The Legend of Broken (5 page)

“Listen, Bane,” the captive says, feeling ever bolder, now that he realizes these three do not intend murder. “You know my comrades will return soon. You should release me now—”

Heldo-Bah considers the matter as he watches events on the Plain. “And
you
had best hope my friends avoid that steer’s horns,” he answers, in a blithe manner that renews much of the young man’s fear. “Because if it’s up to me, boy, you
will
die. But let’s return to this puzzling question of height for the moment. I’ll tell you what—help me solve it. And then, perhaps, I’ll let you go.”

“What is it you want to know?”

“It’s troubling,” Heldo-Bah answers, squinting at the soldier, his voice still a blend of threat and congeniality. “If it’s true, this business of all men having been of one size before your accursed city was built,
†
that would mean that the creation of the Bane wasn’t the act of any god, yours
or
ours—wouldn’t it? That would mean that the Tall somehow brought it about themselves—wouldn’t it?” Heldo-Bah again puts his face very close to the youth’s. “That would mean you have a lot to answer for—
wouldn’t it?
”

The forager is interrupted by a louder cry from the shag steer, followed by a very unsettling sound that Veloc makes as he runs with his buttocks just inches from the dying animal’s thrusting horns, while Keera dashes alongside the animal once more.

Heldo-Bah frowns. “Well … I suppose I shouldn’t have expected anything else. This is the price of being a martyr to one’s digestion, Tall …” He grips the gutting blade (which is almost as long as his forearm) tight enough to whiten his knuckles. “Stay at your post,” he mocks, as he bends down to cut a fresh piece of grassy sod and stuff it into the Guardsman’s mouth. “I’m just going to finish that steer.” Heldo-Bah drops the captive’s brass armlet on the ground. “Here,” he says. “Let your god keep you company. And pray, boy …”

Only when Heldo-Bah is out in the open plain does he realize that he and his friends have wasted too much time with their various amusements: other members of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard will arrive before long, to find out what has so upset the cattle. Heldo-Bah takes the ball of hatred that has been fixed all his life on Broken, and momentarily redirects it to the wounded animal: he locks eyes with the it, in a manner that transfixes the steer for an instant—long enough to allow Heldo-Bah to leap onto the beast’s thick neck and gain an unshakable purchase with his strong legs. Then, in one expert motion, he reaches around with his gutting blade and slits the animal’s throat, sending a spray of hot blood across the winded Veloc’s legs. In seconds the steer has collapsed, and Heldo-Bah leaps back to the ground, rubbing dirt into the blood on his tunic.

“Trust you to bungle it, Veloc,” he says, as Keera prostrates herself before the head of the dead steer.

“An excellent maneuver, Heldo-Bah,” Veloc answers angrily. “A pity you couldn’t have managed it earlier!”

“Be still!” Keera orders; and then she turns to the steer again, murmuring several phrases indistinctly, yet earnestly.

“She fears its wrath,” Veloc whispers. “It did not die quickly.”

“No—and we’ve tarried too long here, as a result,” Heldo-Bah replies—although not loud enough for Keera to hear.

Within seconds, Keera is on her feet, having begged the steer, as Veloc said, for mercy. “Hurry, both of you,” she says, as she cuts away one of the steer’s haunches. “Heldo-Bah, if you want your precious back straps, you can cut them out yourself.”

Heldo-Bah quickly gets the carcass of the steer open and its guts out onto the Plain in a steaming mass. Working deeper, he neatly harvests the long pieces of muscle that run astride the spine, delicacies he has dreamed of for many days; and he does all of this in less time than it takes the other two foragers to remove the second haunch. The three make ready to run back to the river and their waiting bags—but they go only a few steps before Keera stands alarmingly still, ordering the other two to wait. Heldo-Bah and Veloc see fear suddenly widen her eyes.

“The panther?” Heldo-Bah whispers.

Keera shakes her head once quickly. “No—wolves.
Many
 …”

Veloc looks back at the remains of the steer. “Come for the carcass?”

Keera shakes her head, disturbed. “They may have smelled the blood, but—they’re in
that
direction. The place where we—”

The noises that erupt from the spot where the three Bane left the bound Broken Guardsman make further explanation unnecessary: none of the foragers needs to see what is happening to know that the pack of wolves has decided to move in swiftly on the easiest meal. The agonized screams of the helpless soldier indicate the pack is working fast: in half a minute the screaming is stifled, and the howls are replaced by the growls of feeding.

Keera knows that any wolves that do not get an immediate place at the Guardsman’s body will come looking for other meat, and the smell of the steer’s blood will so embolden them that they will take long chances against humans. “We must move in a wide circle and back over the river,” she says. “Quickly—the other soldiers must have heard that.” She starts to move, and Veloc keeps pace behind her; but Heldo-Bah hesitates.

