The Legend of Broken (68 page)

Only when his eyes settle on Radelfer, who stands outside a curtained stall that is one of a group approximately a third of the way up the Stadium benches, does Baster-kin stop studying the crowd. Then, when he takes more specific note of the expression upon his seneschal’s face—one of genuine regret for the very public family spectacle that he believes is about to take place—his lordship jumps down from the pillar’s base and, issuing a final order to one of the animal handlers, moves at a quick pace to join Radelfer before the more (if not completely) sympathetic seneschal has a chance to warn Adelwülf of his father’s approach.

When Baster-kin closes in on the stall, he begins to hear the sounds of fornication emerging from it; and when his lordship arrives, he rips the curtain away, to find his son fully engaged with one young noblewoman, the pair of them having bothered to shift their scant clothing only enough to allow him to enter her, while a second young woman laughs and holds a wineskin, alternately pouring its contents into Adelwülf’s mouth and pressing her ample breasts into that same hungry maw. At the sound of the curtain being torn, the two young women shriek, for they are able to see the man responsible; Adelwülf, however, only begins to turn, disengaging from the widespread girl beneath him as he shouts:

“
Ficksel!
Which of you idiots dares interrupt my amusement—?” He grows silent when he sees the figure behind him, and quickly tries to straighten his tunic as he exclaims, “Father! What are you doing here—”

“I assure you, Adelwülf,” his lordship replies, putting his fists to his hips, “I am not here for my pleasure or amusement. Our kingdom is in chaos, our bravest young men are daring death of every variety in the provinces and beyond, and you lie here throwing curses more suited to a Bane’s filthy mouth at your father while consorting with such as—
these
 …” Baster-kin quickly nods to the two young women. “Get out,” he says to them. “I do not want to know your names, nor those of your clans—for I should have to tell them how their virtuous daughters pass their evenings, and if they have an ounce of patriotism in them, they should exile you to Davon Wood, out of the shame if naught else.”

“Just a moment, Father—” Adelwülf says, trying to recover some ground.

But Baster-kin’s fury is not spent: “Do not use that term in addressing me, just now, you useless sack of meat—I am your ‘lord,’ until I give you permission to call me anything else!”

As he tightens a simple belt around his tunic, Adelwülf keeps his blue eyes fixed on his father, with an injured intensity that would burn some sense of uneasiness, perhaps even sympathy, into most onlookers. At the very least, most witnesses could not fail to appreciate the unfortunate nature of the moment; but the hurt and anger in the son’s young eyes do nothing to soften the severity of Baster-kin’s aspect, and Adelwülf soon murmurs, “Very well—
my lord,
” in resignation, as he gets to his feet. Standing on the bench above the man who has tormented him in like fashion for much of his life, Adelwülf rises higher than his father, and would seem to have the physical advantage; but the air of fear that shows through his rage nullifies any such superiority of position. “Now that you have spoilt yet another of my few enjoyments in life, what would you have me do?”

Baster-kin steps up onto Adelwülf’s bench, in order to look him more closely in the eye. “What would I—” the father echoes, with more genuine anger than the younger man can possibly manage. “You really have no idea, no sense of any duty, do you, whelp? Well, then—” With frightening suddenness, his lordship lays tight, painful hold of his son’s left ear, pulling him first out of the stall, and then, stumblingly, back down the rows of benches. “Let us have it your way, for a few moments! Let us engage in the enjoyments of this foul place—
clear the arena!
”

Adelwülf would like to argue, but the struggle to keep from crying out at the pain in his ear and the difficulty of staying on his feet in front of his friends below are together too great an effort, and he finds himself saying only, “Father!
My lord
—I beg you, can we not settle this matter at home?”

“Home?”
Baster-kin shouts. “You
are
home, whelp! Let us, then, enjoy the
true
entertainments that your hospitality has to offer!”

