by Caleb Carr
“Silence, you idiot! These unnatural women are only meant to make your legs weak and your minds confused—as indeed they are doing! I have told you: one of these two actions, that at the East or that at the Southwest Gate, is intended as a ruse: but what good is a ruse, when see how even the most weighty rocks make little or no dent in the oak and iron of the Southwest! By Kafra, if this is all the traitor Arnem has to offer us, then we can have every expectation of success—provided sniveling cowards such as yourself find their manhood, and are not shaken by a collection of mad but harmless hags in armor!”
Word of this remark is immediately sent by runner to “the traitor Arnem”; who knows that now, he must exhort his own main force to prepare for the truly critical assault, the unique attack that will follow the work of Caliphestros’s ballistae at the South Gate. For it is not simply that the legless old philosopher has pledged the destruction of that gate at the commencement of what increasingly resembles a tempest; that is merely the third deception that composes his plan. There is a fourth deception that completes the great design; and it is that deception for which Arnem’s men, especially his horsemen, must be prepared to move quickly and decisively.
And so, just as the first of Caliphestros’s strange and comparatively few war machines—the construction of which was made possible only by the experience and comprehension of Linnet Crupp—is finally rolled into position on the small open space before the South Gate, Sentek Arnem begins to ride up and down every position that his men hold, preparing them for an act that seems far less natural than it does to his allies: an assault upon the city that is the heart of their own kingdom.
Preparatory appeals such as this, whatever legend may tell us, are seldom effective if they have not been preceded by years of experience, respect, and near-constant reminders that a commander has never asked his men to go into action without attending to every necessary preparation to ensure their success, as well as complete willingness to share their danger. Arnem’s words now are therefore few:
“There is little more that I can tell you, Talons,” he calls, still an impressive figure, after so many days spent primarily in the saddle, atop the great grey stallion named for the Mad King. “Little more, save that of which I have attempted, until now, not to speak; but speak of it now I must. We all stand to see our families beyond these walls, if we indeed have any, at the very least shunned, likely censured and perhaps far, far worse for our part in today’s action. Your loyalty in refusing to allow this to weaken your dedication, even once, speaks for itself; and if it did not, what should I say that would make up the lack? But I have withheld one fact from you, because I did not wish that same steady dedication that you have shown to revert into undisciplined zealotry: Lord Baster-kin will see me punished, should we fail, with as much injustice and cruelty as he once levied against Lord Caliphestros, who courageously returns to this city with us to see his former enemy chastised. But it is not any venom that the Merchant Lord may direct toward me that chills my soul. No, rather it is the sickened desire, tainted by anger, that he directs toward Lady Arnem—toward my wife—that has so frightened me that I have not been able to speak of it, until today: for the Merchant Lord has—for many years, it seems—coveted Lady Arnem!” Murmurs of astonishment that rapidly become the beginnings of rage spread through the Talons. “Nor is that all!” their commander continues. “In order to make possible his sickened fancy, he has knowingly ordered not only myself, but all of our khotor into parts of the kingdom he knew to be diseased! If we lived through this ordeal, supposed his lordship, we would but die in the Wood, with either result suiting his purpose—but if neither eventuality came about, this would suit his design, as well, for, besides declaring us traitors to the Grand Layzin and hence the God-King, the Merchant Lord has, these many months, been poisoning his own diseas wife, under the guise of treating her, in order that he may be free to take my lady to his side, and produce new sons for the clan Basterkin—sons more fit for leadership than his own scion, whose death his lordship has been mad enough, only recently, to oversee in the Stadium!”
And this news, as the sentek had hoped, brings the full anger and determination of the Talons to the fore. Despite their always strong loyalty to their commander, more than a few have been confused, in the most shielded parts of their souls, by much of what they have seen and been ordered to do, on this strangest of marches. But even an intimation of harm to—and worse than harm to, violation of—Isadora, the woman who Arnem has rightly claimed is more the beating heart of their ranks than he is himself, is simply too much for the men to bear. Combined with their deep worries for the fates of their own kin, this revelation causes protestations to erupt from every direction, and every kind of pledge and oath is declared: there will be no further need for the sentek to urge the men to find their mettle.
