The Legend of Broken (81 page)

“In good time,” Caliphestros responds. “Finally, the journey to Okot will also give me a chance to show you how the fabled walls of Broken may at last be breached and the Merchant Lord defeated, should you deem it right—or, more to the point, necessary—to do so. For you see, after many years of study, I have at last discovered the meaning of, and the solution to, the Riddle of Water, Fire, and Stone.”

Arnem’s face betrays shock, once more, and this time it is a shock shared by the Broken commanders behind him. “Truly, old man? Then that riddle was not merely one more fancy of our founding king, Oxmontrot—whom men such as Lord Baster-kin insist on calling ‘mad’—in the years before his death?”

“The longer I live, Sentek,” Caliphestros replies, “the less I believe that any of Oxmontrot’s thoughts were ‘fancies’—or that he was mad, at all.” The old man sits back on Stasi’s shoulders. “Well, Sixt Arnem—will you agree to the Father’s proposition, and come to the place your superstitious citizens call the center of all that is malevolent?”

“Sentek—no, you cannot!” Niksar whispers urgently, and the other officers of the Talons murmur like warnings.

“Don’t listen to
that
man, Sentek,” Heldo-Bah quickly interjects. “He still owes me money!”

“I have told you, forager,” Niksar replies angrily, “the money is in my tent—”

“I shall of course stay within the Talons’ camp,” announces Ashkatar, taking a step forward of his own and attempting to quash this momentary, foolish squabble. “As a guarantee of Sentek Arnem’s safety. So shall the foragers who brought Lord Caliphestros to us, in the first place.”

Heldo-Bah’s eyes suddenly look as if they will burst.
“What?”
he fairly screams. “I will be damned if I will do any such thing!”

“You will be damned, whatever your actions!” Keera declares, quietly but passionately. “Which is why we thought it best not to consult you on the matter.” She turns and takes the few steps needed to put her angry face in his. “In the name of our people, in the name of my family that saved you, in the name of my children, who, for whatever innocent reasons of their own, love you as they would any true uncle, you
will
do this thing, Heldo-Bah!”

Realizing that he has already been utterly outmaneuvered, Heldo-Bah allows his face and shoulders to sag with displeasure. “Very well,” he at length replies.

“It will at the least allow you to collect your silver from Linnet Niksar,” Veloc says tauntingly.

“And so—bring forth a blindfold, Visimar,” the sentek says, glancing at Caliphestros. “But I will make one request: may we make our visit as brief as possible? For it has been brought to my attention that you are correct in assuming my wife is in grave danger, Lord Caliphestros, and my men and I must march at once to her relief—a march upon which I should be proud to have the Bane army accompany us.” Arnem turns his eyes to the Bane leader. “Father?”

“We may be brief,” says the Father in reply, impressed by Arnem’s courage and invitation, both. “So long as we are thorough, as well.”

Arnem agrees with a silent nod, and looks again at the remarkable man atop the equally remarkable panther. “I assume your former acolyte will be accompanying us, my lord?”

Caliphestros smiles, now: the true smile of a man who has begun to be restored. “You assume correctly, Sentek …,” he says, at which Visimar brings forward a strip of clean cotton that Niksar has reluctantly produced for him.

“Must I, too, bind my eyes, master?” Visimar asks Caliphestros.

“You need not,” the latter replies with a small laugh. “But you must stop calling me ‘master.’ If I have learned nothing else from the last ten years, and from this noble tribe that has survived in so harsh a wilderness, it is that such titles, while they may belong within the kingdom of Broken, have no place outside it.”

“Then bind my eyes alone,” Arnem repeats, as the Groba Father issues a last set of quiet instructions to Ashkatar and Keera, and they then begin to make their way to the line of the Broken soldiers. “And do not despair, Niksar—for you must command, now, and that will be worry enough.” The sentek smiles briefly. “That and—paying your losses …” Arnem studies the faces of his “captors,” then dismounts the Ox, steps forward, and bids his mount farewell as he prepares to submit to the binding of his eyes.

At this moment, Caliphestros allows Stasi to stray somewhat closer to Arnem. It is not the Ox’s being led back to the line of the Talons by Niksar that causes the legless old philosopher to so approach: for both Arnem and the Ox know that, if plunged into a fury, the panther could take down even so impressive and mature a Broken warhorse as Arnem’s, and likely would: the last time Stasi saw such an animal, after all, was on that terrible day that her family was lost to her, seemingly forever. Rather, the old scholar desires a moment of confidentiality with the man he long ago and correctly surmised would be the only possible choice to fill Yantek Korsar’s position as commander of both the Talons and the army of Broken: “Again I urge you to remember one thing, above all, on this journey, Sentek,” he says. “The actors in this drama may all be playing far different roles than you have been trained to believe. Keep your mind open to the full range of possibilities, for such is the only true path to knowledge. Of any kind.”

