Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1 (2 page)

‘It will be today, then?’ he asked.

‘Sharpen your sword,’ Bas said.

Theophilus swallowed his smile, but not before it lit up his face. Though he had taken part in any number of skirmishes since his arrival on the plains, chasing rogue bands of barbarians further into the endless waste, this would be his first real engagement. Bas tried to remember if he had been the same way at the boy’s age. He wasn’t sure. He couldn’t even quite recall the circumstances of his first real battle. It would have been in Salucia, during the long series of conflicts that had anticipated the war against the Others, but that was as far as Bas could say. It had become part of his legend long since – born on the battlefield, bastard son of a camp-follower and an anonymous ranker, nursed by the themas, his first toy a dagger, the beloved son of Terjunta, god of war.

That he hadn’t been born on a battlefield, but in a yurt like countless other of the Commonwealth’s by-blows, was a moot point to the minstrels who had made his name common wherever Aelerian was spoken. Bas had the impression that, as a group, minstrels did not consider truthfulness so great a virtue.

The coffee had grown cool, and Bas tossed what was left of his cup in the fire. ‘I’m going to take a walk,’ he said, turning his back and starting off before Theophilus could answer.

The Western Army was not a popular posting. Far from the capital, half forgotten by the Senate, so far from civilisation it was all but impossible to find a competent whore or a decent flask of wine. And though the Marchers were brutal and cruel, deadly as the passing of time, their cities were mobile camps and their temples wooden, so a soldier couldn’t even expect much in the way of plunder. You’d get something out of the slaves, but not much, as the Marcher men were rough and wild and the women considered uncomely. Bas’s hoplitai were a cross section of the Commonwealth’s poorest and least influential citizens – the third sons of tenant farmers, minor criminals offered the choice of a stint in the themas or the loss of a hand. Man for man they were dirty, cruel and infrequently sober. As a group they were the finest corps of fighting men the nation had to offer, at least as far as Bas was concerned, and there was no one more qualified to offer an opinion.

They had spent the previous afternoon and much of the evening putting up the camp, a task that the barbarians across from them wouldn’t have been capable of completing to any degree of competence in a fortnight. Wood and water had been gathered, a long ditch had been dug at the perimeters, a set of sharpened stakes erected in front of them. Watchtowers had been built at regular intervals along the line – only forty or so links tall, three times the height of a man, but here on the plains you could see halfway to the capital from forty links up. Behind the palisades the rest of the camp had been cut out along classic lines, surveyors ensuring that each avenue was straight as any thoroughfare in the capital, hoplitai setting up their mass tents, quartermasters passing out provisions. The labour had continued until well after nightfall, and for many had been followed by long hours on watch, staring out into the endless night of the plains, piteously far from the bonfires around which their comrades hunkered.

Just the same, Bas’s arrival in the south-east section of camp brought the men to their feet, and a cheer to their lips. The men of the Western Army, and particularly of the Thirteenth Thema, loved Bas, loved him with the curious and unselfconscious passion of children, loved him though he gave no speeches and never offered more than a curt nod. His presence was enough, brooding and unapproachable as it was. They preferred it that way, even – a god does not lower himself to speak with men, to laugh and curse and scratch himself, to feel fear or joy or despair. Let the Commonwealth’s other soldiers, the men of the Fourth or the hated Seventh, enjoy a joke with their superiors, the good humour easy and inauthentic – the Western Army fought beneath the auspice of Death himself.

Bas passed among them, keen-eyed for any show of weakness or lack of discipline. He found little of either. The plains discouraged incompetence. A man who couldn’t handle himself wouldn’t last long enough to be chewed out by his pentarche, would be cut away by one of the roving bands of Marchers looking for stragglers, or lose his toes to frostbite, or find a reed-snake in his boots one morning. Though this would be the first major engagement they’d fought in nearly a year, even in peacetime skirmishes were the rule rather than the exception.

Satisfied, Bas returned to his fire, drank a second cup of coffee and ate three pieces of salted jerky with the methodical rhythm of a man attending to a task. He didn’t say anything to anyone, and his officers made a point of not interrupting the silence. The commander was a man of ritual, of rote even. His daily routine had brought them success in the past – there was no point in disrupting it.