“You two go ahead,” he declares. “I want that brass armlet.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Veloc snaps. “You heard what Keera said.”

“Take the back straps,” Heldo-Bah answers, tossing the bloody pieces of beef to Veloc. “I’ll meet you at the bridge!” Before waiting for further argument, Heldo-Bah vanishes quickly.

Intending to give the wolves a chance to move on to the steer carcass, Heldo-Bah works a wide circle through the field to the spot where he left the Guardsman. As he runs, the forager’s thoughts turn to the young man, but with little remorse: to a greater extent he is curious—about how much of the body the wolves will consume before going to the steer, and how it must have felt for a youth who had known comfort for most of his short life to have faced, on his first night of patrol, all the horrors of the wilderness, without weapons, comrades, or even freedom. This last thought brings a smile to Heldo-Bah’s face, as he reaches a spot from which he can hear those few wolves who have not already been drawn to the richer meat of the steer snarling over the soldier’s remains. When these sounds cease, Heldo-Bah creeps closer once more. But even he cannot maintain his smile when he finds the remains:

The wolves have torn away the young man’s limbs, along with the gut-line that bound them, and slick white bone sockets shine out from the bloody groin and shoulders. The armor has frustrated attempts to get inside the body, but the head lies to one side, almost fully severed, the wide eyes slowly ceasing to reflect the moon. Heldo-Bah studies the remains, then retrieves the shining armlet from the ground and sets out for the river. He pauses after just a few steps, however, and turns to stare once more into the dead, horrified eyes of his young captive.

“Well, boy,” Heldo-Bah murmurs. “It’s a Bane’s education you’ve had tonight.” His cracked lips curl a final time, displaying something more complex than cruelty. “A shame you’ll never have a chance to use it …”

Turning back to snatch the soldier’s short-sword from about his ravaged right shoulder, Heldo-Bah is soon running fast enough to catch his companions before they reach the Fallen Bridge.

Arnem’s long march into the heart of Broken, and the

mystery he encounters along the way …

“So it
was
wolves,” Linnet Niksar pronounces, having heard the terrible sounds that have reverberated up from the Plain below Broken; and though his words are conclusive, his tone lacks the certainty to match.

“Yes, Linnet,” agrees young Pallin Ban-Chindo, who tries to hide his relief at this Earthly explanation for the agonized cries. “Shall I stand the watch down, Sentek?”

Like his aide, however, Sixt Arnem does not share the young pallin’s certainty. “I wouldn’t, Ban-chindo,” he murmurs, eyes narrowing and deepening the scar-like creases at their corners: the product of a lifetime spent studying what ordinary eyes are slow to detect. “No, I would not …”

“Sentek?” Ban-chindo asks in surprise.

Arnem slowly lifts a finger to trace the black horizon of the forest. “Why the lengthy pause? Between the initial scream and the final attack?”

“That’s not hard to explain,” Ban-chindo answers, again letting his mouth move faster than respect dictates. “Sir!” he adds quickly.

“I’m delighted you think so,” Arnem chuckles, once more resting his forearms on the parapet. “Please share this easy explanation that eludes both Linnet Niksar and myself.”

Ban-chindo’s face twists with discomfort, as he realizes that his next statement had better be considered, deferential—and above all, accurate. “Well, Sentek—the first cry was one of alarm. A reaction, upon spying the pack, and a warning to the other members of his patrol.”

Arnem nods slowly, settling the pallin’s spirits considerably. “That may have been the intent behind it—yet what would such tell us about the man who cried out?”

Ban-chindo’s mouth falls open. “Sentek?”

“Come now, Ban-chindo, think,” Arnem says, firmly but without anger. “You, too, Niksar. What have we said about the tricks that sound can play on a man near the Cat’s Paw?”

Linnet Niksar’s features fill with comprehension. “If he is part of Baster-kin’s Guard, he would know the others are unlikely to hear him.”

“True. Unless …” This has always been Arnem’s way: to draw ideas from his men, rather than to bellow indictments of their blindness.

Ban-chindo snaps upright once again: he has used the moment well. “Unless—he was a new recruit. He may have been unaware of local conditions, and patrolled too far from the rest of the watch.”

