The Legend of Broken (18 page)

Keera clasps her hands before her face. “But I—” She searches the morning sky for the Moon, the deity who, it seems to her, hides in shame behind the western trees.
“But I was ever faithful!”
she cries, and correctly: she has always been among the most devout of Bane women, outside of the Lunar Sisterhood, and yet now she watches the flames consuming the home that she made in accordance with the tenets of her faith, and in which she taught her children to be similarly devout …

Veloc looks to Heldo-Bah, as he puts his arms around his sister. “I will bring her presently,” he says to his friend. “Go, and learn what you can.”

Heldo-Bah nods, dropping his own foraging sack, along with Keera’s, and heads off down the palisade; although his own trepidation makes him approach the scene of evident destruction at half-speed. Even this is fast enough, however, to cause the first soldiers to become visible just as he comes within sight of the burning huts themselves.

At the approach of two pallins (and why, in the Moon’s name, Heldo-Bah asks silently, did they feel it necessary to adopt the ranks and organization of the accursèd army of Broken?), Heldo-Bah hears a crack, and sees that groups of soldiers are felling unburned trees to create a cordon of emptiness around the conflagration and prevent its spread: for, despite the moistness of a spring morning in the green wilderness, fire as hot as this is strong enough to spread through any woodland.

“Stay back, forager!” one of the pallins coming along the palisade calls out with authority, trying, like all the Bane army, to keep some semblance of order and prevent such torturous bewilderment as Keera is now experiencing from becoming fully fledged panic throughout Okot. Nevertheless, the unpleasant familiarity of being spoken down to causes Heldo-Bah to reach, imperceptibly, for his knives. He can see that the soldiers are covered in sweat and ash, and that their bodies are burnt, in several spots fairly badly.

“We act on the orders of the Groba!” a second pallin shouts.

Ready to let his knives fly at any moment, Heldo-Bah asks the soldiers: “And what makes you think I’m a forager, you scaly little snakes?” (It is a popular taunt: Bane soldiers are mocked, even by children, for the resemblance of their armor to the scales of a snake.)

“Don’t test us,” the second soldier says. “The only members of the tribe still returning to Okot are foragers—you’re the last of them, I expect. And while you’ve been running home, we’ve been tending to the welfare of the tribe.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Heldo-Bah replies, smiling. “Burning down homes, a most imaginative method.” He nods toward the huts. “What’s become of those who lived here?”

“Why do you ask?” answers the second soldier, who, though young, is meaty enough to think that he might give this forager a good thrashing—even though he has apparently seen the filed teeth in the newcomer’s mouth. “I know who you are, Heldo-Bah, and you’ve certainly never lived here.”

Heldo-Bah nods, and even laughs once. “Which only shows what an infant warrior you are, for all your scaly skin. Answer my question.”

“Most are dead,” says the first soldier evenly. “Those who have survived are in the
Lenthess-steyn,
being cared for by the healers.”

“Have you kept some kind of record of who has died?” Heldo-Bah asks. “Or would that be too inglorious an activity for young heroes?”

A third voice joins the fray, coming from the direction of the men felling trees; a booming, commanding voice, full of a self-assurance that, unlike the younger men’s, bespeaks hard years of experience:

“There was no time for lists, Heldo-Bah,” the voice says. “The plague kills too quickly—and it spreads even faster …”

Approaching the forager is a formidable Bane. He is clearly older than Heldo-Bah, his muscles are yet ponderous and tough: not chiseled like an athlete’s, but built thick by the vigorous demands of battle. His black beard is inseparable from his bushy, unkempt hair, yet, unlike the younger soldiers, he wears a fine suit of genuine chain mail, and a knee-length tunic bearing the device of a panther charging through the horns of a crescent Moon. In his right hand, he holds a thick leather whip; and at the sight of both man and whip, Heldo-Bah smiles, but not wickedly; then a hint of genuine affection makes its way into his voice:

“Ashkatar,” he says, nodding. “I’d have thought to find you at the Den of Stone,” he continues, mentioning the cave at the center of Okot that is the meeting place of the Groba.

“
Yantek
Ashkatar,” the impressive Bane replies, reflecting the same trace of comradeship with his own slight smile, and a pleasant narrowing of his dark eyes. “I see your manners are no better than ever, Heldo-Bah.”