Arnem smiles: a genuine and conciliatory expression of hope that the two men may soon be reconciled. “Ever the pedant, even without your legs, eh, Caliphestros?” he says, in such a way that the panther’s rider cannot but laugh again at his own manner. “Well, fear not,” Arnem adds. “I am prepared to heed your advice, I assure you.”

With Arnem’s sight securely if temporarily taken from him, all parties to the truce begin the processions—one short, one longer—back to their respective safe territories, when Arnem suddenly stops and turns back toward his own men.

“Radelfer,” the blindfolded sentek calls. “Will you tell my children where I have gone, and that I have every expectation of returning tomorrow?”

“I shall, Sentek,” Radelfer responds. “And, I believe I can now tell them that they need not fear for your safety—that you travel with an honorable people.”

And it is in this mood of perhaps promising confusion that the meeting under the snapping sheet of white cotton concludes, and the development of events that will only be more decisive commences.

“Feel and smell the breeze,” Arnem says, being led away by Visimar behind Caliphestros and Stasi.

“I have done so for quite some time, now,” Caliphestros answers, turning toward the Broken commander as they reach the members of the Bane Groba.

“It heralds rain,” the Groba Father comments, as the procession back toward the Fallen Bridge begins. “Will that interfere with what you have planned, Lord Caliphestros?”

A deeply satisfied smile enters the scholar’s features. “Only if it arrives too early, Father. But that it
will
arrive?” The old man seems for a moment almost anxious for events to unfold. “On
that,
I am relying—on that, the solution of the Riddle of Water, Fire, and Stone in our favor absolutely depends …”

1.

During Sentek Arnem’s brief visit to Okot, when that good man and great soldier did indeed learn that the members of the Bane tribe were neither demons, degenerates, nor defective human beings bent on betraying the current truce in order to further prepare their own assault on Broken, the wise and cunning Caliphestros had not been idle. Working, for the time being, without the assistance of the three Bane foragers upon whom he had come to rely, but with the once-familiar aid of his partially crippled acolyte, Visimar, as well as among a people who had come to accept his presence and give him whatever help they could, he had located the two largest carts in the town, as well as any and all brass pots, jugs, amphorae, and other containers that were available or could be made so. The latter were stacked and cradled inside the beds of the former, and the whole lot drawn up to the agèd scholar’s cave laboratory: drawn, that is, by powerful Bane warriors, for the Bane had no oxen or cattle or horses of their own. Once there, each container was filled by Caliphestros and Visimar with one of several, usually foul-smelling substances: the true and mysterious fruits of the peculiar labors that Keera had, from time to time, observed Caliphestros undertaking during his time among her people, ingredients which together formed the mysterious answer to the Riddle of Water, Fire, and Stone, an answer whose components needed to be treated gently, Caliphestros emphasized, during the journey back to Arnem’s camp on Lord Baster-kin’s Plain.

Despite the two old scholars’ inscrutable activities (the true explanation of which, Caliphestros had told the Bane again and again, would best be supplied when the results of the experiment took form before the gates of Broken), Sentek Arnem’s visit and behavior had established such an air of surprise and open trust in Okot, and so quickly, that it was a foregone conclusion that the Groba—when they met with him on the morning after his arrival, before his return to his camp—would indeed order Yantek Ashkatar to take as many of his men as Arnem deemed fit and place them under the sentek’s command, to be a part of the force that would now march back up Broken’s mountain to determine what, precisely, was the truth of the situation inside the city. There had, of course, been some argument from the Priestess of the Moon, who objected to there being no role in the campaign assigned to her Woodland Knights; but, when Sentek Arnem had assured both her and the Groba Elders that feeling in Broken against the Outragers ran every bit as high as did the Bane’s toward Lord Baster-kin’s Guard, and that their presence would only complicate and perhaps defeat the purpose of the endeavor, the Groba Father had decreed absolutely that the Outragers would not participate, even if only in a rearguard action to ensure that no troops from Broken slipped past the Talons and Ashkatar’s attack, to launch another assault on Davon Wood.

