by Caleb Carr
Broken…
Yes, we shall go there. But we have not finished with the Wood, yet. For this tale begins with those scurrying little humans below us. Never forget that word: for it is the one supreme fact of this entire history. Those soil-crusted, furtive beings that spark such curiosity in you are human. The people of Broken allowed themselves to forget as much, for centuries; and on tempestuous Moonlit nights below the windswept peak of the terrible mountain, you may yet hear the wail of their condemnèd souls, as they bemoan their most grievous error …
Of the Bane: their plight, their exploits, and their outrages; and of the first of several remarkable events witnessed this night by three of them …
THE SCENT GIVEN OFF by the three hurrying forms is odd—less human even than their stature. But of their many peculiarities, this one is their own doing: for to be identified as human in Davon Wood is to be marked as easy meat, and so they work hard to disguise their odor. This means, first, the use of dead leaves, plants, and rich soil from the forest floor, as well as water, when they have it to spare, to scour their bodies free of sweat, grease and food, and the remnants of their own waste. They then apply fluids drained from the scent bags of animals both clawed and cloven-hoofed, and the result of this careful preparation is that even the cleverest predators, along with the most observant prey, become confused upon the approach of the three travelers, an effect heightened by the incongruous aromas that arise from the burgeoning deerskin sacks they carry on their shoulders. The tantalizing fragrances of the Wood’s rarest herbs, roots, and flowers; the crisp smell of medicinal rocks and bones; and the hint of fear from a few small cages and traps that contain captured songbirds and rare, gregarious tree shrews; these and more besides blend to increase the threesome’s chances of never being precisely identified. Thus do these small, cunning souls complete their near-mastery of Davon Wood.
The three are of the Bane, a tribe made up of exiles from the city on the mountain, as well as the descendants of those who suffered similar punishment; a tribe whose survival in the Wood is ensured by foraging parties like this one, which are dispatched to seek out rare goods prized in Broken for their curative or pleasuring qualities. In return for undertaking risks that even the desperately avaricious merchants of Broken will not dare, the Bane receive in trade from those same merchants certain cultivated foodstuffs that cannot be grown in the forest, as well as such rudimentary bronze and iron implements as the rulers of the great city feel it safe for the exiles to possess. Woodland foraging, even for the Bane, is dangerous work, and the governing council of the tribe—called the Groba—will send only the cleverest and most daring of their men and women to do it. This sometimes includes (as in the case of our three foragers) those who have broken the tribe’s laws: a productive term of foraging can absolve such ungovernable souls of all but the worst of sins, and cure almost any tendency toward their repetition, so great are the hazards encountered during the span of these missions. As for those who undertake foraging willingly, out of concern for the tribe, they can expect to receive high honors from the Groba—should they return with both their bodies and their minds intact.
Thus the Bane have survived in the Wood: and over the course of two centuries they have developed a society, laws—in fact, a civilization, bestial though it looks to their uneasy neighbors. They even speak the language of Broken, though so inventive a race has modified the tongue:
“Ficksel!”
The forager who travels to the rear of the quick-moving pack has spat the insult (an urgent if impractical suggestion that its object withdraw and fornicate with himself) at the tribesman in front of him; yet no sooner has he done so than his face—a blur of scars interrupted only by two hard grey eyes and an enormous black gap amid his teeth, the remaining number of which are ground to sharp points—turns about, to search for any danger approaching from behind. His lips, split so many times by blows that they might be those of an agèd man, curl into an ugly frown of disgust as his whispered insults go on; but the clear, cutting eyes never cease to scan the forest expertly. “You always were a lying sack of bitch’s turd, Veloc, but this …”
“The Moon’s truth, Heldo-Bah!” the one called Veloc answers indignantly (for the Bane still worship the patron of Old Broken). Veloc’s round, dark eyes spark and his well-formed jaw sets firmly, an attitude of defiance that ripples through his shoulders as he makes certain that first his deerskin foraging sack and then his finely worked short bow and arrows are in place. Save for his size, he would be considered handsome, even in Broken (indeed, at least a few women of the city do secretly think him so, when he breaks Bane law and steals within the mighty walls), but he is no less alert for his looks: despite the heat of argument, he watches the thick tangle to either side of the speeding column as carefully as his comrade studies the rear. “It seems I must remind you that I was nominated for the post of Historian of the Bane Tribe—and that the Groba Fathers almost approved the post!”
