The Legend of Broken (83 page)

Once again—silently, this time—Visimar studies Heldo-Bah for just an instant, impressed by the forager’s words, and then looks to Veloc, who but shrugs his shoulders.

“And so, Heldo-Bah,” Visimar asks, “what ‘great heart’ kept your soul alive, when you were cast out of Broken? For my lord Caliphestros and I have been told that story, as well.” Heldo-Bah shoots an icy look at Veloc, who simply shakes his head emphatically. “No, it was not your friends,” Visimar says quickly. “It was their parents, Selke and Egenrich, when my master and I returned to your village to prepare these carts. They are truly kind people, Heldo-Bah, and yet you returned to your old habits, even while living with them.”

“That,”
Heldo-Bah says, “is because a different type of fire burns within
my
soul, Visimar.”

“Ah,” the cripple replies knowingly. “Vengeance.”

Heldo-Bah nods. “A very different spirit that can fill the heart. I do not pretend the effect is as great,” he says quietly. “But it is far more deadly …”

Again, Visimar turns to Veloc; but this time, the handsome historian simply smiles, dismissing Heldo-Bah’s last statement as bravado.

It is an awkward silence that follows; but then, of a sudden, the horses blow out their frustration and weariness in great snorts, and the carts suddenly heave and then level out; and just that quickly—and precariously—the two teams leave the tree- and brush-lined path and find themselves on the cavalry training ground, which is far larger than Visimar had anticipated, and where many of Sentek Arnem’s cavalrymen, as well as the few scouts who are not off determining what weather approaches, are racing about the broad field, chasing down the army’s remaining horses, who have been left largely unattended.

“Baster-kin did take a few into the city, Lord Caliphestros,” Sentek Arnem says, as he again rides toward the carts, which, between the mist and the near dark, are not easy to find, halted as they are in the shadows of several large fir trees. “But this appears to have been simply to satisfy the sentiments of the most powerful of his fellow merchants and their families, to whom the horses must belong, for he has also taken several of the wealthier children’s ponies—”
†

At that moment, Arnem is interrupted by the sound of quicker, lighter hooves approaching out of the half-darkness and the mist, and everyone on or about the carts turns to witness the appearance of Yantek Ashkatar, riding a small, tan-colored mount with a nearly white mane and tail. The animal’s unusual size causes Stasi—who suspects it is merely a young Broken warhorse—to widen her eyes and twitch her tail with thoughts of hunting; yet, as Caliphestros calms her, even the panther realizes that this is no foal, but a creature fully grown: a puzzling discovery, for her and at least some of the Bane alike.

“Look at this little devil, Keera!” Ashkatar calls out. “Have you ever seen the like? He bears my weight as easily as one of his larger cousins would, yet I can ride him with complete control.”

“Yes, I have seen the like, Yantek,” replies Keera, who nonetheless smiles and laughs at her commander’s joy.

“Anyone who has ever been to Broken has seen the like, Ashkatar,” Heldo-Bah calls dismissively, as he gets to the ground. “The Tall breed them for their children, and a few rougher varieties to pull carts and wagons up the mountain—for they are indeed as strong as they are strange.”

“Well,
I
have never
been
to Broken, as well you know,” Ashkatar replies. “And so I am both surprised and pleased to find them. There must be fifty or so, on this field, along with even more horses. Baster-kin apparently does not fear our approach.”

“Aye,” Arnem says, dismounting from the Ox, “would that he rather did not
expect
it. But, as the scouts have already told us—” Handing his mount’s reins to the ever-ready Ernakh, Arnem approaches the lead cart, and eyes Caliphestros, keeping a wary distance between himself and Stasi. “He watches for the first sign of our reaching the mountaintop. And so, it will be for
you
to punish him for having left so many mounts to us. That—and so many other crimes and mistakes, my lord. To punish him with this—with
whatever
is in these containers.” As he stands over the bed of Keera’s cart, Arnem gets a full breath of the odor arising from within, and steps back. “Kafra’s stones, that is a stench! I hope it bodes something unusual—for the gates of Broken, as you know, will not submit to
ballistae
, nor even to ordinary flames.”