All that is left for him to do is demonstrate to the Talons, and to all the army, that access to the Fifth District, and the city beyond, is possible. For this is, in fact, the final deception embodied in the allied plan: not to bring the citizens of the Fifth District out of Broken, but to take possession of that district, and use it as a base of operations from which to destroy Lord Baster-kin’s Guard. And so, with his men still roaring their angry defiance of the Merchant Lord, as well as their passionate defense of the Lady Arnem, to say nothing of their long-standing hatred of the Guardsmen, Arnem gallops to the position that Caliphestros and Crupp have taken up before the South Gate.
“Well, Sentek,” Caliphestros announces, “it seems improbable to me that the moment will ever be more propitious.”
“Indeed, my lord,” Arnem replies; and Caliphestros can see that the sentek’s passion has been no mere performance designed to exhort his troops; now that he has spoken of it publicly, Arnem’s fear for his wife and his son has risen to the surface, and he is impatient for what is to come.
“Tell me, my lord—what in the world are those things?” Arnem questions, as Crupp commands the men who crew the ballistae to load the first of the clay containers that hold the old man’s devilishly foul substance into the cradles that sit at the back ends of lengthy, greased ramps. The ramps themselves are secured through adjustable gears of elevation atop heavy wheeled frames, but the angle of flight they are meant to achieve is clearly higher than any device the men commanded by either Bal-deric or Crupp himself would usually be able to achieve; yet Crupp and his men are experienced with all such weapons, and unlikely to commit obvious errors. Rather, it is the ballistae themselves that appear, for all the world, less like the usual variety of torsion-driven battering machines, such as Linnet Bal-deric continues to use at the Southwest Gate, than they do enormous bows placed upon their sides.
“I first designed and experimented with such devices when I dwelt for a time in the land of the Mohammedans,” Caliphestros explains, “before they, too, declared my presence ‘offensive.’ But they soon decided—with apologies, Sentek, but just as you did—that the weapons could have but little use as devices for battering, and were therefore a mere folly. Having already encountered, in Alexandria, the formula for the fire automatos, I had been thinking from the first of how such machines could be adapted for the delivery of the substance: a longer span for the two bow wings, a gentler force of release, to be compensated for by a higher trajectory.” Turning to the western sky, Caliphestros, along with the rest of Arnem’s force, feels a new mist—this one very damp indeed—creeping up and over the mountain. “We have little time. Yantek Ashkatar has signaled that he is ready. Sentek, it is for you to give the order.”
“I do not think the order was ever truly mine to issue, Caliphestros,” Arnem replies. “But insofar as it may be, you have it.”
And with that, the great experiment begins …
6.
WITH STRONG BUT CAREFUL BLOWS of great wooden mallets, Linnet Crupp’s men release the restraining blocks on Caliphestros’s strange machines. The first of the clay vessels slide almost noiselessly (for they, too, have been greased,
like the rails upon which they ride) up and into the sky, staying aloft for what seems an impossible period of time. Not a sound is heard from any member of the attacking force, although cries of sudden alarm do go up from those members of the Merchant Lord’s Guard positioned above the South Gate.
“My lord Baster-kin!” these men shout. “Still more ballistae, at the South Gate!” Within moments, Baster-kin has himself become visible, even before the first of the clay containers has reached the end of its flight.
“What in Kafra’s name …?” he blasphemes, his furious gaze watching the vessels sail to what must surely be spots short of the gate. But he has not reckoned on Linnet Crupp’s mastery of the art of such arcs; and although the vessels land on the lower half of the gate, land they do, smashing to bits and coating appreciable areas of the stout oak with a remarkably adhesive substance, the odor of which he cannot yet identify.
But when Crupp orders quick adjustments to the ballistae, raising both their bows and the ramps upon their frames, and then commands a second launch, the next flight of vessels find their way to the top of the gate with expert precision; and from here, it is impossible for any man upon the walls to mistake their strong stench.