“And I see you’re still playing at soldiers with the children,” Heldo-Bah says, angering the larger of the two pallins; but the man called Ashkatar holds a hand up, and indicates the burning huts.

“All right, men,” he says. “Back to your posts. I’ll attend to this fellow.”

The two soldiers reluctantly move along the line of the palisade toward the flames. Yantek Ashkatar looks into the distance over Heldo-Bah’s shoulder. “You three are the last home,” he says. “You could not have been close. I assume that Keera and Veloc are with you?”

“Yes. And we want word of Keera’s family.”

“I wish I had it for you,” Ashkatar sighs. “There simply wasn’t time. We’ve already burned the dead—are burning them still, in pyres downriver. But as to just who’s been burned—I honestly don’t know …”

There are not many in the Bane community for whom Heldo-Bah has any use, fewer still among those that command the tribe; but one of those is Ashkatar, and the respect is rooted, characteristically, in a shared experience of conflict against the Tall. The incident took place when they fought side by side among many other Bane warriors to prevent Broken soldiers from crossing the Cat’s Paw and advancing into Davon Wood, an attempt that was the result of the particularly bloody murder of a group of Tall children by several Outragers. Those killings had been a reprisal for the beating of a Bane trading party inside the city of Broken by a group of drunken merchants; a beating that Heldo-Bah and Veloc had witnessed, just as they had witnessed, from a helpless distance, the singularly disproportionate Outrager attack on the children. The two foragers had raced back to Okot, choosing a shorter route than the Outragers knew of and arriving to tell the Groba the truth of the situation before the Outragers had an opportunity to lie about it. Although Veloc played his part in the subsequent effort by the young Bane army to hold the Tall soldiers at the Cat’s Paw, it was Heldo-Bah who approached Ashkatar with a solution: after a bloody night, during which Ashkatar’s men learned more than one way to kill Tall soldiers without being seen, the officers commanding the Broken force were greeted at dawn by the sight of the three guilty Outragers’ heads, placed on spears and smuggled into the Tall camp.

Notes were left with the heads, saying that these were in fact the men responsible for the children’s deaths, and that the Bane would consider the matter closed if the Tall did likewise; and so a battle that might have gone on for months was cut short by the tenacity of the Bane commander and the imagination of the tribe’s most despised forager. In the years since, Ashkatar and Heldo-Bah have often crossed paths; and it is Ashkatar who frequently defends the forager against attempts by the High Priestess and her knights to run Heldo-Bah out of the tribe altogether; and that is why, when the two meet, it is as if they were only slightly estranged brothers.…

Ashkatar cracks his six-foot whip, producing a sound as lethal as the snapping of the falling trees nearby. “Damn the Tall … If they want us dead, why don’t they face us? Instead, they spread this vile pestilence …”

“You think the Tall responsible?” asks Heldo-Bah.

Ashkatar lifts his mailed shoulders. “There are some peculiar reports, from other foraging parties—you’ll have to compare whatever you’ve seen against them.” The Bane yantek looks beyond Heldo-Bah once again, this time nodding a greeting. “Ah. Veloc—Keera. Good. The Groba is anxious to see all three of you.”

Keera has begun to collect her wits, in the manner of those who have been expecting, for longer than their spirits can bear, to hear dreaded news: unsteadily, but using the ordinary duties of daily life as an anchor. She carries her own sack, while Veloc has the other two hoisted onto his shoulders. As Heldo-Bah takes his, Keera speaks:

“Yantek,” she asks quietly. “Have you heard of my family?”

“We haven’t been able to keep careful records, Keera,” Ashkatar answers, true gentleness in his voice. “Or records of
any
kind.” He approaches to take her sack onto one of his own shoulders, and then, tucking his whip into his belt, puts his free arm around her; clearly, Keera finds the press of his weighty limb comforting. “Some survived—but the disease simply kills too quickly to allow us to take note of just who. And it continues spreading, even after the host is dead. We had no choice but to burn the bodies. Those who were exposed but are not yet ill, have been taken to one chamber of the
Lenthess-steyn
—many of the healers lived, thank the Moon, and are attempting to determine why some, like themselves, are unaffected, but others die. The ill are in the uppermost chamber, receiving what care can be given—which is very little. And in the deepest chambers, more healers have been picking at the dead for two days, to know where the plague strikes in the body—the mechanism of how it kills.” The yantek stares into Keera’s face intently. “More have died than have lived, Keera.”

