Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1 Read online

  Contents

  Also by Daniel Polansky

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Also by Daniel Polansky

  The Straight Razor Cure

  Tomorrow, the Killing

  She Who Waits

  THOSE ABOVE

  Book 1 of The Empty Throne

  Daniel Polansky

  www.hodder.co.uk

  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

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.hodder.co.uk

  To Julian – the world awaits.

  PROLOGUE

  Seen 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.

  1

  Bas 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.

  ‘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.