The Broken Man

by Hawkings Austin

  “Me too,” added Piju.

  “What happened? Was it dead?” she asked.

  “Burn ghost kill’d bird!” Buck yelled unexpectedly. Piju was surprised for a moment, as he hadn’t been around children much in the last years. But he agreed with him.

  “The bird was just…cooked?... a moment ago,” Piju said. He looked down at the corpse in his fingers. He pulled and the head came away from neck muscles like cooked meat.

  “I don’t know what happened. I was trying to find out.”

  “Are you the wild Bolg that came in with the Fomor giant last summer? The one that the Daen Priestess is protecting?”

  “Yeah,” Piju remembered his anger and repressed it again. He dropped the bird head on the alley dirt and tucked its body into his pouch. Waylaid might want to see it later. He thought about what she said while he was brushing off his hands. He added it up and decided that it sounded right.

  “We really haven’t been here much. I didn’t speak Ruad very well at first, so we haven’t been out much.” He didn’t much care for the city walls or the people he was finding there, but he didn’t feel like explaining that either.

  “You speak beautifully now,” she said. “It’s Piju? I mean. Is your proper name Piju alet Kelpwa of Leest?”

  “Piju, just call me Piju.” It wasn’t his proper name, but he didn’t know his proper name. The arguments for why he was ignorant of this basic fact would make sense to a spirit talker in a traditional Bolg village. But it would mean sharing his life story to explain it here.

  “Piju,” she said. Her nose wrinkled, and she smiled at him. The sun came out of the clouds and surrounded her with a halo of light. Her eyes were a blue richer than the sky, richer than any flower he had ever seen and she laughed for the joy of laughing.

  “Don’t just stand there, come on out to the courtyard and meet everyone. We’ve all been dying to meet you.”

  She ran out into the courtyard, carrying Buck to a young man whose job seemed to be to corral several other small boys. The small girls were helping move bread ingredients in various bowls. Piju recognized stirring cream into butter and folding the white paste that made biscuits. Anything else was close enough to pass as magic for him.

  “Nana Wing!” she addressed the older woman of the courtyard. “Everyone!” she easily captured everyone’s attention as she spun in place. Her arm went out to Piju, who followed behind more slowly. “Let me introduce to you the Wild Bolg who has come to save us from the Burning Ghost, the sorcerer’s apprentice, Piju of Leest!”

  Piju smiled and nodded, his translation of Ruad still running a bit behind the speed at which the young girl spoke.

  “It is a pleasure to meet all of you,” he said.

  “Here, sit,” she said, directing him to a stool. She then ran to perform some task to which she had been directed, before her son had made his escape.

  Sorcerer’s apprentice? While that was technically true, it wasn’t true that he was an apprentice sorcerer. In fact, his giant wasn’t even a sorcerer anymore. Perhaps “Priest’s Apprentice” would be appropriate, but he wasn’t an apprentice priest either. He had learned to read, under duress, but stuck to adventure stories out of the Daen war journal.

  Piju wasn’t much of a thinker. Unlike his master, he hardly ever found time to sit around thinking. If he did, he would likely be thinking about getting a roll from the bread oven, not anything involving long term plans or life goals. This was one of those rare moments when he realized that he didn’t have a plan for becoming a journeyman.

  Waylaid had once told him, “When you know what you are training to be, then ask me to become a journeyman.”

  “I’m a hunter,” he had said.

  Snappy answers tended to get him smacked in the head, but he had been unusually upset by the question. Waylaid had restrained his hand, for once, and just shook his head.

  “I am no master hunter, Piju. Keep trying.”

  Piju figured he needed Waylaid to take him to some Bolg village, where they would have a master hunter and would need him to be a journeyman. It really wasn’t much of a plan, now that he thought about it. It hadn’t worked in Leest and it likely wouldn’t work anywhere else.

  They were talking around him, and he realized he was lost in his head.

  “Sorry, what did you say?” he said to the nice old Bolg who was talking to him.

  Her hair was long gone to gray, and she kept it put up in two big rolls on either side of her ears. She wore a simple tube dress, much like the young girl, but it was trimmed and decorated with strips of green and brown.