Suddenly, the mountain trail echoes with the magnified sound of fast-moving horses’ hooves, along with a cry of
“Get to the side of the road!”
repeated again and again. Heldo-Bah leaps back aboard his cart, to steer it to the left side of the trail’s inlet into the training ground, while Keera moves her own conveyance to the right.

“It’s that fire-brained scout of yours, Sentek!” Heldo-Bah shouts. “To judge by the sound of his voice and his horse’s pace—whatever he is about, I should move, if I were you—the man would ride down his own mother to achieve his purpose!”

“Which is why I rely upon him,” Arnem replies; but the commander, Ashkatar, and Niksar nonetheless comply with Heldo-Bah’s suggestion, and then stare down the rutted trail, waiting for Akillus’s face to show. But before it does, more horses’ hooves resonate from the north, entering the training ground from the relatively short stretch of remaining trail that leads to the ground before the Southern and Southwestern gates of Broken.
“Where is Sentek Arnem?”
comes a shout from the second scouting party earlier sent in that direction by their commander, and, having been quickly told his location, they descend on the crowd about the carts quickly, reaching it at almost the same instant that Akillus does.

“Sentek!” calls the linnet-of-the-line who leads the northern group. “The sky is clear, once one reaches the open ground above—there is yet a violent storm amid the hills to the west, to be sure, but it is difficult to tell, in this light, how quickly it shall bear down upon Broken, or
if,
indeed, it shall at all!”

“Our own reports confirm this, Sentek,” Akillus adds. “All is uncertainty!”

Arnem nods coolly, turning again to issue orders to Ernakh. “Inform Linnets Crupp and Bal-deric that they are to consult Lord Caliphestros on the types of
ballistae
that he wishes made, and to begin building them straightaway. We shall spend no more than one day and one night more upon this ground, before advancing on Broken.” Ernakh leaps up on his own small mount and is off, at which Arnem turns to Caliphestros.

“Well, my lord,” he says, no little uneasiness in his voice. “The moment has come: you must brew your answer to the Riddle of Water, Fire, and Stone, and the rest of us must make our own preparations.”

“Do not look so troubled, Sentek—if only for your men’s sake,” Caliphestros answers with a small laugh. As he dismounts from Stasi’s shoulders, the old man accepts Keera’s help in strapping his walking device to his thighs, then takes his crutches from her. “Unity will be as necessary to our endeavor as will force itself. Baster-kin, remember, believes he has righteousness on his side—he thinks he fights the good fight, and he will resist so long as he can. Our only friends remain speed and hope—the hope that, thanks to this mist, he does not yet know our exact position.”

“Very well, Lord Caliphestros,” Arnem says, turning the Ox to cross the training ground and begin the organization of his attack. “I shall heed these reasons for encouragement—but I nonetheless wait to see what miracle you will draw out of those containers!”

As the various officers’ forms fade again into the mist, Caliphestros looks up the mountain, even though, from where he, the foragers, and Visimar stand, only the glow of braziers and the very tops of the walls and guardhouses of Broken can be seen. “No miracle, Sentek,” he says softly. Then, in a louder voice, he addresses his former acolyte. “No miracle, eh, Visimar?”

“Oh, no?” Heldo-Bah says skeptically, as he starts to unbind the containers in the carts, with the aid of the other foragers. “What then, old man?”

“Tell me, Heldo-Bah,” Caliphestros replies. “You are a more worldly man than most in this camp; did you ever hear mention, among the traders and mercenaries who frequented Daurawah—or anywhere else, for that matter—of what the
Kreikisch
called the fire
automatos
?”
†

Heldo-Bah stops his work, and stares at Caliphestros with a combination of awe and disbelief. “You haven’t …”

“I have,” Caliphestros answers, as Visimar laughs lightly at the Bane’s wonderment.

“But the fire
automatos
is a myth!” Heldo-Bah protests, his voice controlled, so as not to spread what he thinks will be panic, but his feet stomping like a child’s, as is his habit when presented with something that is too much for him to bear. “As much a myth as your ‘Riddle of Water, Fire, and Stone’!”

“
What
is a myth?” Keera and Veloc ask, almost in unison.

“Oh, Moon—!” the gap-toothed Bane says, with the same hushed urgency.

But Keera interrupts him. “Heldo-Bah—I have warned you about your blasphemies!”

