The Legend of Broken (106 page)

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“… against his nose and face …”
It will not need stating or restating, to those who live with and/or work with cats, large and small, that this delicate touch is their most intimate indication of affection, and of the granting of their trust—usually not easily gained (particularly in areas like northern Europe, the nations of which, especially France, have a long history of believing cats the familiars of witches and creatures of Satan). —C.C.

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“the Northeastern Sea”
Gibbon writes, “Having reliably determined that the ‘Seksent Straits’ to which the narrator refers is our own Channel, we may infer that this ‘Northeastern Sea’ is that which lies in the direction indicated, relative to the position of the mountain
Brocken
—in other words, the Baltic Sea. Yet, even if this is so, we can draw few conclusions from the fact, little as yet being known of the tribes who inhabited the Baltic coast during this period.” We are, as already noted, at no such disadvantage today, however, and this interpretation only reinforces the notion that the old man came from the trading peoples who had been pushed to the Baltic coast by larger and more warlike tribes like the Huns. —C.C.

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“… should stir disbelief …”
Gibbon writes, “While we may indeed, as the narrator suspects, scoff at the further idea of a crippled and bleeding old man being taken in and cared for by so carnivorous a beast as a panther, aneċal Natural History is too full of tales of humans thus cared for by various animal species (for what reasons, we may never know) to permit our immediate dismissal of this part of the tale.” Indeed, the fact that the panther had very recently lost her cubs in the most traumatic manner possible actually reinforces the Manuscript’s account, according to the results of recent experiments on animal brains ranging from our relatives, the apes, down to the tiny wasp and bee: it has been discovered that the brains of every species of animal life contain that core region—the amygdala—that both feels and preserves emotional trauma. Thus, as Gibbon suspected, we have no good reason to reject the narrator’s account at face value; rather, we have sound cause to accept it, most recently, the case of the “lion man” of modern Africa, George Adamson (foster parent, along with his wife Joy, of Elsa the lioness, in
Born Free
), who lived among and was protected by lions until his tragic death at the hands of poachers. Indeed, the story of Caliphestros and Stasi has many elements that closely resemble the tale of Adamson and his lions, too many for us to be able to dismiss the former as mythological. —C.C.

P
ART
T
WO

I: Water

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“legitimate legislature”
Gibbon refers to the French Revolution’s second phase, during which the National Assembly that had sworn the famous “Tennis Court Oath” became, in response to the persistent refusal of the royal, aristocratic, and clerical sectors of the ruling class to evolve with anything like real alacrity, the National Constituent Assembly, which issued the famous “Declaration of the Rights of Man,” and declared as its noble purpose the official abolition of feudalism and the formulation of a French constitution. Unfortunately, the makeup of this Assembly also saw the emergence of wily leftist members who sought to prostitute the Revolution to their own ends—chief among them such characters as Honoré Mirabeau, a particular target of Gibbon’s ire in other letters, and the chief “manipulator” of whom he speaks here, as well as far more radical revolutionaries (Gibbon’s “basest scoundrels”), the most extreme of whom, of course, was the man whose name would all too soon become synonymous with the “Reign of Terror,” Maximilien Robespierre.—C.C.

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“cuirass”
Another encounter with a word that, while it has a modern story (
cuirass
being a fifteenth-century French term), also puts us back in the largely unknowable realm of the armor employed by Dark Age warriors. We are left to wonder just what concept it was that the translator felt comfortable denoting with the immediately recognizable “cuirass”: it might have been anything from the Greco-Roman bronze pieces that covered the front and back of the torso (although we have no other indication that either Broken soldiers or the Bane still employed Bronze weapons in the field), to the steel and leather cuirasses of the Chinese and then the Persians. Again, we must rely on the text, and on the original translation, to supply details. —C.C.

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quadrates
Gibbon writes that this formation is “easily identified, by those with even a basic knowledge of Latin, as growing out of that language’s
quadratum
, or ‘square’; and we can safely assume that these ‘squares,’ whether composed of the smaller
fausten
(‘fists,’
fauste
being the singular, ‘fist’) or the larger
khotors
, were rooted, not in imitation of the closely ordered, distinctive checkerboard pattern of the Roman
quincunx,
but out of the imperatives of the traditional, even ancient, German military doctrine of expecting attack from all sides. Apparently, Oxmontrot at this moment saw, for the first and perhaps only time, something in the Roman military model that he (rightly) did not believe suited his Germanic legions, and that he believed he could improve upon; and in organizing Broken’s marching and defensive order-of-battle formations, he altered the Roman pattern to a prototype of what would come to be identified as both a modern German and an Anglo-Saxon way of war—for in modern times, it would remain both a characteristically Prussian/German, and then British, trademark: the famed square.”

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“… the chaos of conflict.”
The effect of madmen on troops in the field is a recurring tradition in various traditional cultures, and so the Talons would have been far from alone in their belief that somehow a madman or madwoman could divine present and future order in what was (and very often remains, to the average soldier) the incomprehensible context, purpose, and results of battle. The first Muslims, the Vikings, and certain American Indian tribes were only a few examples of early peoples who sought the counsel of such characters at such moments (ascribing to it varying levels of importance); and it cannot be denied that the results were often remarkably productive. —C.C.