  “Roe, have your brain all mushed up already?” she asked.

  “Is that her name?” Piju slowly felt his brain beginning to work again. Countless hours of practice at polite behavior had been smacked into him by the Fomor. Waylaid would not permit improper behavior. Frankly, Piju thought, he would have backhanded me when I didn’t introduce myself right away. Now I’m ignoring the mistress of this kitchen. Oh, I am so due a beating.

  Piju straightened himself on the stool and extended his hands, palms toward his face.

  “Greetings Mistress Wing, I am Piju of Leest, apprentice to Master Waylaid.”

  Mistress Wing straightened, suddenly formal.

  “I took the name Raven’s Wing when I married my husband, nearly thirty years ago. I don’t think I have seen a village man since the day he died, four years ago.” She touched her fingertips to the backs of his hands. “You do me too much honor, young man, I have no rank. I am but a lowly slave in the service of the king.”

  Piju switched to Bolg, a proper language for serious speech.

  “Tell me, mistress, what is the killer of these birds? I have seen nothing like it before.”

  Mistress Wing blinked and translated immediately. She had not spoken regularly in her home language in many years, but it was her birth tongue.

  “Good apprentice, we have been visited by the ghost of a Fomor. Many have seen it,” she looked around at the women surrounding her, “and they fear it.”

  “Why does it haunt you, what does it want?” Piju asked.

  “I haven’t seen it, and none dare question so fierce a spirit. We have no spirit talker amongst us.” She gave a terribly Ruad shrug; she simply didn’t know.

  Roe returned in a sudden rush of girl and mixing bowl. She stirred with the same frantic speed at which she appeared to live.

  “Sunny says that you are a spirit talker?” Roe made the statement a question. “Are you here to talk to the Burning Ghost?”

  Sunny was apparently the Bolg girl with nearly blonde hair who was only a bit younger than Piju. She wore a vest over her dress, which was pleated like a kilt. It wasn’t anything like women’s clothing in a Bolg village, but Piju wasn’t about to correct a woman on how she dressed.

  Roe explained, “Sunny studied the old ways with Old Squirrel, before he was killed.”

  “I am apprenticed to a spirit talker,” Piju said. He realized suddenly that he was speaking Bolg, and they were simply staring at him. “Yes,” he said, trying to remember how to switch between the two languages.

  “What can we do to help?” Mistress Wing asked, returning to the Ruad language herself.

  “Can you get a messenger out to the Library?” he asked. “The city seems to be unfriendly today.”

  Roe looked up, her expression again leaped to pure joy.

  “I can help!” she said.

  She spun in a circle, her dress whipping up to her knees.

  “I have to go to work tonight, and I have a dispensation from Philosopher Guillem.” She spoke a quick aside to Piju. “My master is a six-banded philosopher, very important in the court. He gave me a King’s seal to travel today.” She sobered suddenly, noting the true boss of the slave quarters. “Nanna Wing, can I go out early today?”

  Wing raised an eyebrow, chilling the young woman. “It isn’t safe in the city today; you would be much better to let someone else do this.”

  “
I have to go to work, anyway,” she argued, “and you want to get them back before they lock up at sundown. I’ll spend the night at Guillem’s. He has space for a dozen in his courtyard. And yes mistress, I’ll bring my heavy cloak.”

  Piju realized that it wasn’t his speed of translation that was the problem. It was that Roe lived in a whirlwind of conversations and work, doing two things at once and talking to at least two people, all the time.

  “I just want to help the sorcerer’s apprentice!” Roe said. “I know he can save us!”

  Piju decided to get a word in edgewise, and his tongue miraculously worked this time.

  “Have you spoken to the ghost?” he asked. “Do you know what he wants?”

  Roe turned to him, heartbroken. “I’m sorry, no, I don’t know. Nobody really seems to know what he wants.” She whispered conspiratorially into his ear, “I think he wants blood.”