“Blasphemies?” Heldo-Bah replies. “What do
blasphemies
matter? Keera, these two old madmen have rested our entire endeavor upon a
fantasy
!”

Yet Caliphestros and Visimar continue only to laugh quietly, as the former instructs the latter on where each canister should be placed. “Neither the Riddle nor the fire
automatos
are myths, Heldo-Bah,” Caliphestros says, still chuckling. “In fact, the fire is the
answer
to the Riddle …”

Heldo-Bah attempts no argument, but only nods his head in resignation. “Oh, I am certain it is—and so, go ahead, laugh, you fools,” he says. “When you should be praying—praying that you get your rain!”

“It will come,” Caliphestros replies; and then, in a slightly more serious voice, he adds, “But will it come with enough violence? No matter, right now. Heldo-Bah, if you know of the fire
automatos
, you must know that we will need every breakable container in the cooks’ wagons and the baggage train—rather than weeping, why don’t you start to gather them?”

Heldo-Bah makes no further protest, but wanders off meekly, still nodding obediently and speaking in a voice that sounds remarkably like a moaning infant: “Dead men … we are all dead men …”

3.

To see the
khotor
of Sixt Arnem’s Talons, as well as the two hundred and fifty of Bane tribe’s best warriors, put their full commitment to the task of preparing an attack on Broken, under the direction of subcommanders so expert in their various trades that their like could not be found for hundreds of miles in any direction from the city on the mountain (as well as from Davon Wood), is to watch men and women assembled and readying themselves to do in the best manner possible the most fearsome work, the most awful work, that humankind ever undertakes. For, as Caliphestros explains to those about him, it is only when the essential violence of war combines itself with the arts of
learning,
of construction and experimentation, of the conditioning and steeling of the body
and
the mind—as well as with that finest of arts,
discovery
—that war connects itself to that in Man which is, in truth, both superior and moral. Are these qualities not better attained through other activities? On the greater number of occasions, quite probably so; indeed, this may perhaps be a universal truth. But, like the rain for which Caliphestros waits so impatiently yet confidently on the Broken cavalry training ground, as he mixes his strange brew of materials taken from bogs and mines deep within the Earth, war will visit the lives of all men and women, eventually. And it is in the question of how closely each armed force does or does not labor to connect its practice to those other, nobler studies, rather than allowing it to be confined to mere bloodshed, that will determine any army’s true if relative morality (or lack thereof).

Such connections have rarely been in evidence so completely as they are during the relatively few (but ample enough) hours that the Bane warriors and the Talons spend on the cavalry training ground below the southern walls of Broken, during the first night, the following day, and the second evening following their arrival, in preparation for their advance, under cover of darkness, on the walled city. The men’s and women’s activities would not seem, to those who have witnessed or read of various great clashes of arms through the ages and around the known world, particularly exotic: those Bane (and they are not the majority of their contingent) who have at least some experience on the backs of horses are taught by the Broken cavalrymen to handle the smaller ponies with ease, and to coordinate their movements with larger Broken cavalry
fausten
. This group is led by a restored Heldo-Bah, never so cured of doubt as by action. Together, Bane and Tall riders will provide the attacking army with that single element that besieging forces too often ignore and lack:
mobility,
the ability to test the enemy for points of strength and retreat from and report on their positions, and doing the same if they find weaknesses that can be exploited rapidly. Yet it is in a third role, that of a diversionary force, that cavalry plays perhaps its greatest role during any siege; and Caliphestros lectures Heldo-Bah until the latter cannot stand to hear another word from the old man’s mouth on just what part the allied and especially the Bane cavalry shall play, along these lines.

The overall task of the horsemen is, in short, is to breed in the enemy from the start a constant sense of imbalance, unhappy surprise, and, in general, the confusion that destroys coherence of command and movement. As for those Bane who will remain afoot, they study how to integrate their own actions into the attack under the overall tutelage of Linnet Taankret: how to play a part in the Mad King Oxmontrot’s famed
Krebkellen,
which, like the movements of the cavalry, would seem to less imaginative commanders than Sixt Arnem to have no place in a siege; but, as Yantek Ashkatar is quick to see (much to the satisfaction of both Arnem and Taankret), it can, if its deployment is reimagined.