Arnem smiles and nods. “Yes, Ban-chindo,” he says, offering the young man a look that any soldier of Broken would endure great hardship to receive. “Yours is the best explanation.” As quickly as it brightened, however, Arnem’s face grows dark. “But it is not particularly reassuring …”

Ban-chindo is too confused to speak, leaving Niksar to ask: “Why not, Sentek? It’s no joy to lose a man, but better to wolves than—”

“My dear Niksar,” Arnem interrupts a bit impatiently. “You don’t find it strange that wolves should know to pick an ignorant new recruit, at an ideal distance from the river, when there are so many easier targets? The cattle, for example—what pack of wolves risks a struggle against men, when grazing livestock are to be had? No …” Arnem gazes out at the faraway edge of Lord Baster-kin’s Plain a final time, as if he will tease more clues from it with his eyes alone. “There is more to this business than we yet know. Something, and even more likely someone, was certainly lying in wait for just such a target as our unfortunate new recruit …”
†

A few quiet moments pass, as Niksar and Pallin Ban-chindo watch their chief cast his gaze over the distant line of the Wood. Eventually, Niksar must step forward. “Sentek? The council in the Sacristy—”

“Hak!”
‡
Arnem noises, rousing himself. “Curse me for a buggered Bane …” It is another of the popular oaths, the use of which mark the sentek as an outsider among the ruling classes of Broken, but which have helped forge his close bond to his men. “Yes, Niksar, we must be away. Ban-chindo—eyes and ears open, eh? If anything of further interest happens, you’ll bring the news to me yourself—understood?”

“I—am to report to the High Temple?” the young man replies, once more the very image of Broken pride. “Yes, Sentek!”

“Good. Come, Niksar, before Korsar’s impatience turns to rage.”

And the two officers of the Talons finally vanish into the chisel-scored walls of the guard tower, and down its worn stone steps.

The carving of Broken’s outer walls took more than twenty years to complete, even under Oxmontrot’s ferocious direction. It meant death for thousands of laborers, and misery for many more. But the impenetrable barrier that finally surrounded the Mad King’s fortress-city was, on its completion, a source of awe even for those who had suffered cruelly during its construction. And there were many ways to suffer: for in the early years of Oxmontrot’s reign, the first of the banishments took place, as a pragmatic means of ensuring that those citizens of the infant kingdom who were too feeble—in body
or
mind—to contribute to the great undertaking would not occupy its members’ energies with pointless care-giving, consume any of the initially thin streams of foodstuffs that came up the mountain, or waste space in the crude shelters that were built for the healthy.
†
Cruel reasoning; yet effective.

Arnem and Niksar make their way swiftly to the foot of the guard tower steps, and, once outside, proceed along a pathway that runs at the base of the city’s outer walls, and is kept clear at all times for the passage of troops. Taking a left turn, Arnem decides to cut the distance to Yantek Korsar’s quarters by taking Broken’s main avenue, the Celestial Way,
‡
which separates the market stalls of the Second District from the more formal shops and sturdy residences of the Third. Weary of his family worries, the sentek turns his mind to his duties, and to the possibilities that may be unfolding:
Must it be the Bane?
he wonders, in silent frustration.
Will no more worthy enemy present themselves?
He thinks of his months fighting Torganian raiders amid the frozen passes of the Tombs, and of the ferocity of those southern tribes: surely, he has not survived many years of faithful service only to discover that the soldiers of Broken are to be given the humiliating task of chasing a race of wretched exiles through an impenetrable wilderness. And why chase them? Simply because of the occasional crimes of the Bane Outragers? Whatever god does rule the affairs of men, Arnem decides, he or she would not permit so noble an instrument as the Talons to be bent to so petty a purpose. Perhaps it will be an eastern campaign: an attempt to finally confront the horsed marauders who press Broken’s borders with a regularity that nearly matches that of the rising Sun, out of whose blinding brightness they prefer to attack; or perhaps the fearsomely organized soldiers of
Lumun-jan
have returned once more—

Neither these ambitious ruminations nor his underlying anxieties about the possible connection between the dilemma facing his family and this unexpected council can dull the physical instincts first sharpened during Arnem’s childhood: as he and Niksar pass the mouth of an offal-strewn alleyway that feeds the Celestial Way from the west, the sentek ducks to keep his head from being struck by a hurtling object. A clay wine jug smashes into the mortared base of a house just a few feet from him, with force enough to kill. As he looks up he sees Niksar searching the area, his short-sword drawn; and then they glimpse a thickly made, unkempt man standing in the alleyway. The man grins and lets out an idiot’s laugh.

“Off to lick royal arse, are you, Tall?” the drunkard cries. “May you choke on it!” The man vanishes back through the alleyway in the direction of the Fifth District, Niksar moving to pursue him; but Arnem grasps the younger man’s arm.

“We’ve far more important business, Reyne,” the sentek says; yet he pauses long enough to consider the drunkard’s words. “Tall?” he says in wonderment, as Niksar sheathes his sword. “That man was too big to be a Bane—I thought only they used that term for our people.”