Because Adelwülf is no longer in fact a child, whatever his father’s indictments, Baster-kin’s maintaining a secure grip on his ear requires keeping a clamp-like, even violent hold on the entirety of the appendage, soon causing its skin and gristle to tear away from the skull at one spot; and, like all similarly minor cuts to the head, the wound begins to bleed profusely enough that by the time they have reached the lowest benches that surround the arena, a stream of the precious fluid covers portions of Adelwülf’s face, neck, and upper chest. Catching sight of this seemingly grievous injury, the young man loses all concern with maintaining a courageous demeanor in front of his friends:

“My lord!” Adelwülf pleads desperately, as Lord Baster-kin, again surrounded by Radelfer’s men, roughly forces his son out onto the sand of the arena, in full view and hearing of the others in the Stadium. “Please! I am bleeding, let me depart the Stadium, at the least, and spare me this humiliation before my comrades—”

“‘Comrades’?” Baster-kin replies. There seems something in Adelwülf’s appearance and pathetic manner that gives him a deep satisfaction. “You call these play-warriors ‘comrades’?” As he continues to drag his son across the now-empty arena and toward the concrete pillar on which he stood moments earlier, Baster-kin raises his voice and addresses the crowd that stands outside and above the sand-strewn oval. Few of the young men and women present have departed the Stadium, so compelling is the scene being played out before them; and this fact makes Radelfer, who has joined the ranks of the spectators along with his men, profoundly uneasy. “Do you
all
think of each other as ‘comrades’?” Lord Baster-kin calls to the Stadium’s crowd. “As soldiers in some peculiar conflict that neither risks nor takes any of your lives, yet is somehow of enough importance that you merit the same ranks of friendship and honor as do the young men who fill the ranks of Broken’s legions?”

For a long, very strange moment, the Stadium knows something it has rarely if ever experienced, in recent years: silence. Not a member of the crowd watching what takes place between the two Baster-kins, father and son, has the courage to venture an answer to the older man’s question, however much they may disagree with what he says. Even Radelfer is uneasy that he is about to witness a scene of violence such as his mind—never so strangely or even terribly ingenious as his master’s—is incapable of conceiving. But, although impressed by Rendulic’s ability to hold the attention of the drunken crowd about him, it is when Radelfer looks to his own household guardsmen that his uneasiness becomes simpler dread: for he sees that they, too, are struck dumb by Lord Baster-kin’s ability to keep the false warriors of the Stadium not only silent but in a state of terror; and these are men who, unlike the youths in the stands, have seen much of true violence, and have developed the ability to know when horror is approaching.

All the greater, then, is Radelfer’s admiration for Adelwülf when, seeing that his father has caused his friends, his “comrades,” to become thus silently fearful, the youth finally frees himself from his father’s grip, takes a few steps from the concrete pillar, and spits into the sand, declaring loudly:

“Yes—
Father
! And why should we
not
declare ourselves the equals of such men? What would you know of it? When have you ever faced the dangers of the arena, perils undertaken without the armor and heavy weaponry your precious legions take with them whenever they go into battle? You bully my friends and me with your position and power, but what do you know of mortal danger, as you sit in you tower and count our clan’s money, plotting new ways for
other
men to see to the safety of this city and this kingdom? I have endured this humiliation long enough—give me some proof that you yourself are the equal of those legionaries of whom you speak, and perhaps I will listen to more; but if you cannot, put an end to this endless dissatisfaction with those who risk their safety and honor upon these sands, as Kafra’s priests long ago taught them was a righteous way to prove their devotion to the tenets of the golden god!”

A few daring members of the crowd about the arena dare applaud this defiant and unprecedented outburst—until, that is, the Merchant Lord again turns his deathly stare upon each section of the benches and stalls. As for Radelfer, his satisfaction at Adelwülf’s daring is quickly extinguished by the strange look of satisfaction that enters his lordship’s face. There is no admiration in the gaze, no sense that Rendulic Baster-kin has finally provoked a manly response from the son who has so eternally disappointed him; rather, it is the aspect of a man whose final lingering doubts about a course of action he has been debating in his own mind have been silenced.

“Well,” Baster-kin says, in a much more even yet no less menacing voice. “Perhaps I have been mistaken, then. Perhaps all of you are more than capable of taking your place among the ranks of men who must, at this hour of need, defend our kingdom. And yet …” The Merchant Lord takes a few steps away from Adelwülf, then raises a hand to signal to the attendant with whom he had spoken earlier. “I shall require, I fear, some demonstration of courage and valor greater than words, before I can accept you”—he glances at his son, then up into the crowd—“before I can accept
any
of you, as actual warriors.”

