Those Below: The Empty Throne Book 2 (20 page)

‘You will forgive me, Sentinel, if I do not suppose the long provocations of our enemies to be so casually forgotten. And our purpose in moving eastward is simple – so that in future years, when the Salucians in their mad arrogance think to again insult the might and honour of Aeleria, think to claim what they do not deserve, they will remember this day and grow cautious.’

‘Violence is no remedy for foolishness, however often it’s prescribed.’

It had been a long time since Bas had seen the Protostrator unsmiling. ‘There is much which requires my attention,’ he said, nodding to Einnes though not quite bowing, ‘as I’m sure you will appreciate.’ Konstantinos allowed himself to be drawn away by a neighbouring adjunct, no doubt hoping he would be more successful in the coming contest than he had been in this one.

Bas and Einnes stood silently for a time, though they seemed the only two people in camp who could claim this distinction, all the rest loud in their good humour, the scent of death inspiring to those who need not fear it. Two high-ranking officers, one fat, one thin, both loud, began to dispute loudly as to the proper placement of Hamilcar’s archers, neither able to draw a bow but each confident verging on bellicose. Isaac had begun to talk to himself, or at least not to anyone else in particular, discussing the battle, comparing it to others he had fought in, drunk enough now to forget social convention – though it had to be said that the liquor was proving no impediment to his tactical sense, and his observations and suggestions were, to Bas’s mind, entirely sound. Konstantinos was surrounded by a solid ring of adjutants and councillors, every one of them smiling or trying to hide a smile, every one a senator’s son. At some point soon things would start to happen in the valley below, but in the interlude there was nothing to do but enjoy having been born on the right side of history.

‘This has ceased to be of interest,’ Einnes said simply.

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll return to my tent,’ she said, ‘perhaps I can get a good ride in this morning. You’ll let me know if anything develops?’

But what would? The outcome certain, the business grim and bloody. ‘It seems unlikely that will be necessary.’

‘Yes,’ Einnes agreed, and retreated, and with her gone there was nothing to do but watch the battle.

Bas admitted, if grudgingly and only to himself, that Konstantinos had at least managed to form a competent plan of attack. The army was arranged in the standard Aelerian formation with the broad mass of hoplitai split into three wings, cavalry filling in the gaps, Hamilcar and the other archers on the extreme ends. Nothing particularly clever or imaginative, but Bas had warred for long enough to know that even plain competence in a general is far from a guarantee.

And anyway, victory today would not demand genius. The arrival of the western legions had done more to steady the rest of the army than even their victories at Bod’s Wake or Oscan. They were coolly competent, they were scarred, withered, bone-hard and brutal. They were squat and well-muscled, their calloused hands seemed to have been formed solely to hold pike and sword and knife. They cursed with every breath, they were tight-fisted and grasping, they stole anything not nailed to something else, they gambled constantly and usually lost and often refused to pay. They were generally drunk and always permanently scowling, their only smiles bitter ones, nasty jokes at the expense of others.

The Salucians had nothing with which to match them. Indeed, there was nothing human that could hope to stand against this vast engine Bas had helped to create, this rolling tumult of steel and fire and death, though looking at it Bas found himself with a curious lack of pride. There was a moment then when he thought hard about going back to his tent, drinking heavily and staring up at the cloth, at the line of sun running across the entranceway, watching it draw tight with the afternoon’s arrival, waiting for evening’s inevitable descent. Or perhaps finding Einnes, going for a long ride, away from the camp and out into the hinterlands, north along the river, riding until night began to fall, or perhaps a long time beyond that.

He didn’t do either of these things, of course. There was one word written on Bas’s heart, and that word was duty. He had no role in the day’s events save as observer, and so this was the one he would play.

The horns were near deafening, even at this range, some curious auditory effect of the valley funnelling the noise back towards the Aelerian camp. Konstantinos stopped smiling at the sound, assumed an air of importance, of great and conscious dignity. He waved his rod to the chief signalman, who ran the great crimson battle flag up the pole, the gonfalon bright in the noontime sun.