Arnem is answered by yet another voice, this one disembodied, disturbingly serene and floating out of the shadowy rear doorway of the nearby house:

“The Bane aren’t the only people who resent your kind, Sentek …”

Arnem and Niksar watch in some confusion as the shadows produce an ancient, bearded man. His hair is no more than a mist surrounding his head, while his robe, once an elegant design in black and silver, is now a faded testament to years of hard luck. The man steadies himself on a staff as he limps painfully forward. “Have you visited the Fifth District of late?” the old man asks.

For the second time tonight, Arnem must prevent apprehension from manifesting in his demeanor. “Indeed,” he says, approaching the man calmly. “It’s where I was born, as were my family. We live there still.”

“
You?
Then you are …?” The old man stares at Arnem with recognition that makes the sentek ever more uneasy. “You
are
Sixt Arnem …” Milky eyes stare first at the stars and the ascendant Moon, and then at the beacons outside the High Temple, until at last the old man murmurs, “But am I ready …?”

“‘Ready’?” Arnem echoes. “Ready for what?”

“For what is likely beginning,” the man says calmly. “You go to the Sacristy, Sentek—I suspect …”

Unlike Arnem, Niksar is unable to master his wariness of the agèd specter, and approaches his commander. “Come, Sentek. He is mad—”

Arnem holds a hand up to silence his aid, then says, “So, we’re bound for the Sacristy?”

The old man smiles. “And if so, you will hear lies there, Sentek—though not all who speak them will be liars.”

Arnem frowns, growing less patient and more relaxed. “Ah. Riddles. For a moment, I thought we might actually avoid them.”

“Mad or taunting, his words are treasonous,” Niksar says; then he scolds, “Be careful what you say, old fool, or we must arrest you.”

“The Bane are the cause of your summons.” The old man raises his staff from the ground. “This, I believe, can be stated with certainty.”

“There’s no prescience in that,” Arnem says, affecting carefree laughter. “You’ve likely heard the screaming on the Plain.” The sentek resumes his march. “Why Kafra should have chosen to number those wretched little beings among his creations, I’ll never—”

Arnem and Niksar have not gone a dozen paces before the old man declares, “It was not any god who created the Bane, Sixt Arnem—we of Broken bear that responsibility!”

The two officers quickly retrace several of their steps. “Stop it,” Arnem tells the old man urgently. “
Now.
Whatever your madness, we are soldiers of the Talons, and there are things that we cannot hear—”

Arnem suddenly ceases to speak, as his eyes go wider. The old man’s face is still nothing but a strange mask of misfortune—but his robe … Something about the faded silver and black, and the fine cut—something about the robe looks disturbingly yet inexplicably familiar.

“You do not remember me—do you, Sentek?” the old man asks.

“Should I?” Arnem asks.

His mouth curling, the old man replies, “No longer. And not yet …”

Arnem tries to smile. “More riddles? Well, if that’s all you offer—”

“I have given you what I have to offer, Sentek,” the old man says, raising his staff a few inches higher. “If you go to the Sacristy tonight, you shall hear lies; but not all who speak them will be liars. And it will be your task to determine who disgraces that allegedly exalted chamber.”

Rage flushing his cheeks, Niksar can no longer contain himself: “We should kill you here,” he declares, a hand to his sword. “You speak one heresy after another!”

The old man only smiles again, looking at Niksar. “That has been said,” he replies, raising the hem of his robe with his free arm.
“Before …”

In the dimness of the avenue, with Moonlight playing off water that flows quietly in the gutter, Arnem and Niksar can see that the old man’s left leg is far darker than his right; but it is only when the agèd arm taps the staff against that left limb, producing a hollow knock, that the two men guess the truth. The old man smiles at their horror, and continues to tap the wood strapped to the stump of his thigh.

“The
Denep-stahla
!”
†
Niksar whispers.

“The young linnet knows his rituals,” the old man answers, dropping the hem of his robe. He continues to tap his staff against the makeshift lower leg, producing a sound that is more muted, but no less dreadful, than that which preceded it.

Arnem’s gaze does not leave that leg: for the sight has brought with it understanding of his earlier uneasiness, as well as memories of his own days as a linnet, when he was part of more than a few escort parties that accompanied the priests of Broken to the Cat’s Paw river, where they performed, where they still perform, their sacred, bloody rites of punishment and exile. Although a post of honor, it was not a commission to which Arnem was suited, and he did not hold it long—long enough, however, to plant the seeds of his doubts about the faith of Kafra.

At length, he looks the old man in the eye again. “Have we met before?”

“You will remember my name at the appropriate time, Sentek,” the cripple answers.

“And how did you escape the Wood?”