The Legend of Broken

Little Mischief and says, firmly, “Fever—Wood.”

“Fee-vah Wood! Wood fee-vah!” the starling replies, now struggling to get a wing free of his human companion, who is finally satisfied that he will speak the correct words at the correct time, and releases Little Mischief to sit upon a nearby branch.

“Which leaves but one thing more,” Caliphestros says, reaching into his bag—

And from it he withdraws another golden arrow, indistinguishable from that which he and Keera took from the dead member of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard. The enormous owl immediately flies toward Caliphestros’s shoulder, shocking the human with her speed, then hovers a few inches above him in order to allow those talons that do not carry the flowers — and which are fully as large as human fingers — to snatch the arrow away from him: once again, no instructions would seem needed, but Caliphestros looks to the starling again, if only to be certain.

“The arrow, Little Mischief,” he says. “Also to Visimar.”

“Viz-ee-mah! Awhoh!” the starling repeats, again comically enough to cause Caliphestros to cradle his head in his hands and try to stifle a bout of chuckling, lest the birds think him anything but resolved and serious in his instructions to them.

As both Keera and Caliphestros will shortly be missed by the rest of their traveling party, she is happy to see Caliphestros wave his arms and send the birds off. They circle the little clearing behind the hillock where they have received their latest instructions, and then finally straighten their path of flight so that they head in the direction of the Fallen Bridge over Hafften Falls and, beyond it, the most likely place for the forces of Broken to make camp before any sort of engagement with Ashkatar’s army. Caliphestros then shifts his robe in order to relieve himself (his nominal purpose for coming to this removed place) without shifting from the log, and finally urges Stasi to stand close by and lower her neck, so that he can slide from the log onto her shoulders easily. Keera takes the first indication of the old man’s personal actions as her signal to move back along the treetops that she traveled to reach her perch. In a matter of only a few seconds more, she hears her brother and Heldo-Bah calling her name, a distinct sense of worry in Veloc’s voice.

Even for the famous Keera, the marvelous manner in which she manages to move back through the treetops is a wonder; and it is not long before she is once again among the men and women who have collected for the last leg of their march, and coolly lying to her brother and Heldo-Bah by saying that, as Caliphestros had taken the opportunity to see to his private business, she thought that she would, as well.

“You might have told someone, Keera,” Veloc chides.

“Great Moon, Veloc,” Heldo-Bah bellows, “you would be a thousand times more likely to be taken off by some forest beast than Keera ever would — I really don’t know why you persist in playing this idiotic game of being the responsible brother. It’s almost as feebleminded as your insistence on your being an expert historian.”

“Do not go so far as considering a return to that subject, you two,” comes a new voice; and the three foragers all turn to see Caliphestros and Stasi appearing from the darkness. “The time for idiotic blather has passed,” he continues; but his orders cannot stop Veloc from trembling just a bit as he notes to himself what a truly ghostly apparition the white panther is, in this sort of rapidly fading light.

“Great Moon,” Veloc whispers to Heldo-Bah, “it’s truly no wonder the Tall fear her as they do — the animal appears as out of the night air!”

“Ah, ficksel,” Heldo-Bah answers calmly. “And you dare call me the superstitious one?”

At which point Yantek Ashkatar steps forward and declares, “All right, then — to those of you continuing on: I intend to be within the Den of Stone in two hours — and Heldo-Bah, if we fail to make it in that time, I shall know whose back my whip will cut, in return!”

“Brave words, when you have an army behind you, Ashkatar,” Heldo-Bah answers, nonetheless falling alongside the middling-long column of soldiers to keep pace with them. “But neither the Bane nor the Tall have yet made the whip that will cut my skin, I promise you that …”

Once again walking beside Stasi and Caliphestros as they move to catch up to Ashkatar, Keera shakes her head. “I promise you, my lord — there really are Bane tribe members who are not so devoted to bickering as are those two. Or three, I suppose, if you number Yantek Ashkatar among them, these three—”

“Oh, I am certain of it,” Caliphestros interrupts, an enigmatic smile entering his features. “Indeed, I have seen those among your people who can be almost silent — even as they dance along the treetops …”

3:{iii:}

Arrival on Lord Baster-kin’s Plain presents

Sentek Arnem’s Talons with an eerie silence …

On the morning that Sixt Arnem marches his full khotor of the Talons onto the section of Lord Baster-kin’s Plain north of the Fallen Bridge, he finds no evidence that the men from the Esleben garrison, who were to have met him there, have survived one or the other of the pestilences that Visimar has been able to determine are at work in Broken, during their march to the Cat’s Paw. Similarly, but far more surprisingly, there is no sign of the detachment of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard that has always been assigned to the northernmost boundary of the great family’s most arable and strategic piece of land; yet neither is there any visible token that these men met with some calamity. Instead, as the Talons make their way through the rough, high grass at the edge of the Plain and then south into the rich pastureland that has been chewed to a short and almost uniform length by the Baster-kin family’s renowned shag cattle, they encounter what is, in many ways, the most unnerving circumstance for soldiers who are on the march, full of questions, and far from home:

Nothing.

True, the cattle graze in their ordinary manner (or rather, most of them do, for there are clearly more than a few missing), and take little notice of the newcomers, save to move off to a safe distance; yet none shows any obvious sign of disease. Nevertheless, Arnem’s men are all aware that units of the Guard should be patrolling this part of the Plain: and so where are they? Arnem knows that action is the only cure for his own as well as his men’s bewilderment: thus, after ordering the establishment of a central camp, the sentek orders his scouts to employ their keen talents for detection as far as a dozen miles up and down the northern bank of the Cat’s Paw, reminding them, along with the rest of his men, that no water from the river is to be consumed, either by themselves or by their mounts, save from the several collecting ponds for rainwater that the Baster-kin family has constructed throughout the Plain over the last several years. Arnem’s central camp is hard by one such pool; and as his tent is erected, the sentek orders the establishment of an observation post near the southernmost of the these small sources of safe water, a post that, situated closest to the Fallen Bridge, offers a commanding view of both the river and the Wood beyond. Tents are pitched, there, campfires lit, watches scheduled, and the men are ordered to be ready at a moment’s notice.

As the sounds of the other fausten preparing their own tents around Arnem’s begin to resonate through the midday air north of the bridge, the sentek, Niksar and Visimar move their horses ever closer to the rough border of the Plain that lines its southern edge, Arnem’s eyes alert for any sign of Akillus or his men returning with news, and particularly for any sign of the missing members of Baster-kin’s Guard. The mood throughout the Plain grows more grim if determined with the passage of each hour, as does the bitterness over the advantage that the soldiers who were supposed to have been already positioned in the area might have offered.

“Damn them,” Arnem seethes softly, and neither Visimar nor Niksar have any trouble understanding who is the object of his ire. “I did not expect to find those brass-banded dandies alert and at their posts, but somewhere in the vicinity of those positions might have been of some use.”

“Would you expect jackals to become wolves, then, Sentek,” Visimar asks in reply, “simply because an air of danger presents itself?”

Niksar nods slowly. “He speaks truly, Sentek,” the linnet murmurs. “Given that this would be the first prize that the Bane would likely attempt to seize during any attack on the kingdom, we might have expected that the