“Incendiaries, Sentek?” Lord Baster-kin shouts derisively. “This is why you tied your fortunes to the sorcerer Caliphestros, who has clearly gone soft in the head? Ha! Only look at the western slope of the mountain, you fools—within minutes we shall be pelted with a driving rain, and what of your ‘incendiaries,’ then, you traitorous dolts?”
Arnem views the black figure on the wall with the thin-eyed, smiling hatred of a man who believes he will shortly deliver the decisive blow to his enemy. “Yes, driving rain,” he murmurs. “Eh, Lord Caliphestros?”
“You are yet too confident, Sentek,” Caliphestros replies. “Crupp, be quick! We have the range, now—in less time than you would have thought imaginable, that gate must be coated. Coated! Fire, fire, and above all, continue firing!”
The coverage of the remaining surface of the South Gate takes less time than is required for Crupp’s expert loaders to loose all the containers from their bindings inside their carts; and such is a good thing, too, for, just as the first containers have achieved their work, Arnem, like every other man on the mountain, is momentarily blinded by a series of lightning strikes brilliant enough to cut through the foggy morning, and then shaken by a clap of thunder louder than any he can ever remember hearing. The rain, when it comes, is all that Caliphestros has predicted, hoped for, and relied upon; and in its wake, those before the South Gate, as well as those atop it, become witness to something that no one among them (save the old sage himself) has ever before encountered, and that many, particularly atop Broken’s walls, will wish never to have seen even this once:
It is announced by Heldo-Bah, who left his own contingent of riders to continue their work below the East Gate once he felt the first drops of rain fall; at that point, having made sure that the Bane riders knew only to stay in their position so long as the rain permitted any dust to rise, he joined Keera, Veloc, and Visimar in riding wildly for the South Gate. None of them wished to miss Caliphestros’s promised creation of an event that Heldo-Bah has repeatedly called a fantasy. But despite the noisy Bane’s doubts, by the time the four arrive on the spot, none are disappointed, nor are the hundreds of Bane and Broken troops who have moved forward to see living proof of:
The fire automatos. When the windswept rain strikes the South Gate, that portal is completely coated in Caliphestros’s slowly dripping concoction; and, to the amazement of all, the thick oak between the iron bands of the gate is suddenly consumed in a fire completely strange, one that seems something out of a vision, or perhaps more rightly a nightmare. It is a fire that the awed Heldo-Bah, as only he can, declares:
“Kafra’s infernal piss …”
The first and most arresting aspect of the fire is its brilliance. For while the others in Arnem’s force have expected, at best, to see a traditional fire that has somehow defied the falling rain, this is a conflagration primarily blue and especially white in color—and, most remarkable of all, it has not been extinguished, but ignited by the rainfall. Furthermore, the harder the storm pelts down upon the gate, the more fiercely the fire burns. Nor does it do so atop the great oak blocks: rather, its fierce, destructive heat appears to burn ferociously into the wood, as though it were a living, burrowing being, anxious to reach some point within or beyond the oak itself. In addition, its action is swift: the whitest parts of its terrible flame hiss and snap to match the pelting waters that drive it on.
All among Arnem’s force are anxious to brave the few archers of the Guard who have remained atop the South Gate (to do what good it is impossible to tell, for they are greatly outnumbered by the superior Talon and Bane bowmen who are covering the actions of Crupp’s ballistae), and to take turns feeding Crupp’s great machines: for, as Caliphestros continually cries out, the fire automatos must be constantly replenished, constantly fed, that the blue-and-white-flamed creature may continue to sate its feverish appetite to move inward, ever inward, as if it is a being not only voracious but single-minded:
And its sole goal, it seems, is to reach the opposite side of the oak before it, and reduce the mighty iron banding that binds those prodigious wooden towers to a pile of glowing scrap that the Broken horsemen will be able to pull away with comparative ease.
