The Legend of Broken

athletes of the Stadium has angered the old gods of Broken, who are punishing the city as a whole and thus calling into question Kafra’s long-asserted supremacy. Certainly Oxmontrot himself, a worshipper of the old gods, never intended for such noble creatures to be trapped, safely secured by heavy chains to concrete posts rising out of the sands of the arena, and made to serve as opponents that can do little or no harm to the children of Broken’s merchant nobility; and in this Lord Baster-kin shares the Mad King’s feelings. But his disdain cannot stem the rising popularity of such displays among the future heads of the kingdom’s ruling clans: in ever-increasing numbers they come, day and night, not only to display their prowess in the arena, but to indulge in what are, to the Merchant Lord, the even more mindless and loathsome activities that take place in the endless rows of benches and private stalls that surround that sandy stage: gambling, of course, but also drinking to excess, as well as fornication that has no bearing on the arrangement of marriages or the strengthening and preservation of clans.

All of these would together represent cause enough for Baster-kin’s hatred of the Stadium. But, as always, there is a personal sentiment hidden behind his purely moral objections: for among the young men most active in the Stadium’s amusements is his lordship’s own eldest son (and his sole acknowledged child), Adelwulf. Indeed, had Adelwulf never shown any interest in the amusements that take place inside the thick, elaborately carved walls of the Stadium, Baster-kin would likely never have set foot inside it; but, given his son’s persistence, his lordship must occasionally visit the place, if only to chide the athletes and audiences, and remind them all — Adelwulf most of all — of the damage they are doing to Broken’s future by thus squandering their lives.

These occasional descents by his father are more than a mere embarrassment for Adelwulf: over the last several years especially, the Stadium has become a place in which the handsome young man’s unquenchable appetites for besting others in wrestling matches and battles of wooden or blunt-edged steel swords, facing the many chained beasts that are on offer in the cells below the sands, and finally drinking and fornicating in the stalls above the arena have grown to equal his distaste for going home to his own clan’s Kastelgerd. When he sees his father enter the Stadium, therefore, he considers it a violation, of sorts, of the only place in Broken that he thinks of as his home. For the sake of gaining stature with his associates, Adelwulf usually attempts to laugh off his father’s intrusions and patriotic rants, confidently and caustically: for he knows well the story of Rendulic Baster-kin’s famous panther hunt, undertaken when his lordship was Adelwulf’s own age, and he cannot help but find a good deal of hypocrisy in his father’s indictments. And indeed, Baster-kin has never, in his storied life, come closer to a battlefield than that single instance of blood sport; yet that one exposure was a world away from what he now views …

And, if truth be spoken, Adelwulf, this golden-haired, finely sculpted paragon of Kafran virtue, actually burns less with sarcasm, at his father’s arrival, than with shame: shame and hatred, the latter a passion born out of his enduring resentment for his father’s having driven his mother mad (or so it seems to the youth) and his sister Loreleh into exile. Adelwulf had known Loreleh only too briefly; yet during that time he had come to think of her as the only sibling he had ever known or was ever likely to know, since all awareness of Klauqvest had ever been kept from him; and a life alone in the great Kastelgerd with a lunatic mother and so arch a father had become no life at all. Loreleh had been his temporary respite; and the reasons cited for her removal had never seemed any more sound or just to Adelwulf than they had to his mother.

On this night, however, there will be no exhortations by the elder Baster-kin, and no typical complaints from the younger: for, as his lordship arrives at the Stadium gate and begins to hear the sounds made by the crowd within, he realizes that he truly needs to convince any of the young men amid that throng who possess a genuine talent for violence that they have no choice save to march alongside his Guardsmen into Davon Wood, and to participate — in commanding roles, if possible — in the final destruction of the Bane. And he believes, too, that he has finally conceived of an action that will be striking and decisive enough to shock such play warriors into becoming true soldiers. It is an action, not surprisingly, that will also play a crucial role in bringing his plans concerning Isadora Arnem to full fruition; yet despite the very real advantages it may garner, it is a measure of this the plan’s extremity that even Baster-kin himself wonders if, when the moment comes, he will possess the steadiness of purpose to carry it out …