Battle was joined.

It was an awkward and ungainly means of combat, long rows of tightly packed men walking slowly into one another. Bas had been at the front of it often enough to remember the feeling, the growing sense of nausea, those moments before always the worst, thinking that perhaps this was the time that you broke and ran, wanting it to come, whatever it was, death itself better than uncertainty, or at least it might seem so before you met it. And the reek, the smell – that was something the minstrels never spoke of, the furious olfactory misery manifested by the press of thousands of men, their flesh and their sweat and their blood and their shit; shit comes with blood, as any soldier can tell you, after from death and before from fear. The ant-like ignorance of your own motions, the certain knowledge that your own victory or defeat will play no very significant role in the day’s outcome, that your speed and strength and courage carry no more weight than the speed and strength and courage of the man beside you, and the man beside him, definitive evidence of the essential pointlessness of your existence.

‘Magnificent,’ Konstantinos said, as the hoplitai began to march forward in even ranks, the valley echoing with the rumbling of their feet. ‘Magnificent,’ he said again, savouring the moment.

Not so far below, a world away, men shoved metal into the flesh of other men, men screamed, men staunched their wounds and the wounds of their comrades, men suffered, men died. The Salucians had done their best to mimic the tactics of their enemies, long spears and leather armour, but neither their equipment nor the men carrying it were a match for the themas. It had taken a generation to create such a machine, tens of thousands of men working in admirable if imperfect concert towards the shared end of murder. The Thirteenth led the way in the centre, crossing the distance in unison, in rhythm that would have shamed a troupe of dancers, and seen from so far above it did seem beautiful, thrilling, even for those who ought to have known better. Bas felt his heart pump happily and Isaac let out a war-whoop when the Thirteenth struck against an equivalent mass of Salucians, equivalent in numbers though in no other fashion, the vast metal monster straining forward.

The day was at its zenith, sun blinding bright off the burnished steel of the hoplitai, as if the valley itself had been set alight. Bas wiped a blunt hand across his forehead, came away thick with sweat. Isaac took a long swig from his flask, and Bas waved him over for a sip, and then more than a sip. Konstantinos strutted up and down the line, making pronouncements and observations and exhortations, and his companions, aristocrats and half-nobleman, seasonal soldiers, cheered at everything, at his foolish hiccuped jokes and his predictions of victory, cheered the smell of blood, cheered the sound of their cheering.

The Salucians had determined to break the Aelerian centre, no very creative strategy but then there were no clearly superior alternatives. What few troops they had who could make any claim towards competence were fed into the middle, pike against pike, steel against steel. It would not have worked against any of the thema and it would certainly not work against the Thirteenth; even without Bas leading them they were still the fiercest array of men perhaps ever assembled, they were still more than any horde of lisping half-trained Salucians could hope to best.

Who knew how long it was building, a tremor of terror along the left flank? Who knew what had first started it: one weak link in a long chain, the cowardice of some or other farm boy, pressed into service for a cause he neither understood nor cared for. The collapse at Scarlet Fields had come when one hoplitai had pissed himself and an adjoining soldier had mocked him for it, the two both so mad with fear that they dropped their spears and assaulted each other, the terror spilling out like blood from an open wound, all with the Birds massing for an open charge. It was a part of that curiosity of mass combat by which an infinite number of tiny decisions, each irrelevant in and of itself, is somehow transmuted into victory or defeat. Some confusion along the wing, some unit refusing to go forward, and a seam began to open up between the Salucian centre and the Salucian left, a wide chink in the armour, an invitation to rout.

‘They’re splitting, by the gods they’re splitting!’ Konstantinos shouted, managed to get word to the signalman, who raised the flag for the cavalry charge, though Bas did not suppose Theophilus fool enough to miss the opportunity. And indeed the alacrity with which his band of cavalry set off suggested his old subordinate was living up to his new position. They struck against the hole in the Salucian line perfectly, and for the first time that day Bas did feel something like joy, for he could have done no better himself, no better than this boy he had taught to kill. Their cavalry plunged into the loose-packed mass of men, rode them down without mercy, long spears useless and less than useless in such a situation, an encumbrance and one that most of the Salucians dispensed with as swiftly as possible, along with their arms and armour and anything else that might slow them down, that might hinder their desperate escape, not a retreat but an outright collapse.