A commotion becomes audible from one of the doorways that lead down to the maze of cages and storage rooms beneath the arena; and before long, the attendant and two of his fellows appear, each holding the end of a separate length of chain with one hand and a spear in the other. The three long sections of chain all meet at a common end: a heavy iron collar, one that surrounds and (from the look of the missing fur and the irritated skin beneath) has long surrounded the neck of a large Davon panther.

The animal is a female, one who has grown mature but far from defeated during many years of imprisonment within the Stadium. She attempts occasionally to lash out at one or another of the handlers, if he lets his section of chain go too slack, but has become wise enough to avoid the prodding spearheads that are thrust forward in response to these outbursts of anger. That she is unusually large is easy to determine; less so is the true color of her coat, given the filth that she has been forced to live in for so long. To one with an experienced eye, able to see through such discoloration, it would yet be possible to determine, from the parts of her body that she can and does clean with care, that the fur is unusually golden, perhaps even containing a silver or white tint that makes it catch the light of surrounding torches and braziers in an unusual way.

One identifying characteristic, however, is plain for all to see: the unusually light, even brilliant, green of the eyes, which seem to peer directly into the heart of whichever human she fastens her gaze upon.

“So,” Adelwülf says, as the animal becomes visible. “I might have known. The eldest of our panthers. It is the female that you brought from Davon Wood, years ago. Or so we are told.”

“Yes,” Baster-kin says, taking several steps toward the animal as it draws close to the concrete pillar. “And how have you treated a beast that had more heart than you possess now when she was but young? Locked her away in the cells beneath this ridiculous theater, and allowed her to be attended by such men as these—although, whatever their
seksent
shortcomings, they are likely superior to the useless children of wealth who surround me now …”

Adelwülf is only paying partial attention to his father’s latest tirade, for he has noticed a curious thing: the panther, always known among the Stadium’s athletes as one of the most dangerous and bloodthirsty of the beasts kept therein, seems to recognize the Merchant Lord, even these many years later, despite his infrequent trips to the place; more remarkable still, she shies away from him when he draws close. It is not the sight of any weapon that frightens her, for Baster-kin, while he keeps his right hand upon the pommel of his short-sword, does not draw it; no, whatever fear his lordship inspires is caused by his steady gaze and his voice, which seem to create in the panther’s mind the idea that the tragedy he inflicted upon her family in Davon Wood so long ago will somehow be replayed in this very different place these many years later.

“Chain the animal!” Baster-kin orders the attendants, who begin to fix their three lengths of iron links to one great loop of similar metal that is sunk deep into the concrete of the pillar. The men then dash off as quickly as they can, each pausing only long enough to catch one of the three pouches of silver coins that Baster-kin tosses to them. “And you, whelp,” Baster-kin says, turning on his son. “Select your favored weapon—for if I am any judge, you will need it, and soon …”

Adelwülf smiles at this comment, for he apparently believes he is to be tested by the Stadium’s usual standards, against a beast of great power whose chains will prevent her from doing him any real harm. Seeing this, several of Adelwülf’s “comrades” dare dash out onto the arena’s sands, each bearing a different weapon—the long spear of the southernmost tribes, the usual Broken short-sword, a single-headed axe of the northern variety—that he believes their friend must use to impress his father, not only with his own abilities, but with the prowess of all the athletes in the Stadium. Adelwülf, however, only smiles in appreciation to these young men, taking little note of their weapons; rather, he waits for one young woman in particular, a singular Broken beauty, who bears upon her upturned hands a gleaming blade of the later
Lumun-jani
style: longer than the short-sword by a hand or two, with a tapered blade. As Adelwülf accepts the weapon and exchanges words of affection with the woman, Lord Baster-kin walks with purpose to the edge of the arena, a look of the same unhealthy delight upon his face. He seeks out Radelfer, whose own face, his lordship is happy to see, still displays deep apprehension.