  She backed up a step, but Piju really wished she hadn’t. His tongue had fled again, and he stared at her face in wonder. Slowly, the meaning of her speech seeped into his brain, and he frowned. He had watched Waylaid perform sacrifice before; maybe he could get away with it, before the ghost killed someone.

  “Nanna Wing, please! Can I go?”

  “Yes, child,” she quickly agreed. “Finish the dinner preparation here and get out.” She had apparently thought about that question while Roe and Piju had talked. “With the King’s seal, you can get Guardsman Ked to escort you. Get him to take you to the Library, and the good folks there to escort you to work.”

  “Yes, Nanna,” Roe said, and ran off to finish her chores.

  Piju watched her, letting the time go by, as she did mystical things with bowls and spices. Everyone else appeared to be working, so he simply let the afternoon slide by.

  The buildings were well made and new. Everything had been burned down just a few years ago, and the women’s lodge twice since then. Fire was a great danger here and greatly feared. The bread oven was the only brick outside of the wall itself. The oven was a huge pile of sun-bricks. It was nearly thin enough to reach across, but taller than a man and nearly as long as a room. It seemed to draw properly, but the bread wasn’t cooking well.

  It dawned on him slowly, that these were slaves. All were Bolg, from as young as newborn to as old as Mistress Wing. It was like hanging around the baker’s hut in Leest, mostly older women, some young boys, and a lot of younger girls. There wasn’t an older man in sight. The only differences were clothing and tattoos. There was not a significant tattoo on anyone.

  Mistress Wing had a baker’s family on her right arm. Piju didn’t know their name, but the bread symbol was the same. She had two marks on her left arm; they were woman’s marks so he didn’t know what they meant. She didn’t have an adult mark on her shoulder, didn’t have a master’s mark either. There was only one woman here, another older woman, who had an adult tattoo on her right shoulder.

  Piju hadn’t been back to Leest in three years. It struck him that he didn’t even know where Leest was. He realized then, for the first time, that the villagers of Leest were not his people anymore. These are my people, the people without a village.

  Piju had an insult for a name, no true adult name, no true apprenticeship, tattoos he had drawn himself, laid on by a man who had no idea if he deserved them or not. But, he thought, these people don’t even have that.

  He had so many questions. Who could give them the tattoos they had earned? More impossibly – Who could tell Mistress Wing that she was a bakery master? Piju shook his head. He knew that it was not his place to say, but whose was it?

  Roe left before dinner was served. Piju watched her go and received a fair share of giggles for it.

  “Was he smitten?” they asked.

  Piju had no idea. He had seen attractive women before, but he had never felt like this about them. Roe was taking up all his ability to think, when she left his mind began to clear.

  The girls at the table served him bread and broth and asked him about his home village, about Leest, about Waylaid, and about the Daen. He couldn’t keep track of all the questions, but he told them the story of meeting Waylaid, and he told them about hunting with the Kerrick. He talked more in one afternoon than he had talked in his entire life.

  Slaves came home, the courtyard filling with men Piju’s age and younger. The young women disappeared back into the women’s lodge. Hundreds of slaves returned from their day work and lined up for food. Piju had been in the city for half a year, but he hadn’t seen any of them—they were the hidden people of Ard.

  Piju sat on the stool in the middle of the courtyard and was rarely alone. Each slave, returning from work, wanted to meet the wild Bolg. Every man who came in the gates wanted to see him, to measure himself against a ‘real’ Bolg. A man entered, barely seventeen winters, but the oldest man in the slave quarters.

  “How did you get in here?”

  Piju realized he had intruded on the man’s territory. “The outer gate is well guarded, and the outer wall, but not the inner wall.” Piju pointed at the northern wall.

  “They station men all around the wall in case we break out.”

  Piju raised his shoulder. “Once they did, but not now. There are two guards on the gate and two on the southern wall. None look across your quarters.”

  The man didn’t respond, but his thoughts turned inward. They had assumed but never checked.

  The sun touched the walls of Ard, and the courtyard emptied. It didn’t take long. The men simply said that they were tired, and they needed their sleep. Piju, however, saw something different.

  “They are afraid of the Burning Ghost,” he said.

