Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1
Page 40
‘No,’ the Aubade answered, after a few seconds’ hesitation.
‘Then the challenge shall continue. May you walk in the footsteps of the Founders.’
The Wright dropped from the dais and took a spot among the crowd. A number of human servants, moving swiftly, disassembled the platform, leaving the field unobstructed. The Aubade motioned to one of his assistants, who brought over a shield large enough to shelter a bull from the rain, and an ash-wood spear tipped with glittering red steel. Across the way the Prime did the same. Her armour was one smooth and unbroken sheen of silver, and the diamond that was the symbol of her position perched in the crown of her helmet. Her hair-stalks trailed behind her like the comb of a rooster. Her lance was painted gold, and had three nasty-looking prongs at its end.
They remained like that for a moment that seemed far longer. Then the raven was released, swooped into the sky, and the combatants spurred their horses onward, like an arrow released from a bow. The ground quivered with each step – not exaggeration or metaphor but a literal truth, Calla could feel the stadium shake beneath her. The two riders crossed the distance between them so rapidly that Calla had no time to prepare herself for the impact. The Prime’s lance struck one corner of the Aubade’s shield and glanced aside, but the Lord of the Red Keep had aimed true, and with such force that the Prime’s shield all but shattered, fragments of coloured steel flying off in all directions. The sound was a thunderclap – the great force of their combined charges would have broken the bones of any human fool enough to try to withstand it, would have punctured a stone wall. The Prime rocked back and forth, but she remained in her seat, and by the time she had reached the other end of the course, and her attendants had replaced her shield and weapon, she seemed to have recovered altogether.
Three more lances were broken in turn, each as long as a sapling but a good deal thicker. By the fourth pass one could almost imagine that the two combatants were beginning to feel the stress of the thing, that they had slowed down slightly but perceptibly.
On the fifth pass the Prime demonstrated what had earned her renown for spear work. She began her charge as she had the first four, but in the instant before striking she shifted the point upward so that it caught the Aubade directly on his crown. The force knocked him clear from the saddle, ripped him free of his moorings, sent him careening skyward and then firmly into the dust. The silver frame of his false wings snapped in half, peacock feathers hanging in the air.
Calla screamed.
While in the armoury earlier that day Calla had picked up one of the array of helmets the Aubade had collected, marvelling at the weight of it, almost too much for her to lift, let alone carry atop her head. The entire suit would have weighed twice what she did, but all the same when the Aubade rose he did so with astonishing agility. Two of his house servants came hurrying over from the sides, each carrying one end of a massive broadsword, taller than any human Calla had ever met. They knelt down as they reached the Aubade, and with one swift movement he freed the weapon from its sheath, revealing a shining blade of Roost-forged steel, red-flecked and flared at the tip.
The Prime dismounted, again with a smoothness and dexterity that Calla could not have managed naked. She gave her mount a slap on the rump that sent it galloping back towards the sidelines. Her own servants approached, offering her chosen weapons, and a moment later she was prepared to continue the contest. In one hand she carried a long blade as bright and clean as a ray of sunlight, and with the other she kept the glittering chain links of a morning star swinging swiftly above her head, like a falcon circling a kill.
The Aubade nodded at the Prime. The Prime nodded back. The battle was joined.
Calla knew nothing of swordcraft, though even had she been an expert she would have had difficulty following the exchange of blows, so swift and seamless was each movement. The Prime worked to hinder and trap the Aubade with her chain, in hopes of moving in swiftly and finishing him off with her sword. For his part the Aubade seemed willing to remain on the defensive, dodging out of the way of the fluttering couplings, waiting for an offered opportunity. When he did attack it was with a speed that would have been astonishing even had he carried a much smaller weapon, but which seemed impossible with his blade the length of a young tree. Whatever injuries he had sustained in the fall, he gave no indication that they were affecting him, or no indication that Calla could see. Here and there a strike managed to get through the other’s defences, but each time it deflected off the thick plate. For a while it seemed like a game, no different than some of the training matches she had seen the Aubade take part in – so much so that when the end came Calla was utterly unprepared for it, lulled into a false and foolish sense of comfort.
In one instant the two were facing off as fiercely as ever, as if their toil had not depleted their energy one jot or tittle. Then there was a flash of movement, but who had moved, or what that movement had accomplished, Calla could not say.
Then the Aubade was turning away, settling his sword across the wide arch of his shoulders, stalking back to the lines. Calla’s eyes turned back to the Prime, upright but standing strangely, stiffly. And then her sword fell into the dust, her silver armour stained a heavy red about the chest, and then Calla caught one quick flash of what had caused it; the Prime’s sternum broken, the neck sheared through and the spine laid clear.
The Prime collapsed. There was a gasp from the assembled throng, followed quickly, almost immediately, by vigorous and sustained applause.
Why not? It had been a marvellous display, the finest duel seen in generations, two of the foremost warriors Those Above had ever produced fighting and dying for the diversion of their people. Even those Eldest who had been firmly in the Prime’s camp, who had supported her in the Conclave and who were hoping for her victory, could not help but recognise that they had just been witness to a masterful performance, two artists at the height of their craft. And who could grudge the victor his success? Who could fail to recognise the greatness of the Aubade? Was he not the grandest, the most perfect, the noblest specimen, everything that was good and righteous and ideal?
Calla realised that she was sobbing.
Alone among the Eternal the Aubade had not joined the indulgent throng. He was sitting on a stool on one side of the courses, having removed his helmet and breastplate, and two of his household attendants were carefully tending to his wounds.
Calla held her robes up with the tips of her fingers and sprinted over to him. ‘It is finished, my Lord,’ she said, still weeping, stumbling through her words. ‘It is over.’
Dark red ichor leaked down his face, darker than the blood of a human, the same colour as the sword that he had carried. But his eyes were as cool and implacable as ever, and he answered without hesitation: ‘It has not begun.’
38
Thistle had been on his knees so long that they had started to hurt and then gone numb and then started to hurt again. He had not eaten anything for more than a day, hadn’t had a drop to drink since before midnight, six long hours before. He was in the basement of a butcher shop on the Fourth Rung, a small stone room empty of furnishings except for the small altar at which Thistle knelt. The only illumination came from two flickering candles on top of it, a plain wooden bowl between them. Thistle had been meditating on these lights for hours, until they seemed to encompass within their small, sputtering flames the entirety of the world he had known and was poised now to leave behind.
‘Who is this who comes before us?’ Edom asked.
Thistle kept his head down and did not answer.
‘He cannot tell us,’ an unknown voice informed him, ‘because he does not know.’
‘Why does he not know?’ Edom asked.
‘Because his name has been stolen from him.’
‘Does he consent to take his place among his brothers?’ Edom turned his eyes now on Thistle and Thistle felt their weight like a burden, like a porter on a long jog upslope. ‘Does he swear eternal fealty to the cause
of his species, to their freedom, to their prosperity, to their future unjustly denied?’
Thistle did not speak, but he held out his right hand. Edom made a shallow cut on Thistle’s palm, held it in place as it dripped little blooms of red into the bowl. He performed the same operation on his own hand, which Thistle only now realised was thick with scars old and new.
It wasn’t much of a wound, but Thistle found himself light-headed after receiving it, some combination of the heat and not having eaten, or perhaps just the unconscious shuddering of an organism about to be born anew.
‘What did they call this boy?’ Edom asked.
‘He was Thistle, the false-known,’ a voice answered.
‘And who is he now?’
Thistle had been frightened that, weakened as he was, he would prove unable to rise, would dishonour himself at this pivotal moment of his existence. So he threw himself into it, forced his body into motion and rose up quickly, too quickly, almost stumbled before righting himself.
But he could feel the swelling goodwill of his new brothers, steadying him with their own strength. ‘Pyre,’ he said with a force and confidence that surprised him, that ignored how tired and hungry and weak he felt, that left his body light and his head full of fire. ‘Pyre, the First of His Line.’
Pyre raised his hand open-fisted, five fingers above his head, the shouts of his companions echoing in his ears, the death of a nation on his lips.
Coming in 2016:
THOSE BELOW
The Empty Throne Book Two