The Legend of Broken

by Caleb Carr

  “Great Moon,” Heldo-Bah breathes when he hears this: for he is, as he has protested, not so unversed in the ways of both love and lust that he cannot comprehend such ideas. “I knew that those priests were scheming devils, and the people who followed them no more than shorn sheep, but … So you have no doubt that she did truly love him, once, Visimar?”

  “I saw it in her,” Veloc answers, before the old cripple can speak.

  “Oh,” Heldo-Bah groans. “Of course you saw it, historian. You see all, that you may one day sing of it to our children …”

  “I did not say that I understood it, Heldo-Bah,” Veloc whispers in protest. “But I saw something. And Keera saw it, as well, and she understood it, and explained it to me, later. The pain in his eyes, and in the priestess’s, too, if only for brief instants. Intermingled with all their bitter statements …”

  “Yes, bitter,” Visimar says. “For, as has often been observed, there is no bitterness like that which results from love willfully destroyed. And the happiness that my master and Alandra knew was willfully destroyed; its death was plotted, just as surely as was the murder of Oxmontrot, and carried out just as cruelly. And if she had any doubts, all the priests needed do was use her own ambition to exploit them: after all, they said, had he shared his deepest secrets, his greatest knowledge, with her, even if such sorcery was blasphemous? Was that love, to give less than all he knew to her? In truth, my master was only protecting Alandra, for he knew the role she had been born to play in Broken: had he involved her fully in his work, she might well have been mutilated and almost certainly murdered on the edge of Davon Wood, as well. Yet from the moment that she began to believe he was keeping powerful forces and knowledge from her—secrets that she saw, not as ‘sorcerous,’ but as magical—his indictment was only a matter of time. We could all see it, and begged him to leave the city. But he would not go. You see, he never acknowledged that Alandra craved power more than she loved him; and, as I say, if denied the full range of his power, she would take the more vulgar form (however ‘sacred’ it might be portrayed as being) offered by the priests, and view him, not as protecting her, but as ever more determined to hold the position of superiority between them. Thus did he seal his own fate, first with the priests, and then with her; and even more painfully, for him, she began to see him more and more as simply a wicked, even blasphemous old man, who had tainted rather than adored her.”

  “Hak …,” Heldo-Bah whispers; but there is sympathy in the oath, now, something like what he displayed to the white panther when he discovered that it was the young Rendulic Baster-kin who had killed her cubs. “The poor old fool … Well, it only demonstrates that you can travel the world and learn the ways of the great philosophers, and still make the mistakes of a Moonstruck village boy who has never seen so much as the next town, where women are involved …”

  Visimar turns for a moment, to study the filthy, foul driver of the cart with some surprise. “That is a remarkably apt statement, Heldo-Bah.”

  “Do not expect them at regular intervals,” Veloc comments with a smile. “But he does make them …”

  Heldo-Bah quickly moves for one of his knives, but Visimar, just as quickly, stays his hand, with the same surprising strength of one who has had to manipulate a staff and crude wooden leg over many years. “None of such foolishness,” Visimar says. “Heed me closely, both of you, for we are only now arriving at the most interesting part of the story.”

  “We are?” Heldo-Bah replies, relaxing his arm and urging his horses on. “There is something of greater interest than bedding the First Wife of Kafra?”

  “Indeed there is, Heldo-Bah,” Visimar says quietly. “For the last time I met my master in the Wood to bring him supplies, shortly before the priests took me away for the ordeal of my Denep-stahla, his mind was still in pieces, great as his affection for the white panther obviously was. He knew that, once Alandra had taken the decision to condemn him as a monster and a demon, she would only cultivate the feeling. And that cut into him deeply. Yet now, that wound has been almost wholly healed. In some way, that great beast has lived up to the name he gave her—Anastasiya—in that she brought him back to life, when resignation to death would have been the easiest path. Not only brought him back, but changed him, somehow: she has taken away much of the arrogance he once possessed, and that led him to his ultimate crisis concerning the priests and Alandra. How does an animal, however powerful, accomplish this? Can neither of you tell me, after so many years in the Wood?”

  Both Heldo-Bah and Veloc appear somewhat embarrassed by their inability to give Visimar the answer he seeks; and finally Veloc says simply, “It is my sister who knows of these things, far better than do we.”

  “Well,” Visimar sighs, slightly dumbfounded. “There must be some explanation.”

  “There is,” Heldo-Bah mutters, almost seeming, for a moment, self-reproachful for speaking of such things. “And, while Veloc is correct, and we cannot supply you with the details, old man, there is one basic fact of which I have become aware, and from which, I suspect, the details spring.” He points ahead, to the figures of Caliphestros and Stasi: two beings who seem, in the approaching twilight, to combine into one creature. “There are times when one’s own race of beings is the last sort of creature that can or will help or care if you live or die. But if a great heart, like that cat, does so care, chooses to so care—chooses, in short, you—it fills a place that no human can occupy. No mere human, no potion, no powder, no drug—and believe me, I’ve tried the ones he creates to ease his pain, and they’re very effective. But not effective enough. Nothing is, save another great heart. And the reverse is true, as well: Stasi’s soul has been mended by a human’s. I have seen it between them.” Spitting over the mountainside, Heldo-Bah shakes his head. “And so, if that old man is still sane and still capable of doing what he now seems to be doing—seeking knowledge and justice—that is the only reason why. Don’t ask me to tell you how it happens—talk to Keera, as Veloc says, for that. I know only that it does …”

  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 automaton?”

  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 wan
ders 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 the 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.