Heldo-Bah bounds a fallen ash, scarcely jostling his sack of goods and grumbling, “Great collection of granite-brained eunuchs …” At the sound of twigs cracking in the distance, he suddenly produces his favored weapons: a set of three throwing knives originally taken from an eastern marauder by a soldier of Broken, one who was later unlucky enough to encounter Heldo-Bah across a tavern table in Broken’s trading center on the Meloderna River, the walled town of Daurawah. “There’s no need to remind me of anything, Veloc! Lies breed like groin rot, and ‘historians’ are only the whores who spread it—”
“Enough!” The command, though issued by a woman of even smaller stature than the men, is instantly obeyed; for this is Keera, round-faced, dusty-haired, and the most skilled tracker in the whole of the Bane tribe. At three feet eleven inches tall, Keera is shorter than Heldo-Bah by two inches, while her brother Veloc stands taller than her by a full three; but no advantage of height can outweigh her knowledge of life in the Wood, and her quarrelsome companions are accustomed to doing as she says without question, resentment, or hesitation.
Keera deftly leaps onto the rotting stump of a collapsed oak, her knowing blue eyes seeing in the forest ahead what no other human can discern. Heldo-Bah’s expression has changed aspect from angry annoyance to concern with a speed that is almost clownish, and characteristic of his tempestuous moods. “What is it, Keera?” he whispers urgently. “Wolves? I thought I heard one.”
Wolves in Davon Wood grow to extraordinary sizes, and are more than a match for any three Bane—even these three. Keera, however, shakes her head slowly, and answers: “A panther.” Veloc’s face, too, fills with apprehension, while Heldo-Bah’s shows childlike panic. The solitary, silent Davon panthers—which can reach lengths of twelve feet, and weights of many hundreds of pounds—are the largest and most efficient killers known, each as lethal as a pack of wolves and, like all cats, nearly impossible to detect before they strike. They are particularly fond of the caves and rocks near the Cat’s Paw.
Keera listens intently to the Wood, leaning forward on a worked maple staff with which she has humbled more men than would ever admit to the experience. “I sensed him some time ago,” she murmurs. “But I do not believe he stalks us. His movements are—strange …” She cocks her head. “Hafften Falls—near the river. The rocks are high and hidden, hereabouts—good ground for panthers. We, however”—she reaches into her bag for a stick with well-oiled, charred rags wrapped in tight layers around one end—“will need torches. At this speed, in this darkness, we may go over the bank and break our necks, before ever we realize it. Veloc: flint.” As her brother goes into his own sack, Keera frowns at Heldo-Bah, so that her small nose points in accusation. “And by the Moon, Heldo-Bah, stop complaining! This poaching was your idea; it’s your stomach that can’t bear any more wood boar—”
“They’re made of nothing but fat and gristle!” whispers Heldo-Bah.
“We’re going, are we not?” Keera answers sternly. “But stop drawing attention to us with your eternal grumb
ling!”
“It’s not my fault, Keera,” Heldo-Bah says, tossing his own torch on the ground before Veloc. “Tell your fool brother. These lies of his—”
“They’re not lies, Heldo-Bah—it’s history!” Veloc’s face and voice grow improbably pompous, as he produces sparks for the three torches that he has sunk into the moist Earth in front of him: “If you choose to ignore facts, then you’re the fool—and the simple fact is, long before Broken, all men were of roughly the same height. The Bane did not exist, nor did the Tall—the names meant nothing. It has been recorded, Heldo-Bah!”