When Bas finished he unslung his weapon and checked the edge. It was threefold the size of the short swords common to the rest of the thema, though it weighed the same or less. The lack of heft had been one of the things Bas had taught himself to compensate for over long years of practice. The guard, in the fashion of the Others who loved all thing avian, was a hawk with wings extended. Or perhaps it was an eagle – falconry was one of the many arts of which Bas remained ignorant. Indeed, the hilt was not of any great interest to him, though it was beautifully rendered and the eyes sapphire. It was the blade that rendered the weapon priceless, sharper and stronger than even the finest human smith could craft. A few of the other hoplitai, veterans of the war against the Others, carried with them smaller blades of similar make, daggers and hand axes, but none could claim a treasure equal to his. Bas spent a few minutes sharpening the foreign metal, glimmering folds and vermillion hue, ever so slightly darker than that of human blood. In the twenty years since he had taken it off its last owner, it had rarely been out of his sight. It rested next to him when he slept, hung on the wall when he shat, lay beside the bed on those infrequent occasions when he felt the need for a fuck. In the strands of doggerel that grew around Bas like ivy, it was called Soulflame, or Endbringer, or Salvation, though if Bas had given it a name he had never yet let it passed his lips.

Bas knew the emissary had arrived before he could see him from the buzz coming off the south road. Not long after a man on horseback could be seen trotting towards the centre of camp, very conscious of his moment of glory.

‘Legatus,’ the emissary said, ‘I return.’

Bas sheathed his sword, stood and approached the man. ‘What news?’

‘Hetman Mykhailo agrees to a meeting. Midway between the camps, in thirty minutes’ time.’

Bas nodded, dismissed him and returned to the fire. The area had grown crowded with officers waiting to hear the news or just to bask in the glory of their leader.

‘What’s the word then, Legatus?’ Hamilcar asked. The Dycian sat cross-legged on the ground, stringing his long, horn-sheathed bow. Hamilcar was tall and dark, dark even by the standards of his nation, with lively eyes that seemed to smile even when his mouth was a grim line. And indeed, his tone suggested that he found the threat of imminent violence a source of amusement. Everything seemed to be a source of amusement to Hamilcar, and though levity was a quality for which Bas had little regard, he found the Dycian’s skill and cleverness nearly made up for it. ‘Are we finally to finish chasing these mule-fuckers?’ Hamilcar said.

‘Make sure your people are ready,’ Bas replied.

Hamilcar lifted one arse-cheek off the ground and let loose a wet fart. The expulsion failed to interrupt the work of his hands. ‘My people are always ready.’

It had taken three themas five years to subdue the Dycians, a contest that had only ended with the capture and virtual destruction of their capital. Bas himself had been part of the force that had stormed the ramparts, could remember the mad rush as his soldiers had swarmed past the remaining defenders and into the great city itself. In part as a guarantee of their continued loyalty, in part because the Commonwealth always needed more killers, a force of three thousand were pressed into service as auxiliaries. The greater part of these had found themselves fighting on the Marches these last ten years, firing their arrows from beneath Aeleria’s banner. Had Bas been a poet, this reversal of fortune might have offered him some fodder.

Bas was very much not a poet, though Hamilcar had some pretensions in that regard. He liked to say that his tongue was sharper than his eye, before demonstrating the excellence of the latter with some extraordinary act of marksmanship, bringing down a bird on the wing or piercing a coin at a hundred paces. Hamilcar’s men were less impressive manifestations of the ideal set by their leader, rough-bodied and cruel, good with a long knife and better with a bow; reckless in victory, brave in defeat. Loud, arrogant, dishonest, clever verging on untrustworthy. In short, excellent allies, so long as you kept a boot on their neck.

Hamilcar finished with his bow, slipped it gently back in the case at his side and took to stuffing his long clay pipe full of tobacco. ‘When you die today, boy,’ he asked Theophilus suddenly, ‘will the Marchers be impressed enough with your bravery to give you a spot on their pyres? Or will they leave your corpse to be picked apart by the winter wolves?’

‘I will labour not to dishonour my fathers,’ Theophilus said, young enough for such seriousness to be forgiven.

‘Then you think to see battle?’

‘The Legatus said to keep my sword sharp.’

