Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1

by Daniel Polansky

  Thistle figured he still had a decent chance of it; the Cuckoos might decide to pounce on Rat or Treble, or they might just not give a shit at all – it wouldn’t be the first time a Cuckoo had decided not to do his job, wouldn’t be the first time by a long shot. And indeed, the fat one didn’t seem in any great hurry to chase after anybody, made do with yelling warnings at Thistle’s back. But the younger was all hell-bent on running after someone, and for whatever reason he seized on Thistle as quarry.

  As soon as he was out of view Thistle tossed the bottle, heard the glass shatter and the hopes of an evening drink with it. Still he had a smile on his face and felt something close to euphoric. He buzzed through back alleys and ducked down side streets, till every heartbeat throbbed so hard it was like being punched in the chest. The Fifth was his, you could keep the rest of the Roost and the rest of the damn world. There wasn’t no way in hell they’d catch him here, not if he had to run for the rest of the day and night. He knew it like the back of his hand, every side alley and brown-water canal, every pipe and every tenement.

  Then he turned a corner and standing there was the fat Cuckoo, and closer up he seemed more stout than fat, especially when he gave Thistle an open-handed slap strong enough to land him on his arse.

  It wasn’t the force of the blow that put Thistle on the ground so much as the shock of the thing. The fat man was sharper than Thistle would have credited a Cuckoo, let alone a Cuckoo whose man-breasts heaved up and down at having jogged for three solid minutes. But in those three minutes he had managed to deduce Thistle’s destination and cut him off without a breath of trouble.

  ‘Where’s the bottle?’ the Cuckoo asked, in a languid sort of drawl, as if he weren’t excited about the matter either way.

  Thistle spat a stream of blood against the alley wall, leaned against it as he worked himself upright. ‘Don’t have no bottle,’ he said. It would take more than a smack to loosen the truth.

  ‘That a fact?’

  ‘You can search me,’ Thistle said, not remembering until he said it that he was still carrying his shiv. And for the first time that day Thistle knew real fear. Getting caught with the bottle wouldn’t have meant more than a walk up to the Cuckoo’s headquarters and a good beating, and neither for the first time. But carrying a weapon, even Thistle’s makeshift blade? That was a heavy piece of sin, as reckoned by the Cuckoos and their four-fingered overlords. Theft, vandalism, even a good assault – none of these the Cuckoos found very interesting, so long as the victim was another denizen of the Fifth. A weapon, on the other hand, was counted as a close cousin of rebellion, a crime against the Eternal, against the Roost itself.

  He’d go underground for this, into the roots of the mountain. Down into the suck, hammering away at the pipes, hard labour to make sure the water kept running, in the dark until they let you out or you died. Most men it was the latter, and it didn’t take so long. The hardest thug didn’t talk about going below casually, and it was widely agreed that it was better to find a way to die before they took you underground, if you could manage it.

  The younger Cuckoo had arrived finally, the store owner a few steps behind him, looking winded and furious. ‘Where’s the bottle?’ he asked, after taking a few seconds remembering how to breathe.

  ‘Says he doesn’t have it,’ the fat Cuckoo said.

  ‘Time Below, he doesn’t.’

  ‘Check his pockets.’

  ‘Screw that,’ the younger Cuckoo replied. ‘Probably end up with lice.’

  Thistle’s heart rose for a second, just long enough for the fat Cuckoo’s next words to dash it. ‘Up against the wall.’

  Thistle looked back and forth between the two, but couldn’t yet bring himself to move.

  ‘Are you deaf?’ the thin Cuckoo asked. ‘He said get against the wall.’

  They would find the knife, and they would take him before a magistrate, and they would put him below, and when he came out he wouldn’t be fit for anything more than swatting at flies. All of these things would happen, at that moment Thistle was certain of it, as certain as he’d ever been of anything in his life. There was nothing he could do to change it, nothing that could alter or improve the situation. There was nothing left but to beg or sneer.

  Thistle sneered for all he was worth. ‘Fuck you and your mother, you bent-kneed turncoat son of a bitch.’

  The fat Cuckoo shook his head back and forth, tired and less than thrilled at what was about to come. The thin Cuckoo smiled, excited by the prospect of injuring someone.

  ‘Why exactly are you bothering my son?’ a voice asked.

  Thistle’s father had been a porter who’d got drunk one night and fallen into the bay, come back out again fish-pecked and green, so Thistle was pretty certain whoever was speaking wasn’t him.

  The fat Cuckoo took a long time to answer. ‘What?’

  ‘I asked, why exactly are you bothering my son?’ Thistle turned and took a quick look at the man. The first thing to notice was the outlandish dress, coarse brown trouser and a coarse brown shirt, the uniform of someone who had laboured below – but he was clean and well kept, which didn’t square, not at all. Nor did his bass voice, nor his easy tone of command. His hair trailed down his head like a mane, white as snow though he couldn’t have had forty-five years on him. Between that and his forehead, disproportionately broad, he gave the impression of some great resting feline.

  ‘This one’s your kid?’

  The man who was not Thistle’s father walked over and put one hand on Thistle’s shoulder. His arms were thick and he had a brand on his wrist that marked him as being from one of the higher Rungs. ‘That’s what I said.’

  The thin Cuckoo looked at the second, gained some courage from the reminder that he wasn’t facing the situation by his lonesome. ‘What’s his name, then?’

  ‘Spring,’ the man said cleanly, with a swift disregard for truth that any street kid could appreciate.

  The Cuckoos spent the next couple of seconds realising that they had no way of proving that one way or the other, and the merchant took the opportunity to break in. ‘If he is your son, he’s in a lot of trouble. He ripped me off on a bottle of rotgut, the little savage. Him and his pack of hoods, trying to scam me.’

  The man looked down at Thistle for a moment, then back up at the merchant. He had a gaze as heavy as a porter’s pack, and he seemed in no great hurry to speak. ‘I’m afraid you’re mistaken, friend. My son and I have been together the last three hours. I just sent him out a moment ago to pick up a few things for dinner.’

  ‘Birdshit,’ the younger Cuckoo said.

  ‘I’ll thank you to avoid profaning yourself while in my presence,’ the man said stiffly.

  ‘Awful dark to be your son,’ the fat Cuckoo said.

  ‘His mother was Dycian,’ the man answered. ‘And if you’re done combing my family tree, perhaps we might get on with our business?’ Thistle had done his fair share of lying to figures of authority, but he knew he couldn’t have matched the stranger’s easy duplicity, natural as a duck in water.

  ‘Father or not,’ the older Cuckoo said, ‘this boy is in trouble. Theft, vandalism and evading arrest.’

  ‘Where’s the bottle?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The bottle he snatched, where is it?’

  The Cuckoos looked at each other, then at the merchant. ‘I suppose he’s thrown it away, hasn’t he?’

  ‘So you’ve no proof at all, to back up this absurd allegation.’

  ‘I chased him half a cable!’ the younger Cuckoo said. ‘You think I don’t recognise him?’

  ‘I just went into your shop looking for some garlic, sir,’ Thistle broke in, pitching his voice high. ‘Then I realised Father hadn’t given me any money, and I was going back to find him when everyone started yelling.’

  ‘Why’d you run?’

  Thistle shrugged, tried to make himself look as friendly as Rat and as dumb as Treble. ‘Cause you were chasing me.’

  ‘Wasn’t
talking so polite two minutes ago,’ the fat Cuckoo said, but he seemed to have lost his enthusiasm for the proceedings. ‘Are you sure this was the one that made the snatch?’

  ‘I got a better look at the other one,’ the shopkeeper admitted, staring hard at Thistle.

  ‘I don’t have time for this,’ the man who was not Thistle’s father snapped, and there was real weight in his voice, such that even the Cuckoos had to respond. ‘And neither does my boy. You say you’re short a bottle of liquor?’ he asked, turning towards the merchant and counting out five bronze nummus from his purse. ‘This should make good your losses, and you can add to it my apologies at your misfortune. All the same, it would be better in the future not to go blaming innocent children for your adversity.’

  The owner looked at Thistle, looked at the man, looked at the coin in the man’s hand. Wasn’t no way he was foolish enough to believe this story, but putting Thistle below wouldn’t pay him back for the bottle of liquor. And this was the Fifth after all, no one was in any hurry to send a boy into the mountain. ‘I suppose I might be confusing him with his double.’

  ‘Kind of thing could happen to anyone,’ Thistle’s saviour said, handing over the coin and turning to the two Cuckoos. ‘Your good service is appreciated, but I think we’d all agree the situation has resolved itself.’

  ‘This is birdshit,’ the thin Cuckoo said again, still mostly out of breath and wanting someone to blame.

  But the fat Cuckoo seemed less inclined to make an issue out of it, probably because he didn’t feel like having to walk Thistle all the way up to the station. ‘Sorry for the confusion,’ he muttered finally before turning and heading back towards the main road.

  ‘I’ve got my eye on you,’ the thin one said, not because he really meant it but because it seemed like the thing to say.

  The shop owner waited till the Cuckoos were out of earshot, then he turned down to Thistle. ‘Don’t ever come into my shop again,’ he said, then gave a long, searching look to the man who had just saved Thistle from something akin to death, before toddling back upslope.

  And then there were just the two of them, Thistle and the man who was not Thistle’s father but had done him better service in five minutes than that old sack of shit had during his whole miserable existence. Thistle didn’t say anything for a while, couldn’t quite figure out anything to say. He had had sixteen years downslope, and in those sixteen years he’d learned pretty well how things ran, and they did not run this way – strangers did not put themselves out to help you, especially not when that help was extralegal and costly.

  ‘Thanks,’ Thistle said finally, lamely, with awareness of the latter.

  The man didn’t answer, just stared at Thistle without blinking. Thistle didn’t blink either, though he very much wanted to. ‘That man you stole that bottle of liquor from – he seem rich to you?’

  ‘Not really,’ Thistle said.

  ‘He seem like he’s making enough money that he can afford to lose some of it to a pack of miscreant children?’

  Thistle shrugged. He didn’t know what miscreant meant exactly, but he didn’t like being called it. And of course, no youth likes to be reminded of their age.

  ‘And what do you need a bottle of liquor for at mid-afternoon? You’re a man, or nearly one. What kind of man is it gets drunk before the sun sets?’

  Thistle shrugged again, but his eyes clouded over and he felt his hands tense at his side.

  ‘My name is Edom, the First of His Line,’ and the way he said it, it sounded like something worth being. ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘Thistle,’ though even to his ears it didn’t seem to have much weight to it.

  ‘Thistle is the name they gave you,’ the man said.

  Thistle didn’t know what that meant.

  ‘Ask yourself if this is what you want to be, boy they call Thistle,’ the strange man said. Then he reached into his purse, took out a silver tertarum and handed it over. ‘Ask yourself if this is everything that you want to be.’

  With that, the man turned quickly and marched north.

  Thistle watched him till he disappeared out of sight. He knew the answer, wanted to shout it at the man’s back. Instead he closed his hand round the coin and started to walk downslope. Back to the Barrow, and the tenements, and his life.

  5

  The line held, but barely.

  The Marchers attacked just before noon, though apart from that, Hamilcar’s prediction had been correct. Bas had formed out the men shortly after returning to camp, two wings with Hamilcar’s bowmen on either side and the small force of cavalry in the centre. Three hours had passed then, though the certainty of the conflict made it feel longer, even for Bas. Twice he gave the order for the water-boys to pass through the ranks, grateful soldiers filling their bellies, no few for the last time.

  The sun was near its zenith when the Marchers began to buzz, loud enough that you could hear them from half a valley away. Masters of ambush, of cutting a line of horses from camp, of slipping a baggage train as easy as a cutpurse would a pocket, in open battle the Marchers had no notion of trickery and little more of tactics. Their leaders and holy men would work them into a frenzy, then send them hurtling forward like javelins. Bas had seen it before, seen it and survived, which was more than most men could say.