When the Bane commander had asked his counterpart from Broken how many of his tribe’s warriors Arnem would require to support his two
khotors
of Talons, the sentek’s answer had perhaps been predictable: only so many as could be armed with weapons forged from Caliphestros’s amazing new metal (which the sentek had climbed the mountain behind Okot to observe being made, with the greatest interest and satisfaction). The number had been placed at only some two hundred and fifty of the best-trained men and women in the tribe; for without such weapons, Arnem assured the Groba Elders, no Bane warrior dared participate in the coming attack on the mighty, granite-walled city. With these final issues decided, the return to Arnem’s camp had gotten under way. It was a march made far more arduous by the need to delicately handle Caliphestros’s carts, and to transport the contents, container by container, across the Fallen Bridge: each container was tightly sealed, that the fumes emitted by the various contents might not overcome its carrier or carriers—yet even at that, there were one or two near mishaps high above the Cat’s Paw. Once reassembled in the carts on the Plain, however, and with horses rather than men to draw the conveyances, progress moved at a much faster pace; but nothing could stop soldiers of either the Bane or Broken armies from wondering what could possibly be in the containers that might create such an effect.

This air of mystery only deepens, now, as the Talons strike their camp: for, with the full combined force of Bane and Broken warriors beginning to move up the southern route of ascendancy toward the great city, a ring of mist begins to form about the middle and upper reaches of the mountain. Pure white, the mist is nonetheless remarkably dry; and there is a fast-spreading tendency among both the Bane and the Talons—who have come to regard each other as allies with remarkable speed, a sentiment urged on by each of their trusted and even beloved commanders—to view the mist as some sort of a blessing from their respective deities, since it will make their movements far more difficult to detect from the walls of the city. (They cannot know, as you do, readers who encounter this Manuscript many years from now, that what they believe their unique and divine gift was, in fact, the first appearance in the mountain’s history of that same misty halo by which Broken has since become known, and by which it shall likely continue to be marked until the end of time.
†
) Matched with the general enthusiasm for Caliphestros’s steel, which both Bane and Talons are experienced enough warriors to recognize is indeed an unqualified boon, the mist creates an air that further promotes the heartiest of feelings between former enemies.

The mist, meanwhile, is having an entirely different effect in Broken: as Arnem had hoped, it is indeed making it almost impossible for the men of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard who are manning the walls of the city to determine just what direction the allied
†
armies are approaching from. The realization of this confusion, relayed by Akillus’s stealthy scouts, causes an increasingly congenial atmosphere to overtake the expedition below: for the Talons and the Bane both know full well that they will require such compensatory advantages. Say what one will of Baster-kin’s Guard, they shall now be fighting, not in the dark, foreign terrain of Davon Wood, but from behind Broken’s seamless walls and mighty oak and iron gates: a position whose superiority is almost impossible to measure in numbers or comparative skills. Certainly, however, odds of less than two warriors to one—which the Guardsmen will be facing, if they not only fight soberly, but organize their positions and their system of response to assault so that it is quick and effective—should not, under ordinary circumstances, be sufficient to cause any defenders of the city alarm, any more than they should bode well for the attackers. Thus Arnem and Ashkatar are inclined to view every favorable development or disposition with even greater encouragement than they usually would, and are forced to turn indulgent ears and eyes to the several and often amusing situations that grow out of the Talons and the Bane warriors becoming acquainted with each others’ ways during the march.

The need for this indulgence is only reinforced when they consider the probability that the Guard’s exacting and often quite terrifying commander will himself be at his men’s backs: the Merchant Lord, no doubt driven on by the consuming desire for a new wife and family, which he has sacrificed so much to gain, as well as by the defection of his seneschal, will press his men toward a rugged defense, one that they may well be capable of achieving.

“What think you of this, my lord Caliphestros?” Arnem calls merrily as he gallops back to the baggage train from his usual position at the head of the column. “A nearly dry mist? What does this herald for your certain prediction of rain?”

Caliphestros is still tightly clinging to Stasi’s shoulders, as the panther walks next to the first of the two carts, in which rides Visimar as Keera drives, making up for what she lacks in physical strength by her ability to communicate with the two horses that pull the conveyance through her manipulations of their reins and harnesses. Stasi, for her part, makes it ever clear to the beasts that only strict obedience to their mistress will be tolerated, without actually frightening the horses so greatly that they bolt. Veloc and Heldo-Bah manage the reins of the second cart, and in the beds of both vehicles, pairs of the Talons’ rearguard men make certain that that the tie lines which secure the brass containers are neither too tight nor too loose, but offer just enough flexibility to both secure the apparently precious cargo and absorb whatever unseen jolts in the road the carts themselves cannot.