At this, Keera gasps. “May I—go and look for them?”

Ashkatar considers the matter. “Will you not let the healers try to find them? You are our finest tracker, Keera. If I’m any judge, we will need you, in the hours to come. The Groba has asked for you, as I say, specifically.”

Keera has been shaking her head from almost the instant Ashkatar began to speak. “I cannot—I cannot meet with the Groba and speak of this as a ‘problem.’ I must find them, I must know, ere I go mad with the fear of it …” She thinks to bury her face in her hands; but she will not break yet; certainly not in front of the commander of the Bane army.

“Then you enter the
Lenthess
at your own peril,” Ashkatar replies, nodding. “Should you display signs of illness, you will be kept there. It’s all we can do. Come—Veloc, Heldo-Bah, you as well. We go to the square.” The four walk past the soldiers who are hard at work with axes. “Linnet!” Ashkatar bellows.

An unusually tall Bane (unusually tall, that is, for a Bane who is not also an Outrager) turns: he has stripped to his waist, and his powerful muscles glisten in the heat of the blaze. “Yantek?”

“Assume command, here. I must take these foragers to the Groba. You have your orders.”

“Yes, Yantek—although the fire grows hellish hot, and spreads too fast. If we cannot contain it—”

“I’ve told you already, Linnet—if you cannot contain it, then
direct
it. Toward the northern huts. They have been sealed, and want only pitch and oil to draw the flame. See to it.”

“Aye, Yantek. The Moon’s blessing go with you,” the younger man says. He glimpses Keera’s horrified face. “The Moon’s blessing, lady …”

Keera nods in confusion, leaving Ashkatar to say, “And with you—may it go with all of us, now …”

Ashkatar leads the way through the forest tangle, emerging on the main path into the village far enough downhill that the group does not run the risk of being struck by those burning tree limbs that, when they become fiery embers, break off and hurtle toward the Earth in dangerously large pieces, which burst apart on the forest floor. The flames rising from the twenty-odd huts have now joined, some forty feet above, to form one massive column of flame which seems to be pulled upward—as if some deity is sucking the life from Okot, and especially the northeastern settlement; some capricious, cruel god, Keera cannot help but continue to think, until a more pragmatic fact occurs to her:

“There can be no doubting it, now,” she murmurs to Ashkatar, who keeps one heavy arm around her shoulders, even as her brother holds her left hand tight in his. “With so many soundings of the Horn, and now this fire—the Tall will finally see in what part of the Wood Okot is.”

“They’re probably assembling their blasted troops even as we speak,” Heldo-Bah says.

“But let the rest of us concern ourselves with all that, Keera,” Veloc says, scowling at Heldo-Bah for his thoughtlessness. “Worry only for Tayo and the children.”

“And we
did
consider that likelihood, Keera,” Ashkatar adds. “But there was no other course to take—fire stops the spread of the illness, this is virtually the only thing we
do
know.”

The group are on the main pathway into Okot now, which is a well-worn cart trail, with clumps of forest grass growing between its two deep ruts. They soon reach the central “square” of Okot (really a circle that the cart path makes around the village well, the only thing in the area that actually
is
square), to find it flooded with Bane of every description. Men, women, children, household and farm animals, all mill about in near-panic, the humans fixing their attention on the northern and southern sides of the square. Towering over the northern gathering ground is the cliff face into which the
Lenthess-steyn
caves are set; while the southern ground leads up to a smaller rock formation, one with a gaping hole between two mammoth boulders: the Den of Stone, where the Groba is now meeting. On the northern side, a group of counterweighted wooden cages on powerful ropes slowly and constantly rise to and descend from the various
Lenthess
openings, in which the bright light of torches can be seen, and out of which drifts their smoke. Against the walls of the
Lenthess
caves are cast the eerie shadows of Bane healers: men with long, thin beards and ankle-length robes, women in less impressive but more practical shirts and pantaloons, their hair tied above their heads and covered with white kerchiefs. Long lines of anxious Bane wait to take their turn in the cages, trying to find what Keera seeks: news of whether their families are well or stricken, or if, indeed, they are there at all, or have already been burned in the mass pyres near the Cat’s Paw.