Heldo-Bah grunts: “Yes—by you, no doubt. Written on the rump of some other man’s wife!” Glancing about for something on which to inflict his bitterness, Heldo-Bah sees only a creeping orange tree grub on a moss-covered log. In a startling flurry, he slices the creature into four pieces with his deadly knives. “It’s bad enough that you make these insane tales up to charm women into your bed—but to then try to pass them off as ‘history,’ as though no one would ever question you …” Heldo-Bah picks up the four oozing segments of wood grub—and drops them, one after another, into his mouth, chewing ferociously and seeming satisfied by a taste that would cause most humans to erupt from both ends.
Keera watches in revulsion. “Do you never consider, Heldo-Bah, that wood boar may be the least likely cause of your ailments?”
“Oh, no,” Heldo-Bah says simply. “It is boar—I have studied the matter. And tonight, I will have beef! What do you see, Keera?”
“We’ve angled our run well—we should reach the Fallen Bridge in a few minutes, and then should cross straight onto Lord Baster-kin’s Plain.”
Heldo-Bah moans delightedly, seeming to forget the panther. “Ah, shag cattle … Good beef, and beef belonging to that pig Baster-kin, too.”
“And the Merchant Lord’s private guard?” Veloc asks his sister.
Keera shakes her head. “We will have to get closer before I can answer that. But—” She lifts her staff, hooks it onto a leafy birch, and pulls the fluttering green curtain aside to reveal the distant summit of Broken, perfectly framed by the trees. “All seems quiet in the city, tonight …”
At the sight of the torch-lit metropolis, fountainhead of power in the kingdom of Broken and wellspring of misery for those who dwell in Davon Wood, a passionate silence falls over the party, and, soon thereafter, over many of the forest creatures that share this sudden glimpse of the northern horizon. The eerie calm is not broken until Heldo-Bah spits out the last bit of his vile meal. “So—the Groba has not dispatched any Outragers,” he grumbles; and it seems he finds this last word infinitely more sickening than what he has just eaten.
Veloc glances dubiously at his friend. “Did they consider it?”
“There was talk of as much, among that last group of foragers we met,” answers Heldo-Bah. “They claimed to have witnessed one of the Tall’s death rituals at the Wood’s edge, and sent a man back to Okot with the news. When he returned, he said that the Outragers had argued that the act required a response—for the Tall did their killing on our side of the river.”
Keera presses: “But are they certain it was the Tall who were responsible? The Groba are forbidden to dispatch Outragers unless they are sure, and the river spirits are very active, following spring thaw—they may have coaxed a forest beast to attack one of Baster-kin’s men—”
“And I might have stones the size of a shag bull’s,” Heldo-Bah answers, spitting again. “Save that I don’t. Rock goblins and river trolls …” The forager’s cynicism is answered by even louder crackling on the forest floor nearby. His face reverting to childlike fear, Heldo-Bah snatches a lit torch from the ground and glances in all directions. “The existence of which,” he declares in a clear voice, “I accept as an article of faith!”
Keera is over to him in a few bounding steps, and claps a hand over his mouth. Her eyes and head always moving, she whispers, “The panther …” Keera creeps to the very limits of the flickering glow created by the three torches, holding her maple staff at the ready. “I may have been wrong—he may be stalking us. Yet it did not seem so …”
Veloc comes to her side. “What can we do?”
“Run?” Heldo-Bah whispers, joining them in a bound.
“Yes,” Keera says, “but we will not manage fifty yards, even holding torches, unless we give the panther something else to think about. An offering—where is the boar joint from yesterday?” Veloc produces a piece of bone and meat, wrapped in a bit of hide. “Leave it here,” Keera commands. “It will draw him, and the fire of the torches should remove any lingering interest he might have in us.”
“And catch the interest of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard,” Veloc replies, even as he follows his sister’s orders.
“We will extinguish them at the Fallen Bridge,” declares Keera, her mind, as ever, solving problems before Veloc and Heldo-Bah even contemplate them. “Come now, quickly—away!”
Having resumed their characteristic pace through the Wood, the three Bane need only moments to reach the craggy, deafening banks of the churning Cat’s Paw river, where they find themselves near the thick, hundred-foot trunk of an enormous red fir, whose roots have recently given up the desperate struggle to grip the scant Earth of the high riverbank. The ancient sentinel’s mighty body now points directly north across Hafften Falls, one of the most daunting of the Cat’s Paw’s many cascades: it has sacrificed itself to provide the most reliable of several natural bridges between Davon Wood and Broken—bridges that many of Broken’s military commanders would like to see destroyed, and with them the threat posed by the mischievous and sometimes murderous Bane. But the merchants of Broken, although they despise the exiles, make enormous profits from the goods that the tribe’s foragers bring out of the wilderness: a child in Broken, for example, who does not number among his possessions a little Davon tree shrew like those that now huddle in cages in the sacks carried by Keera’s party can depend upon the disdain of his play fellows, while any woman who cannot drape herself with sufficient jewelry made of the silver, gold, and precious gems found in the wilderness will leave her house only at night, or elaborately veiled. Worse yet, a husband or father who cannot afford to buy such things is seen as faltering in his devotion to Kafra—
Kafra: the strange god whose image was first brought up the Meloderna valley centuries ago, and who, with his love of beauty and riches, quickly stole the souls of citizens of Broken away from the pragmatic tenets of the old Moon faith—and so changed the very basis of their lives. But we must speak more of Kafra soon; and it will sicken me enough then …
Nimble as ever, the three foragers prepare to cross the bridge, not so much alarmed as amused by the crashing waters below it. Their escape from the panther, the thought of enjoying a meal suitable for the wealthiest of the Tall (and above all stirring trouble in the otherwise peaceful night), combine to make them increasingly boisterous. As soon as they have mounted the bridge, they boast of how they will knock one another from it, and play at doing so, the two men finally able to shout all they want: for between the rocky banks, the roar of the river overwhelms the sound of their voices.
It would require something dire to put an end to their games; but such sinister signs are precisely what Keera has a gift for detecting. As she puts her nose to the light breeze, her body goes taut; and then, with a quick wave of her maple staff, she once more silences her companions.
“What now?” Heldo-Bah whispers. “Not that cat—”
“Silence!” Keera hisses. Then, at a run, she leaps back off the bridge, and begins to search the rocky ground on the southern bank of the river, following an unmistakable scent:
“Someone has died,” Veloc announces, following his sister.
“Aye,” Heldo-Bah noises. “And been left to rot …”
Within moments, the three are upon the remains of a young man of Broken. Once he had been as tall and well formed as any; now, he is a rotting carcass, from whose ribs protrude several beautiful
ly crafted arrows: shafts of wood overlain with gold leaf, flights made of Davon eagle feathers, and heads of fearsome silver.
“This must be the fellow.” Veloc’s voice betrays some small measure of sympathy, although the rotting man would likely have spat on the Bane forager, had the two ever crossed paths. “The one who was slain in the ritual you spoke of, Heldo-Bah. He’s scarcely more than a boy …”
Heldo-Bah grunts, repelled: “Look at the arrows—Moon strike me dead if they did not come from the Sacristy of the city’s High Temple.”
Keera nods agreement; yet her face betrays more complex suspicions. “But there has been no mutilation—his head, arms, and legs are all intact. And they killed him on our side of the river—why?” She moves a few steps closer, still puzzling with the sight. “And what of scavengers? The body has not been disturbed; yet wolves and bears should have strewn it over this part of the Wood. What could—”
She stops suddenly, her face wrinkling up with some newly detected aroma that makes her immediately retrace her steps. “Keep back!” she orders, holding her torch higher. “His flesh is not merely rotting—it is diseased. Even scavengers would sense as much—it’s why they have not touched it.”
“Well, then,” Veloc muses, moving away from the remains. “They killed him because he was sickly. They’ve done it many times before.”
“But it makes no sense,” Keera insists, strangely alarmed. “Look at him—there is nothing to suggest that he was anything but a perfect young man of Broken. Tall, well formed, no lameness in the bones of his limbs, a good skull … And they slew him on this very spot, whereas the sickly have always been simply abandoned to the Wood—it is the ritual they call the mang-bana.”