Those Below: The Empty Throne Book 2 Read Free

he could have retired knowing that no man had ever performed so skilfully.
    Alas then, that there was still the war to be fought.
    Six months they had been forced to wait at the borders of the Commonwealth while the Roost gave its consent for two slave nations to wage war – fine, he could not be blamed for that, nor for the long winter that had after been wasted. And the first part of this year’s campaign had gone well enough. They had finally met the enemy at Bod’s Wake, and if the result was not the signal victory that Eudokia’s propaganda machine had proclaimed it, still it had been the Salucians who had found themselves in rapid retreat northward, towards the heartland and the nation’s capital.
    But that had been nearly four months previous, and the time since had been spent camped in front of Oscan, the themas diminishing daily and a second winter growing close. As the trees had budded and then blossomed and were now shortly to die away again, so had the gallant youth she had waved farewell to diminished. There was grey at his temples, a shade she found difficult to square with the immaturity he had somehow managed to retain from the first moment he had been presented to her, a tow-headed child of fifteen. He had on the same chain armour that he had worn while marching out of the capital, but it looked better used, no longer an affectation but as natural as the sallow skin it covered. His eyes were cramped, and uncertain.
    He sat at his desk, as if so engrossed in his work he had failed to notice her arrival. A pretence, and not a particularly good one either, meant to show how hard he was working, how seriously he took his task though his efforts had not yet been crowned with success. By the gods, how she yearned for a man, a true man, and not simply a long-limbed boy!
    ‘Revered Mother,’ he said, rising swiftly. At least he had not forgotten that much. He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. ‘How was the journey from the capital?’
    ‘Tedious. As will be the next leg. How fares the child of my beloved Phocas, upon whom the hopes and prayers of Aeleria reside?’
    Konstantinos made an attempt at stoicism, but he wasn’t very good at it and also he didn’t try for very long. ‘It is no easy thing, being the leader of men.’
    ‘Do tell.’
    ‘The Salucians have bottled themselves up inside the city, and they have provisions to last out the winter. Every day we lose ten men from disease, and it won’t be long until we start losing more from the cold. If they’d only come out and give fair battle, we’d roll right through them, but …’
    It was almost as if they would prefer not to die, Eudokia thought. A clever people, the Salucians, but then again wit wasn’t everything. A well-timed jibe would not get you so much as a swift blow to the jaw, and whatever the poets might say, one doesn’t ride to battle holding a pen. ‘Heavy are the burdens required of great men. Broad must be their shoulders.’
    ‘It’s not like with the sea lords. The truth is they weren’t nearly so hard to kill as everyone made out. A ragtag bunch, and they had no walls to hide behind.’
    Not for the first time Eudokia wondered if it had been wise to arrange the short series of naval battles that had cleared the southern coast of pirates and established within the minds of the more credulous citizenry – a group that apparently included Konstantinos himself – her stepson’s reputation for invincibility. The Gentleman Lion, they had taken to calling him, and it seemed clear he had heard the name.
    ‘The Salucians send peace offerings weekly,’ he informed her, as if she had not already known, as if there had ever been anything, down to the contents of his meal and the specificity of his toilet, that Eudokia did not understand better than did her stepson.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘They have promised to make Oscan a free city, one without official ties to either of our nations. But I think if pressed, they would agree to