For all these reasons, and despite every word of doubt that he has ever voiced concerning both the Riddle of Water, Fire, and Stone (for who can doubt, now, that water and fire have indeed come together to defeat the mighty stone walls of Broken?) and the fire automatos itself, Heldo-Bah races about in mad ecstasy upon his pony, until he has clapped eyes upon the legless old man he has so often mocked. When he sees Caliphestros, sitting proudly—but still without complete satisfaction—on the back of the white panther, Heldo-Bah dismounts and races for the pair of them, first pushing his face in the pleased panther’s neck and burrowing as far into her wet, pungent fur as he is able, and then insisting on removing the old philosopher’s skullcap and kissing his balding pate.
“Heldo-Bah!” Caliphestros protests, although even Stasi cannot take his protests seriously enough to attempt to defend him. “Heldo-Bah, there is yet work to do, and you are behaving like a child who has become disordered in his mind and senses!”
“Perhaps so,” Heldo-Bah declares, taking a seat upon Stasi’s powerful back and coming as close to embracing the distinguished gentleman in front of him as Caliphestros will allow. “But you have made good on your promise, old man!” he cries. “And in doing so, you have made every other portion of this attack seem possible!” Carelessly replacing Caliphestros’s cap and tweaking his bearded cheek, the forager returns to the ground, and loudly kisses the muzzle of the great cat, who, while mystified by the action, is no less understanding of its intent, and in sheer joy, opens her mouth to let out that curious half-roar that is her method of communication.
And yet, Heldo-Bah thinks to himself, this is not the mournful sound that he has heard her make in the past; quite the contrary. The forager therefore turns to Caliphestros, who is busy fixing his skullcap with no little annoyance, to ask, “Lord Caliphestros? Is this joy at the humiliation of those who took the lives of her children? Or some other happiness that I do not understand?”
By this time, Caliphestros notices that the entire previous scene has been observed by Visimar, Keera, and Veloc, all of whom sit upon their mounts with wide grins, as Heldo-Bah retrieves his own pony and remounts it. “Nay,” Caliphestros says. “This is a specific happiness, I have but lately learned. When Lord Radelfer came to our camp, he brought me most extraordinary news: the sole cub of Stasi’s who was taken alive, all those years ago, by Baster-kin’s hunting party has been kept alive, for the amusement of the athletes in the great Stadium. As ‘alive,’ that is, as any animal can be kept in the dungeons below that place of sickening spectacle—”
The old philosopher is interrupt
ed by a single noise: the first great, thunderous crack of the oak planks of the South Gate. The attackers before the gate can suddenly make out, above the deteriorating portal, the figure of Lord Baster-kin, who is returning from the southwest wall: the site at which, the Merchant Lord had become certain, the main attack on Broken would actually come.
And although this much more may be impossible for those on the ground to perceive, Baster-kin’s proud face suddenly sinks into utter despair, as he realizes that his calculations have been incorrect; that whatever sorcery (and he persists in believing it so) the outcast criminal Caliphestros has used to create this fire that has been ignited by, and burns so terribly hot in the midst of, a rainstorm, it is the fire itself that may well prove his undoing.
“Very well,” he mutters bitterly, running his hands through his drenched hair and smelling the stench of his rain-soaked velvet cloak that clings to his armor. “But if my world is to vanish—then I can yet take pieces of yours with me …” Glancing about at the sky, and realizing that his long-held plan to burn the Fifth District has also been undone, Baster-kin feels his bitterness run deeper; and his only thought, now, is for vengeance. “For if my triumph can be stolen—then you will yet find, all of you, that yours can be turned to ashes in your mouths …” He glances at the Guardsmen immediately about him. “Three of you—now! We go upon what may be our last errands of blood!” And then, making his way into the nearest guardhouse, Baster-kin descends to the Fifth District, below, a long and lethal dagger appearing from within his cloak.
It is a dagger, however, that will be stricken from the Merchant Lord’s hand almost as soon as he exits the guard tower, just as life is immediately stricken from the unlucky Guardsmen who accompany him. And as he glances about, ready to inflict his wrath on whatever unlucky resident of the Fifth District may have committed the act, Baster-kin discovers a terrible fact that instantly changes the outlook of his entire existence. By now, the South Gate of the city has begun to glow with the destruction of its inner side, and by this light, Baster-kin can see clearly, circling him: