Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1

by Daniel Polansky

  And now, with the charge stalled and the Marchers in confusion, the hoplitai made their own attack, surging forward to impale the horsemen, Aelerian steel sliding into the unprotected flesh of the Marchers’ ponies or, better aimed, into the unprotected flesh of the Marchers themselves. Unable to flee, pushed onward by the men behind them, hand-to-hand combat was the only option. The Marchers were armed with war spears, pig-iron hatchets and bent swords, heirloom or cast-off. Stalled, they were no match against the Aelerians, who were cool and brutal and, above all, competent.

  But Mykhailo had another quiver in his bow, had not yet given up the game. As the rolling tumult of Marchers streaked across the valley they had forked in two. The first contingent launched themselves at Bas’s left, pinned them down, while the second half of the horde wheeled and struck against Bas’s right, aiming to roll up his flank.

  And this time it was a very close thing, very close indeed. From his vantage point Bas could see the right flank buckle, bend against the onslaught, the Marchers and their war lances taking their toll. No, not see – it was impossible to take into account the thousand tiny battles taking place on either side of the line, each a matter of desperate importance for the men involved in them, none of any particular weight on their own. ‘Sensed’ would be a better way to put it, like knowing rain is on its way though the sun is hot overhead, or how some men say they can feel a run of cards coming at the gambling table.

  It was one of those peculiar moments of clarity that sometimes descend in the midst of chaos, when a single decision, executed firmly, can turn fortune’s tide. A good tactician needs to have something of the savage in him, needs to have the same instinct for the kill as a hawk, needs to be able to seize on the emptiness between the seconds. All the might of the Marchers wasn’t enough to break the Aelerian right, just to pin it into place. And with the balance of the plainsmen engaged in combat against each side, unable to conquer but equally incapable of retreat, Bas gave the order for his own cavalry to charge.

  The strength of the Commonwealth was in its hoplitai – ironclad, hardbitten, trained to move as a single organism. For cavalry, they had little use. The Marchers were far more skilled – better riders, superior lancers. And of course the Others were as far beyond the Marchers as the Marchers were the Aelerians, as they had proved more than once during the short but sanguinary conflict known as the Seventh Other War. But still, while inferior to the plainsmen in open battle, the weight of the Aelerian cataphracts were enough to strike a decisive blow against the weakened Marchers, the last piece that would turn defeat into a rout.

  Bas stayed in the centre of the charge, careful to take no chances with his own life. He had enough acts of bravery to his credit, and he had seen more than one army collapse from the death of its leader. The thema was far too disciplined for that, of course, but Bas was not one to take a needless chance. With the force of their charge lost, the Marchers were left rudderless, incapable any longer of collective action. Too closely packed to manoeuvre, too brave to break and run, they collapsed beneath the full impetus of the Aelerian cavalry, a thousand men in close ranks and heavy armour.

  In front and alongside him the Aelerian cataphracts – veterans all, or all save Theophilus, and if he lived past today he could claim that distinction and have no man gainsay him – went about the savage business of their trade. Exhausted by the fighting they had already seen that day, unarmoured, their hand weapons as like to break against the chain hauberks of the Aelerians as they were to find purchase in flesh, the Marchers were in no position to make a serious defence. That they did so at all was testament to the extraordinary, if pointless, sense of valour that was their national inheritance.

  Bas unsheathed his sword but had not yet seen the point in doing anything with it, the front ranks of the charge sweeping the enemy in front of them. He felt a dissonant moment of bliss, as if he were about nothing more than a midday ride, the weather warm for once, the sun pleasant rather than absent or brutal. The noise was so loud and had lasted for so long that he had ceased to be entirely cognisant of it, a coterminous drone not altogether dissimilar to silence. Thus it was only belatedly that Bas realised he had dropped from the middle of the pack to the tail, that his mount was running ragged, and later still that he discovered the cause of the injury, a tear along the beast’s haunches made by axe or blade, one that made it impossible for him to keep pace with the charge.

  A battle has only one certainty, and that is that at some point everything will descend into chaos, with no one individual capable of enforcing his will upon the whole. The day had reached that point. The Marchers were thinking of nothing more than escape, the Aelerians so fired by victory and bloodlust that they’d have sprinted over a cliff sooner than notice the orders of their commander. It was each man to his own, until exhaustion set in or night fell.

  Bas was lost in the melee, the rest of his force striking against the fleeing Marchers. After a few moments his horse had dropped down to a canter, and then a walk, and then began to stumble.

  Bas sheathed his sword and slipped down off Oat. The charge had carried him out into the hinterland between where the two armies had begun the day. In front of him the mass of plainsmen that had been able to flee were doing so, the cataphracts in fierce pursuit. Behind him those Marchers that were unable to break free from combat against the pikemen were dying in a fashion bloody and wholesale. On a battlefield of more than seventy thousand men, Bas found himself virtually alone.

  Oat collapsed into the grass about the same time that Bas noticed a retreating Marcher wheel and turn to face him. His horse looked to be of decent stock but the war lance he carried was tipped black where it had been tempered in fire – his first battle, then, newly blooded and looking to make a name for himself. Bas could see in the boy’s face the certainty of escape compete with the possibility of glory, and he knew which would win out. Bas had been fighting the Marchers since before this youth had been a dream of his mother’s – prestige would always trump survival.

  The boy whooped and charged.

  Pain and fear are the two gifts with which the gods have provided man to ensure the propagation of the species. It is the purpose of discipline and routine to render a soldier ignorant of these two saving graces, to ignore the reasonable instinct that makes a man flee from death. Man for man, the barbarians were the superiors of the thema, a fact which was well recognised even in the Aelerian camp. A lifetime of hardship inured them to cold and hunger and toil, their first toys as children were smaller versions of the arms they carried into battle, their skill on horseback was remarkable. But the barbarians fought for personal glory, or perhaps for some grand sense of national destiny, which was equally unhelpful from a practical perspective.

  A hoplitai fought because that was what he did, because it was his profession. He was not brave because of a personal sense of courage, because he hoped to gain glory or renown. He was certainly not brave out of any love of country, the very suggestion of which would have got you mocked out of the mess tent. He was brave because the men next to him demanded it – in effect, the genius of the thema lay in replacing the fear of death with the fear of contempt, a curious bit of chicanery that had ensured their onward progress across a dozen-odd nations. But alone, outmatched, without hope of assistance, even the fiercest of men can find their skin growing cold and the breath in their lungs slow to escape.

  Bas’s next action carried with it little in the way of courage, if by courage one means the ability to overcome fear. Because – and this was the one way in which the reputation he had gained matched the reality of it – Bas was possessed of no such emotion, had never known the presence of it, even so much as its shadow. Fear is the bastard child of imagination – and Bas was the sort of man who had no clear conception of what might be, only what ought. It was his duty not to fall beneath the blade of the plainsman, and Bas was never one to shirk a duty.

  Some ten paces ahead Bas noticed a small indentation in the ground, and he mov
ed towards it as fast as his knee could carry him. His sword whistled from his sheath as he moved, coming to his hands almost unconsciously, as it had a thousand times before. The Marcher took notice of the gleaming red blade, realised to whom he was about to give battle, screamed louder and spurred his horse onward.

  But Bas had chosen his position well. In his excitement the Marcher failed to notice the depression, and just as he was set to make his killing strike his horse half-stumbled. The traditional skill of the barbarians was enough to keep him upright, but he had to drop his lance to do so.

  With an Aelerian blade it wouldn’t have worked; the steel would have caught in the horse’s sinew or turned against bone. But Bas’s Other-crafted sword carved through the equine’s legs like a knife through melted wax. The horse pitched forward, mewling piteously, and the Marcher went with it, tumbling heels over hands.

  He was up quickly, one of the advantages of riding bareback. His lance had followed the horse to the ground, but from the soon-to-be corpse of his mount he pulled a hand axe and a battered Aelerian short blade. Neither weapon would be enough, not against the God-Killer, but if the Marcher realised it he didn’t seem to care. He beat his breast twice with the hand holding the axe, and came against Bas in a low crouch.

  Bas’s buckler rested on the side of his dying steed, and so he held the sword two-handed, blade elevated slightly. A younger man, or one more desirous of glory, would have surged forward, secure in his strength and prowess, hoping to best the Marcher in single combat. But victory was all for Bas; he would no more risk his own life needlessly than he would that of one of his subordinates. He gave a step, then two, knowing time was on his side, that his men would return to help him soon enough.

  But the youth was wise enough to realise the same, and decided to stake the outcome on one single moment rather than allow himself to be overtaken. The axe spun through the air, not at all a bad toss given that it had been hurled from his off hand, which is to say that it went well over Bas’s head. But then, the Marcher hadn’t intended to kill Bas with it, though he’d happily have accepted that outcome. The thrown hand axe was meant to distract Bas from his own movement, to create an opening behind which the Marcher could attack.

  Bas was not easily distracted. Had he been more familiar with Bas, the Marcher might have kept a hold on the hatchet, known better than to try to shake the God-Killer. Had he been more familiar with Bas, the Marcher might never have turned his horse round, might have made for the horizon with everything he had left in him.

  The end came quickly. Bas thrust his blade forward, the Marcher stumbled trying to stop his momentum, made a desperate parry. Bas turned his own blade in a little half-circle and the sword the Marcher held was gone, as was the hand that held it, and almost before the pain could register Bas had pivoted and planted half of his weapon into the man’s chest. They were very close when he died, close enough that Bas could see his eyes go dim as his body collapsed around the metal, till Bas was the only thing keeping him up.

  Bas let the corpse slide off his blade. He crushed a handful of the wild grass in his hands, stalks of which reached up nearly to his breast, and wiped clean the blood from his weapon. Then he went back to check on his mount, saw it was beyond help, ended its pain quickly and dispassionately. He spent a few moments trying to remove the saddle, an awkward task given that three hundred clove of dead horseflesh was lying on most of it. Finally he gave up and just cut the straps with his knife. It had long since ceased to astonish Bas, how many of life’s problems could be solved with naked steel.

  6

  The Lord jumped smoothly from the gently rocking bow of his pleasure craft to the soft sand of the beach. Next came Calla, and then the three bearers, young gentlemen of the Keep chosen for their grace and beauty, carrying the gifts the Lord was to present. The setting sun shone gold on the boughs of the oak and willow hanging out over the water. A path of grey stone led deeper into the forest. Standing inside the first line of trees was a household servant, wearing a white robe that covered everything but a respectful smile. ‘Welcome to the House of the Second Moon, my Lord of the Red Keep.’ Atop his ebony tray were a hollow gourd resting on a silver stand and several small wooden cups. ‘May I offer refreshment?’

  The Lord took the gourd. Calla took one of the cups and thanked the man, who nodded in response. The concoction tasted of cinnamon and cream and clover, and she could feel the kick almost before she had set it down.

  ‘The Prime awaits you in the central pavilion,’ the servant continued, and gestured, wide-armed, further into the wood. ‘If you please.’

  The Eternal had no conception of hereditary nobility. All were equal before the code of law that had been created at the foundation and passed down unchanged in the millennium since. All could trace their line to that period as well, and often did so, an hour-long monologue that Calla had heard the Aubade perform on more than one occasion. Each was fabulously wealthy, heir to the income of the great farms surrounding the city as well as to a portion of the tithes presented to the Roost by the human nations of the continent – though, in general, money meant nothing to them, and in practice Calla herself was responsible for keeping track of the Aubade’s finances.

  Thus the Prime could not be said to rule exactly; she gave no orders, possessed no special powers or rights. It was her quality that imbued the rank with meaning, rather than the reverse. For even amongst this race of near-divines, there were none to match her – not in wealth, not in dignity, not in beauty nor in accomplishment. Her estate was the largest in the Roost, a sprawling thing that dwarfed even the Red Keep, itself one of the larger of the Eternal’s estates. She was regarded as the greatest practitioner of all the arts that defined their culture – her incense was the subtlest and most pleasing, her brushwork finer than any other, her skill with harp and lute unparalleled. In the Conclave her counsel was regarded as much the wisest and most temperate, though in the last war against Aeleria she had been at the vanguard, and acquitted herself with noteworthy ferocity. Across the length and breadth of the First Rung, which was to say the Roost, which was to say the world, there was simply none to match her.

  None but the Aubade – Calla had her pride, after all.

  But even she could not pretend that there was anything in the Red Keep to compare with the grandeur of the Prime’s estate. The woods they walked through made the east aviary seem positively diminutive by contrast. It had been three hundred years since the Lord’s father had brought the first cuttings to the Red Keep, but the Lady’s forest was far older, went back almost to the Founding. Each seedling had been carefully chosen, planted in some infinitely distant past, lovingly cultivated, pruned and shaped. It was a living masterpiece, a millennium of careful planning married to virtually unlimited resources.

  The path got smaller before disappearing altogether a half-cable into the forest. Calla held her breath in expectation.

  ‘They’ll find us soon,’ the Aubade said.

  Calla blushed. ‘Is my excitement so obvious, my Lord?’

  He neglected to answer, continuing forward into the wood, seemingly without direction. Even with the path gone the walk was easy, the ground a soft carpet of moss, undisturbed by weed or prickly bush. The late-summer foliage would be gone within a week, and in defiance it seemed to throw itself into one last explosion of colour, fireweeds and flecks of white hellebore and bright yellow strands of trumpet vine. Threads of sunlight leaked through the canopy above, but it was difficult to make out anything much further ahead, beyond a general impression of beauty and of soft, green, living things.

  The Lord noticed it first, of course, and waved in its direction, though it took a while for Calla to make it out amidst the camouflage of flowers. But after the first became clear she quickly noticed more, hiding among the trees, gazing at her shyly.

  The personal bestiary of the Prime was as famous as the reserve that surrounded them, a menagerie of creatures unique to her demesne, cultivated by generations of her anc
estors and the Lady herself. Foremost among them were the velvet deer, and Calla could see why. They were the size of large dogs, hornless and wide-eyed. Their coats were reddish purple, notable even at this distance for the fine quality that had given the animals their name.

  Calla brought her hands up to her lips, as if to catch the escaping sigh.

  One of the deer was trying to work up the nerve to approach, dancing forward a few steps, then back again. Calla laughed and clapped her hands, and the beast spurred away shyly. But by then the other deer had lost their inhibitions, and they began to arrange themselves around the Lord and his party. They evinced neither fear nor wariness, indeed seemed to be gazing at Calla with the same interest and wonder as she at them. After a moment one came forward and nestled itself against her. She laughed again.

  ‘Oh, my Lord,’ she said. ‘How magnificent.’

  ‘She is a wonder, the Prime.’

  The herd had accepted them completely now, sniffing at the bearers and the packages they carried, blinking up at the Aubade. After a moment some of their number began to draw away, but slowly and with frequent backward looks.

  ‘Best follow them,’ he said, and proceeded to do so. Calla could barely bring herself to break away from the creature that was, even now, rubbing her softly with its long neck, as glorious and carefree as a sunbeam. But she managed it – there were other wonders yet to explore, she reminded herself.

  Their escort frolicked circles around them as they walked, pausing to nibble at the flowers or drink from the little streams running through the grounds. These last were clear as crystal and babbled kindly and were dotted with wide, flat stones so one could cross without wetting one’s feet. Running along the bank were brightly coloured clusters of giant mushrooms, thick-stalked things that came up to her knee, bright red caps flecked with white. The flickering sunlight weakened and withdrew, and as prelude to evening the bell crickets struck up their tune, each variant chirruping in a different pitch and rhythm, the resultant symphony as complex and subtle as anything that could be written with four fingers or five.