“I realize fully the military advantage of this strange phenomenon,” Caliphestros replies, eyes ever on the beds of the two carts. “And I am glad that it brings with it no moisture—yet. But when the time comes, Sentek, we shall require rain—a good, driving rain, and as I now have no clear view of the night sky, I am less sanguine than I was that we shall get it. Certainly, the wind from the west that was earlier so promising has died down—and that is not something that pleases me.”

“Well, if you would but tell me
why
you require such a rain,” Arnem replies, hoping that his roundabout attempt to pry will not sound so heavy-handed as its statement feels, “then I might dispatch several of Akillus’s men either farther up or down the mountain, to a position where they could more clearly attempt to divine the approaching weather.”

“And I might oblige your rather obvious ruse, Sentek,” Caliphestros replies, “if I thought it truly possible for your scouts to do so. But the dying down of the wind, together with the surrounding hills and mountains that both obscure and channel patterns in the weather, make it seem unlikely that their reading from anywhere on this trail would be accurate …” The old man nods once. “But I will offer you this, in reply: send Linnet Akillus—for I know he will never be able to pass up such an opportunity for adventure and the gaining of intelligence—as well as whatever men he requires on this errand, and if their news is good, I shall agree to explain what I can about what we carry in these carts.”

“Thus you trust Akillus fully,” Arnem says with a smile, “but myself only reservedly … 
Hak,
in your scheme of ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ I cannot tell which of us thereby makes the better man …”

The old scholar is unable to keep from returning the soldier’s smile. “So you have thought upon my words, eh, Sentek? And, I suspect, understood them.”

“Studied, yes, but understood?” Arnem shakes his head, then turns to notice that both Keera and Visimar are listening intently. “Who, I still do not know, is the one good man in Broken who does evil in the name of what he perceives as good?”

“Truly, you have not divined as much, Sentek?” Caliphestros answers, surprised. Urging the sentek as close to his side as the Ox will bear, given Stasi’s presence, the agèd scholar strains his body as far toward the commander as its compromised state will allow, speaking in a whisper:
“It is Lord Baster-kin, himself.”

Keera gasps suddenly, in a manner almost audible to the eternally inquisitive drivers of the cart behind them. Arnem, for his part, pulls away, stunned. “Lord—!”

Caliphestros hisses silence. “
Please, Sentek
—I tell you this in all confidence. It must remain shielded, especially from that noisy sack of verbal and physical obscenities who drives the cart behind us. So let us speak no more of it. You shall study upon it, now, as you studied upon my earlier statement, and come to comprehend my meaning, in your own time.”

Still stunned, somewhat, from what he has heard, Arnem can only reply weakly, “I fear that time will be too short, my lord. We are not so far from the Southern Gate of Broken as you may think, and the time it takes to reach it is all I can give to such contemplation.”

“But this is not at all so,” Caliphestros replies. “Did
you
yourself not say that we shall need to pause at the open, roughly flat meadow upon which your cavalrymen train, just south of the city, before we reach the walls? Your purpose was, as I recall, to allow your engineers to begin the construction of the various
ballistae
that I requested from the wood of the surrounding trees, as well as to determine how many horses have escaped Lord Baster-kin’s efforts to capture them and thus supply additional stores of meat for the city’s population during the coming siege?”

“I did,” he answers. “And it will take some time—for those mounts have been trained to avoid capture by such clumsy, untrained hands as those of the Guard, and will likely be scattered. In addition, I don’t know why you continue to insist on any
‘ballistae’
at all—for you know as well as I that both the granite of Broken’s walls and the dense oak of her gates are impervious to such weapons. In addition, the building of such devices will take the better part of a day and a night, even for such skilled craftsmen as Linnets Crupp and Bal-deric and their men.”

“Perhaps my explanation for wanting the machines, when you hear it, will alter your point of view,” Caliphestros replies, knowing that he dangles bait that the sentek cannot resist. “So it would seem you have time and reason enough, then.”

“And it would seem that I’ve been outmaneuvered by
you
again,” Arnem comments, without rancor. “I know, now, who taught Visimar that skill. Very well, then—
Akillus!
” The sentek, his mind back upon affairs at hand, spurs the Ox forward, and the others can still hear him shouting for his chief scout long after he has vanished back into the strange, surrounding cloud.

“Well,” Visimar comments, with a small laugh. “That was deftly managed—your skills at such negotiation have not suffered during your years among the denizens of the Wood, my lord.”