  “Yes, I think you are right.”

  The young woman named Sunny came and sat down with him. She adjusted her kilt like a man and pulled her vest forward to hide her breasts. She could have passed for a young man, but there was a hardness to her face that didn’t match her age. She did not begin with politeness; she was much like Waylaid in her speech.

  “I want to lay this spirit to rest, as the old ones could,” she said. “Have you laid many spirits to rest?”

  “Yes,” said Piju, “mostly animals.” Entirely animals. He had been with Waylaid when the Fomor had laid human spirits to rest. Piju couldn’t hear the spirits or see them, but Waylaid had talked to them, sometimes all night. Piju had only been in danger from angry spirits twice in four years. Waylaid had been more than enough to stop them.

  “Our people are afraid. They don’t want to be locked in at night with the Burning Ghost, but the Ruad are afraid of the slaves and won’t let us leave at night.”

  “I’ll try to talk to it,” Piju promised, “but I don’t know if it will talk to me.”

  He wasn’t afraid of the ghost. He didn’t know if he could help them, but he would do his best. He wished he had a decent sacrifice, or anything, maybe the spirit would be appeased by listening to him talk. If it was a ghost accustomed to magic, it should respond to the Fomor language.

  “The boys say that you used your magic today to kill a guard. They said that a mob chased you, and that you flew across Ard to escape them. They said that you turned into a pigeon and flew over the walls into the slave quarters without even passing the gate!”

  “No,” protested Piju, “almost none of that is true.” Though that would make a great story!

  Sunny smiled at his modesty and delivered a devastating blow.

  “Roe believes you can stop the Burning Ghost.”

  He choked. “Of course, I can.”

  “I saw it,” she said. Her voice became distant, she was looking into her dreams. “It looks like a man on fire, walking through the village looking for something. He seems almost lost, hungry.” She licked her lips. “I should have talked to it, but I was terrified. He wants blood.”

  She held herself together, tucking her head down and wrapping her arms tight around her. “I thought it wanted to kill me.” She swallowed uncomfortably. “I think he was trying to talk to me,
but I thought I saw myself in the oven, hung and bleeding like an elk. The fire was climbing me, burning.”

  Piju nodded. She was untrained, but it sounded like a true vision to him. “My family always told me that it wasn’t a vision, it was just a nightmare. But it doesn’t fade away, does it?” It wasn’t a question.

  “True or nightmare, I should have talked to it, but I was afraid.” She raised a shoulder in a Bolg shrug. “You’ll be brave, won’t you?”

  Piju couldn’t answer her, but he would attempt to be brave. In the gathering dark, Sunny took his quiet for a yes and worked her way back to the small lights of the women’s quarters. Piju sat alone in the dark, wondering what he had gotten into. The gate was closed; could Waylaid get here tonight?

  The buildings rose tall around him. The moon was not out, but the sky above was brilliant with stars. There was no light to be seen from the city of Ard―no light that could be seen over the wall, in any case. Some smoke drifted among the stars, like a low cloud, but the night passed quietly for a while.

  Piju had sat many a night in a holy place, watching the spirits with Waylaid. He had hunted many times in the woods, seeking those holy places. Waylaid would study the ruins and speak with the ghost, setting them to rest if they wanted it. If this was a Fomor ghost, then there was a holy place nearby. Waylaid would appreciate Piju finding where the body was buried. Otherwise laying him to rest might not be possible.

  The clouds came stronger and the stars, one by one, winked out. There was a ripple of fire in the corner of his eye, more the reflection off the building behind him than a light. Piju stood and turned slowly, trying to see anything that could be a burning ghost.

  An image floated to the front of his mind. It wasn’t clear, a vision like Sunny had seen, but he felt the fire in front of him, where there was none. The smell of blood like the taste of Bolg copper. The fear was there too, more a fear of suffering a vision than the fear of the ghost, but both had him near to paralyzed.

  There was nothing he could do about it but wait for his Master. There wasn’t a hen, pig, deer, or dog anywhere near the slave quarters. The ghost had driven them off. Waylaid would bring something, he hoped.