He does not wonder for very long. As he passes under the Stadium gate and stands at the edge of the arena, his eyes and ears are assaulted by sights and sounds that are as wildly intoxicating as ever to those young men and women who either participate in or observe them. The combat that takes place in the arena is, to all present, a most splendid display of the ideals of Broken youth, power, and beauty, all the more arousing for the knowledge that it will never result in the death of a human being, but risks only the lives of those powerful woodland beasts that are brought up from the dungeon-like cells in chains. So extreme is the activity at this late hour, both in the arena and in the rows of seats that stretch into the sky about Baster-kin, that he feels his hatred begin to surge anew, and his momentary qualms to subside. Radelfer, who has followed his lord into the arena, can detect as much: he has seen this man, both as a youth and in his present middle years, with death stalking his features, and he sees as much again when Rendulic studies the Stadium crowd this night.

“My lord?” Radelfer says, the concern he felt for his master’s soundness of mind when they departed the Fifth District still very alive. “Are you well? It has already been a long night of difficult undertakings — should we not return to the Kastelgerd? You can leave the chastising of your son for tomorrow.”

“Concerning that matter, you could not be more mistaken, Radelfer,” his lordship answers. “These people must finally learn their duty, and understand the consequences of ignoring it; and they must be taught such lessons tonight.”

As soon as the crowd in the Stadium begins to take as much notice of him as he already has of it, Baster-kin is appalled to see the usual wave of petitioners moving toward him, each looking for some favor that will allow him to serve in civil government without having to undertake precisely the sort of military service for which the Merchant Lord has already selected him. At the same time, as good fortune would have it, Baster-kin sees that Radelfer has taken the precaution of ordering some eight or ten members of his household guard to report from the Kastelgerd to the Stadium, likely by runner while his lordship was in council with the Layzin. The men are arriving now — yet the only thanks Baster-kin offers his seneschal is to say:

“Have your men keep those people away from me tonight, Radelfer. My business is far too important.” He pauses, searching the various combatants in the ring before adding, “In every way imaginable …” Glancing at the supposed acts of bravery upon the sands ever more keenly, Baster-kin at last determines: “I do not see my son exercising his talents out there — but find him, Radelfer. Bring him to me. For he has always trusted you more than he has his father. I shall await you—” Baster-kin continues to eye the arena. “There.” He points to one concrete pillar near the center of the sandy oval, to which is anchored a chain that restricts the movements of a large Broken brown bear, preventing the confused, enraged animal from injuring any of the several young men who are proving their “courage” by tormenting him with spears and swords, evidently to the crowd’s satisfaction.

As Baster-kin makes his way to the concrete pillar he has indicated and is recognized by ever more of the crowd, a strange hush falls over those participating in the various activities in the arena as well those among the audience. It is not a hush inspired by affection, of course, although it certainly contains a large measure of respect. When he nears the concrete pillar to which the brown bear is chained, Baster-kin takes aside one of the enormous, scarred Stadium attendants — the men who do the inglorious work of moving animals and racks of weapons from the arena to the scarcely lit iron cages and storage rooms below — and orders the man and his fellow workers to remove all the animals to their cages, and disarm all combatants. It is a command that would draw jeers, were it issued by any other official: but now, no voice among the assembled athletes and spectators is brave enough to express the disapproval that all feel. Such is the effect of the hard glare that the Merchant Lord moves from face to face about and above him; such is the effect he has long cultivated.

Only when his eyes settle on Radelfer, who stands outside a curtained stall that is one of a group approximately a third of the way up the Stadium benches, does Baster-kin stop studying the crowd. Then, when he takes more specific note of the expression upon his seneschal’s face — one of genuine regret for the very public family spectacle that he believes is about to take place — his lordship jumps down from the pillar’s base and, issuing a final order to one of the animal handlers, moves at a quick pace to join Radelfer before the more (if not completely) sympathetic seneschal has a chance to warn Adelwulf of his father’s approach.

When Baster-kin closes in on the stall, he begins to hear the sounds of fornication emerging from it; and when his lordship arrives, he rips the curtain away, to find his son fully engaged with one young noblewoman, the pair of them having bothered to shift their scant clothing only enough to allow him to enter her, while a second young woman laughs and holds a wineskin, alternately pouring its contents into Adelwulf’s mouth and pressing her ample breasts into that same hungry maw. At the sound of the curtain being torn, the two young women shriek, for