The Legend of Broken

The wolves have torn away the young man’s limbs, along with the gut-line that bound them, and slick white bone sockets shine out from the bloody groin and shoulders. The armor has frustrated attempts to get inside the body, but the head lies to one side, almost fully severed, the wide eyes slowly ceasing to reflect the moon. Heldo- Bah studies the remains, then retrieves the shining armlet from the ground and sets out for the river. He pauses after just a few steps, however, and turns to stare once more into the dead, horrified eyes of his young captive.

“Well, boy,” Heldo-Bah murmurs. “It’s a Bane’s education you’ve had tonight.” His cracked lips curl a final time, displaying something more complex than cruelty. “A shame you’ll never have a chance to use it …”

Turning back to snatch the soldier’s short-sword from about his ravaged right shoulder, Heldo-Bah is soon running fast enough to catch his companions before they reach the Fallen Bridge.

1:{v:}

Arnem’s long march into the heart of Broken, and the

mystery he encounters along the way …

“So it was wolves,” Linnet Niksar pronounces, having heard the terrible sounds that have reverberated up from the Plain below Broken; and though his words are conclusive, his tone lacks the certainty to match.

“Yes, Linnet,” agrees young Pallin Ban-Chindo, who tries to hide his relief at this Earthly explanation for the agonized cries. “Shall I stand the watch down, Sentek?”

Like his aide, however, Sixt Arnem does not share the young pallin’s certainty. “I wouldn’t, Ban-chindo,” he murmurs, eyes narrowing and deepening the scar-like creases at their corners: the product of a lifetime spent studying what ordinary eyes are slow to detect. “No, I would not …”

“Sentek?” Ban-chindo asks in surprise.

Arnem slowly lifts a finger to trace the black horizon of the forest. “Why the lengthy pause? Between the initial scream and the final attack?”

“That’s not hard to explain,” Ban-chindo answers, again letting his mouth move faster than respect dictates. “Sir!” he adds quickly.

“I’m delighted you think so,” Arnem chuckles, once more resting his forearms on the parapet. “Please share this easy explanation that eludes both Linnet Niksar and myself.”

Ban-chindo’s face twists with discomfort, as he realizes that his next statement had better be considered, deferential — and above all, accurate. “Well, Sentek — the first cry was one of alarm. A reaction, upon spying the pack, and a warning to the other members of his patrol.”

Arnem nods slowly, settling the pallin’s spirits considerably. “That may have been the intent behind it — yet what would such tell us about the man who cried out?”

Ban-chindo’s mouth falls open. “Sentek?”

“Come now, Ban-chindo, think,” Arnem says, firmly but without anger. “You, too, Niksar. What have we said about the tricks that sound can play on a man near the Cat’s Paw?”

Linnet Niksar’s features fill with comprehension. “If he is part of Baster-kin’s Guard, he would know the others are unlikely to hear him.”

“True. Unless …” This has always been Arnem’s way: to draw ideas from his men, rather than to bellow indictments of their blindness.

Ban-chindo snaps upright once again: he has used the moment well. “Unless — he was a new recruit. He may have been unaware of local conditions, and patrolled too far from the rest of the watch.”

Arnem smiles and nods. “Yes, Ban-chindo,” he says, offering the young man a look that any soldier of Broken would endure great hardship to receive. “Yours is the best explanation.” As quickly as it brightened, however, Arnem’s face grows dark. “But it is not particularly reassuring …”

Ban-chindo is too confused to speak, leaving Niksar to ask: “Why not, Sentek? It’s no joy to lose a man, but better to wolves than—”

“My dear Niksar,” Arnem interrupts a bit impatiently. “You don’t find it strange that wolves should know to pick an ignorant new recruit, at an ideal distance from the river, when there are so many easier targets? The cattle, for example — what pack of wolves risks a struggle against men, when grazing livestock are to be had? No …” Arnem gazes out at the faraway edge of Lord Baster-kin’s Plain a final time, as if he will tease more clues from it with his eyes alone. “There is more to this business than we yet know. Something, and even more likely someone, was certainly lying in wait for just such a target as our unfortunate new recruit …”†

A few quiet moments pass, as Niksar and Pallin Ban-chindo watch their chief cast his gaze over the distant line of the Wood. Eventually, Niksar must step forward. “Sentek? The council in the Sacristy—”

“Hak!”‡ Arnem noises, rousing himself. “Curse me for a buggered Bane …” It is another of the popular oaths, the use of which mark the sentek as an outsider among the ruling classes of Broken, but which have helped forge his close bond to his men. “Yes, Niksar, we must be away. Ban-chindo — eyes and ears open, eh? If anything of further interest happens, you’ll bring the news to me yourself — understood?”

“I — am to report to the High Temple?” the young man replies, once more the very image of Broken pride. “Yes, Sentek!”

“Good. Come, Niksar, before Korsar’s impatience turns to rage.”

And the two officers of the Talons finally vanish into the chisel-scored walls of the guard tower, and down its worn stone steps.

The carving of Broken’s outer walls took more than twenty years to complete, even under Oxmontrot’s ferocious direction. It meant death for thousands of laborers, and misery for many more. But the impenetrable barrier that finally surrounded the Mad King’s fortress-city was, on its completion, a source of awe even for those who had suffered cruelly during its construction. And there were many ways to suffer: for in the early years of Oxmontrot’s reign, the first of the banishments took place, as a pragmatic means of ensuring that those citizens of the infant kingdom who were too feeble — in body or mind — to contribute to the great undertaking would not occupy its members’ energies with pointless care-giving, consume any of the initially thin streams of foodstuffs that came up the mountain, or waste space in the crude shelters that were built for the healthy.† Cruel reasoning; yet effective.

Arnem and Niksar make their way swiftly to the foot of the guard tower steps, and, once outside, proceed along a pathway that runs at the base of the city’s outer walls, and is kept clear at all times for the passage of troops. Taking a left turn, Arnem decides to cut the distance to Yantek Korsar’s quarters by taking Broken’s main avenue, the Celestial Way,‡ which separates the market stalls of the Second District from the more formal shops and sturdy residences of the Third. Weary of his family worries, the sentek turns his mind to his duties, and to the possibilities that may be unfolding: Must it be the Bane? he wonders, in silent frustration. Will no more worthy enemy present themselves? He thinks of his months fighting Torganian raiders amid the frozen passes of the Tombs, and of the ferocity of those southern tribes: surely, he has not survived many years of faithful service only to discover that the soldiers of Broken are to be given the humiliating task of chasing a race of wretched exiles through an impenetrable wilderness. And why chase them? Simply because of the occasional crimes of the Bane Outragers? Whatever god does rule the affairs of men, Arnem decides, he or she would not permit so noble an instrument as the Talons to be bent to so petty a purpose. Perhaps it will be an eastern campaign: an attempt to finally confront the horsed marauders who press Broken’s borders with a regularity that nearly matches that of the rising Sun, out of whose blinding brightness they prefer to attack; or perhaps the fearsomely organized soldiers of Lumun-jan have returned once more—

Neither these ambitious ruminations nor his underlying anxieties about the possible connection between the dilemma facing his family and this unexpected council can dull the physical instincts first sharpened during Arnem’s childhood: as he and Niksar pass the mouth of an offal-strewn alleyway that feeds the Celestial Way from the west, the sentek ducks to keep his head from being struck by a hurtling object. A clay wine jug smashes into the mortared