And above the valley the officers and nobles, hands uncalloused but steeped in blood, whooped and hollered, shouted joyfully, threw hats in the air, embraced each other fiercely, offered loud and fervent prayers to the god of war. Prayers well due him, an easy victory better even than a just one.

O
n a dark night half past the hour of the Nightjar, Pyre and Hammer slid down an alleyway on a distant corner of the Fifth. Above. A great width of pipe beat its steady tune, though as children of the slums they gave no more thought to the noise than they would the beating of their own hearts. On either side were bleak walls of faded red brick, tenement houses much like the one that Pyre had grown up in, finger-width walls separating small rooms into smaller ones, the smell of excreta and of cooked cabbage. At the back door of one of these hovels were two Dead Pigeons, nearly obscured by the shadow of the suck. Even back when the Cuckoos had been masters of the Fifth Rung, had strutted down the thoroughfares like capons ignorant of their deficit, they had rarely seen any point in visiting so impoverished and miserable a corner of their territory. These days, with Pyre’s men leading lightning raids on unwary custodians, with Five-Fingered handprints up on every wall from the docks to the Perennial Exchange, there was no Cuckoo brave enough to show himself below the top of the Fourth, and many who would not attempt even that modest feat. There was, in all likelihood, not a single member of the civil guard within a dozen cables, and the only authority was wielded by Pyre himself.

But still he was wary approaching the back door, gave the parole with one hand on the hilt of his weapon. Caution had become second nature to Pyre; he did not walk into a room without thinking of how he would leave it, he did not meet a man without questioning how they might think to betray him, and what method he would find to return that evil.

‘Brother Pyre,’ said one of the guards quietly, a dark-skinned man, short and ugly as a swelling bruise.

‘Brother Frost.’ Pyre knew every man in the Dead Pigeons, every man or near to. Knew them and was known in turn. ‘The rest are in attendance?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Make sure their escorts are ready to move before the hour of the Owl. This won’t last as long as they think.’

‘Of course, Brother Pyre,’ Frost said, giving the salute, then holding it out in front of him, fingers open. ‘Until the new age.’

‘Until the dawn to come,’ Pyre said, the words second nature if truly meant. Hammer came into the corridor but stayed outside the main room, as much to serve guard as because, like most of the Dead Pigeons, he preferred violence to parlay.

They had knocked down three dividing walls to make enough room for the table and the eleven men who sat round it. For most this was their first time so far downslope, and likely they found the accommodations insalubrious. This was not their fault, and Pyre had learned enough by then – Edom had taught him enough – that he did not hold it against them. They were his brothers, he reminded himself, his siblings, victims of the demons as he was, different in degree but not in kind. They huddled round the table, wearing heavy furs and shivering despite them. The walls of these buildings were weak enough to bend with a strong wind, and the cold seemed to leak right through, as Pyre had observed on innumerable nights as a child, sharing his small bed with his three sisters, chilled despite the tight, rank press of their bodies.

They all stared as he came in, a row of middle-aged men, smooth-skinned and unsmiling. Except for Edom, and that was enough, that smile that sanctified everything. Pyre returned it and moved to the one vacant seat, set next to their leader as was only appropriate. ‘You will forgive my tardiness, brothers,’ he said. ‘It was the result of urgent business.’

‘What sort of urgent business?’ snapped Steadfast, ready as ever to give insult.

‘It was a matter for the Dead Pigeons,’ Pyre said

‘Discussing the delay only exacerbates it,’ Edom interrupted, ‘and we have little enough time as it is.’ Standing with customary grace he offered the Five-Fingered salute. ‘Edom, the First of His Line, calls this meeting to order.’

‘Steadfast, the First of His Line, bears witness.’

‘Able, the First of His Line, bears witness.’