broken catch or a man out of position. Looking at him straight on it took a few seconds to realise that his head was off-kilter, his features strangely unbalanced, though you’d have needed to have viewed him in profile to see the raw red mess of his cropped ears. What exactly Isaac had done to mandate not only his mutilation but also a lifetime of service in the outermost hellhole of the Aelerian Commonwealth Bas had never asked, and Isaac never volunteered. ‘At your command,’ he said now, holding open the folds of his tent.
Bas nodded, then dipped out of what passed for his home and into the structured chaos of camp.
The bivouac of the Western Army, consisting of the Eleventh and Thirteenth Themas, was a city on the move, a whirling, clanging, all-consuming metropolis of flesh and steel that had crossed half a continent to take up residence in the very heart of enemy territory. They came from the Aelerian heartland, a month’s hard ride east; from the coast and the border cities, whose independence had only been finally eclipsed in the years just after Bas’s birth; and from more recently subjugated territories as well, slingers from the Baleferic Isles, archers from Old Dycia. Twenty thousand men and two thousand horses, three hundred wagons, a dozen mobile foundries and a herd of cattle large enough to keep everyone fed. These were only the official numbers, didn’t take into account the perhaps only slightly smaller mob of merchants, con-artists, camp-followers and beggars who had decided the financial benefits of attaching themselves to Bas’s wandering nation outweighed whatever risks the Marchers posed.
Bas stood in the centre of it. Was the centre of it, the camp radiating out around him like the spokes of a wheel. The ranking officers down to the chiliarchs had pitched their tents nearest to Bas. The remainder, with the hoplitai themselves, were packed closer to the walls. The scavengers took up position wherever they could, brightly painted wagons advertising drink and flesh and food. It was Aeleria made manifest. Tomorrow it might well be ashes. Today it was the largest city that the March had ever seen.
There was a fire in front of Bas’s tent, and a cauldron of coffee boiling over it. Bas poured himself a cup, drank it and pretended not to see the boy staring. When that didn’t work he turned his dark brown eyes over to him, only for a moment, but long enough.
‘Legatus,’ Theophilus said, belatedly realising his attentions had been noticed, and snapped a quick salute.
Bas would have found it difficult to hate Theophilus even if Theophilus hadn’t been so obviously infatuated with him. In fact, this last was the only thing Bas really disliked about the youth, though he had been well prepared to find more when the boy had shown up six months earlier, escorted by a troop of cavalrymen. He was the son of a senator and looked it: dark hair cropped short, piercing blue eyes, sallow skin over loose muscles. Of course a half-year on the plains had done its work, levelled out some of his boyishness. It had been a surprise, the speed with which he had taken to the tasks required of every soldier who served on the frontier, for out here there were no servants, and the chores of all but the highest-ranking officers included the menial. Many of the senators Bas had met were courageous, in their way – could wield a blade and didn’t shirk from doing so. Far fewer would have put up their tent without complaint, or chiselled a stone from the shoe of a horse, as Theophilus had been doing until he noticed Bas approaching.
