The Legend of Broken (100 page)

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 and
passim
“gutting blade”
Again, one cannot help but wonder, especially given the aforementioned general use of the
seax
among the Saxons, who took their name from the weapon, if these knives that the narrator persistently refers to as “gutting blades” did not in fact have a far broader and greater purpose, by design or by accident, than the name might suggest: if they were not, that is, like the
seax,
as close to a sword as a utilitarian knife, much in the manner of yet another such weapon, the Frankish
scramasax,
so close to the
seax
that the two words are often used interchangeably. The Bane evidently relied on gutting blades so greatly in situations involving close combat that one is led to the strong suspicion that the “gutting” in question must have included not only dead animals, but living humans, too, and perhaps even more so—indeed, to so great an extent that the narrator does not even consider it worthy of explanation. A wound to the gut of a man, then as now, was the next best thing to an actual kill, given that serious abdominal wounds are paralyzingly painful and usually fatal; and the death, being slow and agonizing, renders the unfortunate victim unfit for continued action. —C.C.

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“The hysterical woman …”
Gibbon writes, “The phrase employed here, in the original Broken dialectal version of the Manuscript, apparently translated, literally, to ‘moonsick,’ which the translator of the work immediately associated with ‘hysteria.’ The two concepts do, indeed, have much in common, ‘hysteria’ being a feminine illness which arises out of the womb, and is generally supposed to be governed by the lunar cycle: hence, ‘moonsickness’ becomes ‘hysteria.’” We should not fault the great scholar for what may appear to us a ludicrous interpretation: in 1790, many if not most violent mental disorders in women were still considered forms of hysteria, which was indeed thought to arise from the womb (the ancient Greeks, of course, first came up with the idea,
hystero-
being the Greek root for “utero” and “uterine”), and to be governed, therefore, by the phases of the moon. What
does
seem odd is Gibbon’s failure to connect “moonsickness” to “lunacy,” both being illnesses attributed, obviously, to the moon (see note for p. 00). —C.C.

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“… to form a
skehsel
 …”
Gibbon writes, “Again, there remain, alas, several words and phrases, the precise meanings of which the purveyor the Manuscript could not, or would not, determine; and, even more irritatingly, he persistently refused to say
why
he could not. I have left these words and phrases in quotations [changed to italics here], and have tried to extrapolate meanings as best I can from context.”
Skehsel
was apparently not one of the words he could so extrapolate, and, as in the case of the names of the waterfalls, it appears in its original form because the scholarship of Gibbon’s time simply had not caught up to the Broken Manuscript. We can now speculate with reasonable certainty, however, that the word is some sort of an Old High German variation on the Gothic
skohsl,
the term for an “evil spirit” of neutral gender. Why the Bane should have feared such spirits above others (and they mention several) is unknown, but we can also speculate, based on the very high priority the Bane placed on the natural ordering of the world, their reputation as a highly sexed people among the citizens of Broken, as well as the frequency with which “gelding” is mentioned as among the worst of fates, that it is precisely the gender neutrality of the demon that so disturbed them. The Bane evidently believed, as did many Barbarian Age peoples, that humans could, as a course of last resort, mate with most spirits and other mythical creatures, as a means of appeasing them; the
skehsel
do not seem to have offered that option, and, as has always been (and still is) the case in traditional societies that are followers of certain pagan religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, the failure to produce offspring, any kind of offspring, implied personal annihilation. This may well have been true for the Bane, as well. —C.C.

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“… bested by Welferek …”
Gibbon writes, “This man
Welferek
must, indeed, have held a position of importance among the Outrager ‘knights,’ for his name cannot but be a Broken-Germanic variation of the name we encounter in Old English as Wulfric, the ‘lord (or king) of wolves.’ Given the activities of the Outragers, such a title implies high honor and authority, as well as loyalty to the Priestess of the Moon strong enough to earn him the right to carry out the most sacred punishments—as he does in this case.” Since Gibbon’s time, the word “wolf” (or “wolves”), used in this connotation, has been identified as having the secondary, metaphorical meaning of “hunter(s)”; and it is almost certainly true that the knight
Welferek
was the Priestess of the Moon’s chief “hunter” as in executioner—or even assassin. —C.C.

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“‘… can only be the
Halap-stahla
 …’”
Gibbon writes, “Again, the peculiar formulation of the names of the rites of punishment and execution in Broken frustrate almost every attempt we can make to determine their origins. Whether the
Halap
in
Halap-stahla
has any basis in some early Germanic variation of
halbe,
itself a variation, in certain German dialects, of
halb,
or ‘half,’ or if it is derived from the Gothic
halba,
which shares the same meaning, or from some other term entirely undiscovered, we cannot answer with certainty—although it seems at least possible, given the ‘halving’ nature of the mutilation.”

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“… warriors will meet once more.”
Gibbon writes, “In stating that many if not most of the tribes of the region surrounding Broken shared the faith that fallen warriors went on, in the afterlife, to a great hall where perpetual carousing and other indulgences were on offer, Arnem (and the tale’s narrator) spoke more truly—and presciently—than they likely knew, for it was not merely, or even especially, in Germany that this belief had taken root, by this time, and would become elaborated in centuries to come: Most schoolboys of our day are familiar with
Valhalla,
the Norse version of this myth; but, in truth, the idea pervaded many northern European ‘barbarian’ faiths, and not a few Eastern tribes, as well. On the other hand, there were also warrior cultures of the time that had little or no faith in an afterlife (for one example, consult the
Beowulf
Manuscript acquired several decades ago from Sir Robert Cotton during the founding of the British Museum), and which therefore placed all the more emphasis on a man’s achievements in this life, thinking that such was the only way to keep one’s name and spirit alive after death.”