Hamilcar held a small branch in the fire till the tip turned red, then brought it to his pipe. ‘The Legatus can only speak in orders. “Sharpen your sword.” “Ready your people.” When he lies with a woman, his first words are,“Moisten your cunt.”’

Theophilus turned redder than the kindling. Isaac turned a chuckle into a cough. No one else in the camp, perhaps no one else in the Commonwealth, would have dared to make a joke at Bas’s expense.

Bas pretended he hadn’t heard the remark. In truth, his temper was not so fierce as was generally believed. He didn’t find Hamilcar amusing, particularly – there was very little indeed that Bas found amusing – but neither was he so consumed by self-importance as to resent the occasional joke.

‘If you talked as well as you fought,’ Isaac said, ‘I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of raping your mother in front of your palace.’

‘Wasn’t my mother,’ Hamilcar answered, taking a draw from his pipe. ‘Was my grandmother. She hadn’t had a good roll for years, and you Aelerians are energetic, if fundamentally untalented.’

‘Remember me to her in your letters,’ Isaac said, taking his leather cap off and holding it to his chest for a moment. ‘She was very tender.’

Hamilcar laughed, went to continue in that line, but Bas cut him off. ‘Enough,’ he said, standing. ‘Hamilcar, you’re with me. Isaac, the camp is yours.’

Hamilcar feigned a scowl, tapped out his half-smoked pipe and stood. It was a source of pride that Bas kept him in his counsels despite his foreign birth and former allegiance, that his intellect and ability was respected by the Legatus. In fact, Bas would have preferred to take Isaac, who was more reliable if less brilliant than the Dycian. But in the unlikely event that the Marchers decided to violate the flag of truce, Isaac would be required to lead the hoplitai in revenge of their fallen commander. Or, failing that, maintain a capable fighting retreat.

Bas grabbed a pair of bodyguards and his personal standard-bearer, and they walked quickly towards the stables. Bas did not count himself much of a horseman, and his opinion contained no weight of false modesty. To be a truly skilled rider requires empathy, the capacity to interpret and alter the moods and feelings of a dumb animal, and this was not a quality that Bas could justly claim. He worked best on two feet, or in the thick of battle where manoeuvre counted for little. Oat was the name of the horse he chose – a silly name, but Oat had been given it long before Bas had owned him and Bas had never cared enough to change it. Oat was a stallion, strong and mean. He obeyed Bas for the simple reason that Bas was stronger and meaner.

Though his people were little-regarded as riders, Hamilcar was a masterful horseman. It was what he did best, he claimed, after bending a bow and pleasuring a woman, and though Bas couldn’t speak to the last, he had seen the Dycian feather enough men to recognise at least that much of the boast as truth. ‘Shall we die today, then, Legatus?’ Hamilcar asked, boosting himself into the saddle. ‘Will Mykhailo do the wise thing, as my people should have done, and kill you as soon as he sees you?’

‘If they kill me they’ll kill you the same.’

‘I’d die happy, knowing that Aeleria has lost the tip of her spear.’ Hamilcar had been a servant of the Commonwealth for ten years, had signed up for a second term after his first had expired. In all that time he had never returned to Dycia, though he claimed three wives and a passel of lovers still wept his name into the night. Hamilcar would die in a foreign land, the victim of some quarrel in which he had no particular interest. He was as much a soldier now as Isaac; the talk was just posturing, and posturing was how he handled his nerves.

Everyone had a way, and Bas had seen most of them. Some yelled, some boasted, some prayed. Isaac was steady as a stone in the thick of things, but as soon as it was over he’d find the nearest flask and drink himself into oblivion. Jon the Sanguine, who had taught Bas everything he knew of war, used to piss himself before a hard scrap, a bloom of yellow spreading out through the crotch of his trousers – but despite the odour his orders were unfailingly correct, and in those few instances when his own life had been in danger he had fought like a man possessed, laughing and cutting flesh like spring flowers.

Bas put spurs to his beast by way of answer, and Hamilcar and the bodyguards followed after him. Down the south road leading out of camp, through the open gate and into the plains beyond. It was late summer and the March was striking if not quite beautiful, the grass high enough to hide a troop of soldiers, the land so flat that it extended out into the horizon, a sea of blue meeting with a sea of green.