  A few small packs of horsemen broke away from the main body, crossed to just outside of arrow range and began to ride back and forth, hooting and hollering and taunting their opponents. It was a source of some curiosity to Bas how these unlettered half-children had managed such a competent grasp of Aelerian profanity. More than competent, elegant even. Bas had never known his mother, but sight unseen he doubted her capable of half the gymnastics the young Marchers attributed to her.

  They were to die, most of them, perhaps all of them, and if they didn’t die they would do their best to kill. But all the same they looked very fine in the midday sun, vital and amoral as a thunderstorm. One particularly dextrous youth managed to remove himself from his codpiece while straddling his mount, galloped down the lines with his cock dangling in view. An impressive feat, though not one that Bas imagined would be of much help in the coming battle.

  Through it all, not a man of the thema broke from the position, not so much as wavered, though you could hear a titter of laughter go through them after a particularly good jibe. There would be no individual heroics, no squaring off of champions. Warfare was not a matter of personal glory. The thema was an engine that ate up men and spat out corpses – it had no time for gallantry.

  Disappointed at their reception, the emissaries rode back to their countrymen, now very near to acting, a howling squall of hardened killers, long lances erect. Hanging from these last the sharp-eyed among the Aelerians could see off-white circular bands – the scalped remnants of some previous combatant. Their own end if they weren’t lucky and careful.

  Then they were off, not suddenly, because no group of men that size could possibly get moving in any particularly rapid fashion, but with the growing momentum that gave their charge its potency. A swift canter at first, then steadily faster, like a summer rain. The noise was more than deafening, it was almost physical, a gust of wind blowing through the valley. The hammering of hooves, the painted men screaming their hatred as if expelling poison.

  The thema had no equivalent caterwaul. Their silence before battle was part of what made them unique, part of their mystique – that they were professionals, that war for them caused no flutter of agitation, any more than a smith gets excited when he walks to his forge. That was the ideal at least, though here and there Bas noticed a neophyte go weak-kneed, and even some of the veterans looked less than enthused about the day’s work. Still, for men about to face death, their seeming indifference was remarkable.

  When the mass of riders had come within range there was an abrupt humming sound, a half-thousand bows twanging in unison, a half-thousand arrows clouding the sky. Lost for a moment against the sun, then falling again, a grim and dea
dly parabola, Hamilcar and his people at their work. The plainsmen wore no armour, not even the chieftains, and where the arrows fell they found flesh awaiting them. Horses plunged to the ground, death screams shriller and longer than a man’s. Marchers died by the tens and hundreds, choking on blood or thrown from their saddles and crushed beneath their mounts, but the charge continued all the same. Hamilcar’s men fired off a second volley with less effect. The front ranks shifted their pikes horizontal, a bristling line of steel dropping like a curtain.

  Bas waited.

  Horses are not wise creatures, insofar as they would prefer to stand in a field all day, eating and rutting and going for the occasional run when the mood takes them, rather than put on clothes and travel thousands of cables to kill other members of their species. But they are not so foolish as to run full speed into an obvious physical impediment, regardless of what the man on their back pushes them to do. The success of cavalry against infantry does not rely on force or momentum per se – it is the moral factor that determines its efficacy. Should the infantry stand firm, keep their feet planted and their arms thrust forward, the charge is certain to fail. The riders will pull up at the last moment, break and search for another weakness in the line. All that needs to be done to ensure victory, in effect, is to stand firm.

  Not so easily done when staring at a multitude of screaming plainsmen, bare-chested, trails of raven and owl feathers streaming from their headdresses and their war lances. A rolling wave of muscle and sharpened iron, a crest of rage hurling itself across the plains. And a charge, while destined to fail should its target maintain a unified, compact mass, is the ideal formation by which to spear a disordered mob of soldiers.

  So Bas waited.

  Here and there the line weakened, bent, where a particularly brave Marcher dared slip between the rows of pikes to skewer a hoplitai, or where a horse, mad and dying from its wounds, collapsed into the front rank, making a gap in the lines. But more often the Marchers were forced to shy away at the last moment, the unbroken line of steel impenetrable. And where the Aelerian line held the very momentum of their charge doomed many of the Marchers, as the back ranks of horsemen pressed closely against the front, making escape impossible, offering easy targets.