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trouser “feet”
During this period, it was common for European working classes to wear cloth pants that extended all the way down to encase even the toes, much like modern-day children’s pajamas with “feet,” to which these older garments have often been compared. Such covering obviated the need for “foot stockings,” or socks, but were often more vulnerable to wear and tear. —C.C.

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“‘the Lord God of the
Lumun-jani
’”
Gibbon writes, “This is the first ambiguous reference to Christianity in the text. By the seventh or eighth century, nearly all the barbarian tribes, with the exceptions of a few small clans in discrete domains [including, evidently, Broken], had adopted what was by then the long-established state religion of Rome; and, as at least a few of the Bane must have come into contact with missionaries of that faith and other representatives of Rome—probably during their trading sessions in the Broken town of Daurawah—we can reasonably conclude that both Broken’s subjects and the Bane knew the general story of Jesus Christ, including the crucifixion, which is the subject of the Bane forager’s allusion, here.” Stated more graphically than Gibbon was apparently willing to do, we can assume that Heldo-Bah is declaring that Welferek’s being pinned to a tree with knives in a vaguely outstretched position resembles the most infamous ritual punishment inflicted on so many slaves and criminals by the Roman Empire. This underscores the point of how fluid the religious situation during the Barbarian Age was: as Gibbon says, Heldo-Bah would have been most likely to come across a crucifix in the Broken trading center of Daurawah, which the narrator has already spoken of his having visited. The fact that Gibbon let this remark go with only an explanatory comment was almost certainly a fruitless effort to keep Burke from reacting to the story in precisely the manner that he ultimately did. —C.C.

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“… patterns of profound complexity …”
Again, we tend, today, to take the many uses that glass serves for granted; but if we remember that most of the tribes and kingdoms surrounding Broken had either lost the ability to create window glass, or, as in the case of nomadic tribes like the Huns, had never had any need for it, we can begin to get an idea of how little the narrator is exaggerating, here: light, in its various forms, was more than simply a source of illumination, during the period of Broken’s existence, and could, when cleverly used, inspire faith in one’s deity and confidence in the wisdom of one’s leaders. Oxmontrot would indeed have seen this process at work (in a number of ways) if he had been a mercenary in the employ of both the western and the eastern parts of the Roman Empire; and it is small wonder that he would have placed such emphasis on preserving and advancing the art of glassmaking in the kingdom that he founded. —C.C.

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“… a marble initiation font …”
Gibbon writes, “The use of the words ‘marble initiation font’ may be taken by Christians less informed than yourself [that is, than Edmund Burke] as ‘proof’ that the Kafran religion was nothing more than a polluted form of their own faith; and, of course, certain similarities do exist. But, they are minor; and the more important aspect of the Kafrans’ use of ‘fonts’ and ‘altars’ is its reinforcement of the fact that, among the barbarian tribes of Europe during the Dark Ages, religion was in a state of near-constant turmoil and adaptation, a condition that saw Christians borrowing rites, holy days, and customs from pagans—and, more to the point (although far less popularly recognized), pagans doing the same with regard to Christianity. Thus, we can no more cite the existence of an ‘initiation font’ within the High Temple of Kafra as evidence of Christian influence than we can say that the original baptismal practices of early Christians were adapted from the ‘blood-baptisms’ of more than a few barbarian tribes, at least some of which took place in just such fonts and receptacles, which were often located in temples.” Gibbon, although attempting again to be tactful, cannot entirely suppress his own passionate feelings on the subject. Still, given his personal agnosticism and Edmund Burke’s repeated and public defenses of the Christian faith (even, in his
Reflections on the Revolution in France,
of
Catholic
Christianity), the above statement is an admirable if unsuccessful attempt at restraint. —C.C.

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“A small, circular piece of brass …”
It should surprise no one to learn that the metalworkers of Broken, as well as those of the Bane, were capable of producing such alloys as brass, bronze, and steel (although the Bane were, of course, laboring with far less advanced equipment than was available in Broken, and therefore were unable, up to the time of these events, to achieve the kind of alloys that were available to their enemies). The mountains of the area, as has been noted several times, are rich in all the ores necessary to produce these important materials, or rather, they were, at the time: again, the originally plentiful deposits were exhausted relatively early in the Industrial Age. —C.C.

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Atta
Pass
Gibbon would have been unable to do more than guess at the full meaning of this name, which is perhaps why it goes unnoted by him. Now, however, we can reliably translate
atta
as one of many Gothic terms for “father,” this one in the sense of “forefather”—but it may also have been intended, in the case of such an important and deadly physical location as this mountain pass, to carry a religious interpretation; and, while any reference to a masculine deity may at first make us think of Kafra, the state of religious flux that dominated Europe (even, to some extent, in and around Broken) at the time poses intriguing alternative interpretations, and suggestions of the Christian “Father” who is more familiar to us today—and whose faith was spreading throughout the Germanic tribes. —C.C.

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“‘… dwarfish exiles …’”
Obviously, given the repeated explanations of the Bane’s height as having not been, in the main, a result of dwarfism, references on the part of anyone in Broken—especially Lord Baster-kin—to “misshapen dwarves” must be taken as a slur. They also offer consistent reinforcement of the fact that the Bane were not
de facto
dwarves, at least in the main: had they been, “dwarf-
ish
” would hardly have been such a common insult used in reference to them. We return, then, to the notion of “miniature” human beings, as well as the more likely question of genetic adaptation. —C.C.