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seksents
As explained earlier, this appears to have been the Broken dialectal word for “peasant,” an interesting fact, in that it has a clear phonetic (and likely etymological) relationship to “Saxons,” a tribe who may well have first entered Broken, not as fierce, proud conquerors, but as peasants, in many if not most cases “indentured” peasants, who thus occupied the lowest rung on the ladder of Broken’s fairly unique social hierarchy. —C.C.

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“linnets-of-the-line”
Now that we are on the march with Arnem and his men, it is appropriate that we are introduced to this slightly junior grade of the
linnet
rank, men who apparently served as something between our own sergeants and lieutenants, in that they had the duty of actually supervising subdivided units of each
khotor
and
fauste
. This appears to be yet another rank that Oxmontrot adapted from the Roman model, as it has an obvious Roman counterpart in the
pilus prior
, or “first spear.” —C.C.

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“
thatch
-roofed … forges and smiths …”
Gibbon writes, “We have become so accustomed, in our own age, to tales of thatched roofs put to the torch, or set alight by some ordinary household mishap, that we forget that there ever was an era when thatch was viewed as
progress
. But, at the time of the events described in this narrative [the late seventh and early eighth centuries], thatch was only beginning to appear in northern Europe, and was an expensive technique that was also far more advanced, pleasant, and efficient than were the mud, sod, and mere tree-limb roofs that set the dubious standard for most of the era’s dwellings.” As for the “forges and smiths,” while, as always, it is impossible to say with anything like certainty, the description of the bustling town called “Esleben” in the Manuscript, along with its approximate position on the map, create at least the possibility that it might have been some early forerunner of the town of Hettstedt, which became famous for just such a variety of commercial activities, from the agricultural to the proto-industrial. —C.C.

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Linnet Akillus
Gibbon writes, “Here is further proof of how great the influence of Classical Greek and Roman culture was on Broken, having made its way in, again, through the experience of the ‘Mad King’ Oxmontrot and his comrades, who served in the Roman legions as foreign auxiliary troops (which, by the later imperial period, comprised the bulk of the ‘Roman’ army). Although the epithet ‘Greek’ or, in the Broken dialect,
Kreikisch
was, as seen elsewhere, employed as a thinly veiled insult, there nonetheless appears to have been ample knowledge of and respect for ancient Greece’s heroes. We may infer this, not only from the fact that various counterparts to such names (in this case, ‘Achilles’) made their way into both Gothic and the various ancient and modern Germanic dialects, but by the already-demonstrated and crucial fact that the Roman—and, thereby, at least
some
of the Greek—military systems were studied and emulated in Broken, and even improved upon.” Today, there remain Germanic and Nordic counterparts to the name
Achilles
in various countries, although they are used infrequently, in keeping with the very
un
-martial societal values and national narratives that such societies have at least tried to project in the “postmodern” age. —C.C.

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“lad”
Gibbon writes, “My translator did inform me that the Broken grammatical form for ‘children’ was remarkably close to the modern German
kinder;
however, while it has always been something of a tradition for German commanders to refer to their men as such, the same effect is not achieved in English, ‘children’ sounding far more condescending than any military officer would wish to. He therefore chose ‘lad’ or ‘lads’ when he encountered the word, which seems fitting.”

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Lenzinnet
Gibbon notes, “A typically German compounding of the rank of ‘linnet’ with what, it would seem, was the Broken Dialectal term for the modern German
Lanze,
or ‘lance.’ Hence, the term is another with a distinctly
Romani,
or Latin, influence, analogous to the ‘first spear’ [again,
pilus prior
] rank of the Roman infantry, but transplanted to the cavalry, where it anticipated the later European terms ‘first lance’ and ‘lancer.’”

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“ball-headed spurs”
An interesting detail that may reveal something of the people of Broken’s earliest history and attitude toward animal life during their pagan era. Spurs had been in use at least since the Roman Empire, yet the Romans almost exclusively used a “prick” or “spike” spur, a simple, straight piece of iron tapered to a sharp point, and meant to inspire their mounts to obedience and speed, like most spurs, through pain. The ball-headed (or, in the parlance of modern dressage, the “Waterford”) spur, however, has persisted among various riding cultures as something of a counterargument to the belief that horses will respond only to discomfort, for the small, spherical piece of metal used causes little pain and no bloodletting, and has sometimes been called an instrument of cooperation rather than absolute command. One can find advocates even today of both types of spurs—a fact that indicates that the ball-headed model is at least as effective as the elaborate forms of pricking and cutting spurs that have been developed since the Romans, particularly in the American West, Latin America—and, of course, nowhere more so than in that homeland of animal extermination and abuse, Texas. —C.C.

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“… cavalry sword …”
By the time of the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the various styles or “models” of the classic
gladius,
the Roman short sword (which had been “borrowed” from Rome’s Spanish Celtic enemies), the shape and image of which are closely identified in the popular consciousness with the Roman legions to this day, had been largely replaced by a somewhat longer blade of lesser width (or, in some cases, simply greater tapering), the
spatha,
which fell somewhere between the
gladius
and the various, classically medieval blades, most notably those Viking models referred to in the Broken Manuscript as “raiding” swords; especially popular among horsemen, this is likely the version of the “Broken short-sword” that Arnem and his mounted troops carried. —C.C.