The Legend of Broken

continuing to blow with true ferocity, causing the old man’s robe to drag directly across his body, and his beard across his face, as well; but his skullcap remained in place, and an expression of wilder emotion than any of his forager friends had ever seen him exhibit soon came into his features.

“So soon?” Caliphestros said, staring only briefly at the winding points of lights on Lord Baster-kin’s Plain before moving to a large, naturally formed basin in the outer rock of the cave’s entrance, one that was full of rainwater. A small cake of the same soap that the old man had insisted the Bane diggers use during their march to Okot lay on the basin’s edge. “Then they cannot be the column of Talons that is on its way from Daurawah,” he said, as he began to scrub himself clean of the coal dust and other black patches on his skin that had formed during the smelting and smithing processes earlier in the day.

“Not if they behave so stupidly as to light their path for us to see plainly,” Veloc replied. “Although how you could have known that the Talons went to Daurawah in the first place remains a mystery to me, Lord Caliphestros.”

“It was the only logical direction to take, if they needed to collect supplies and forage for their horses,” Caliphestros answered with a smile. “Besides, did not your tribe’s Outrager spies observe them taking the eastern road as they departed Broken?”

“Yes,” Heldo-Bah said, spitting on the ground. “But to trust in the reports of the Outragers is folly — and even if one accepts that they were right, it does not explain your insistence that the plague was also active in the Tall’s port, Lord Caliphestros.”

Caliphestros glanced again at the swaying treetops, and smiled slightly. “You must allow me a few secrets, Heldo-Bah.”

But Keera, also glancing at the loudly rustling branches above, knew the secret of the old man’s wisdom concerning this subject, even if she could not, at that moment, see either the starling called Little Mischief or the enormous (and enormously proud) owl named Nerthus.

“So — if it is not the Talons, the question becomes, Who is it?” Having voiced the question, the old man moved on his single wooden leg and crutches to stand beside Heldo-Bah, who was scratching at Stasi’s thick coat. Leaning against her other shoulder, the old man removed his walking device, then bundled the wooden leg and crutches, and slung them on his back. Climbing with little difficulty onto the neck and upper back of the panther, he settled himself as Stasi stood fully upright again, and Heldo-Bah took a step back “Well, whoever it is,” the old man continued, “Yantek Ashkatar must make his preparations — with all crossings over the Cat’s Paw save the Fallen Bridge destroyed, he must position his best men amid the Wood on this side of that pathway, so that he will, from the first, force these Broken soldiers to fight on the Bane’s chosen ground, and according to the Bane’s most practiced dispositions and maneuvers. Has he been alerted?”

“Yantek Ashkatar is even now about the very activities you have mentioned,” Veloc replied. “He has obeyed your counsel wholly, in preparing this first battle, my lord, despite the objections of the Priestess of the Moon.”

“And he is to be congratulated for that bravery,” Caliphestros judged with a nod. “For myself, I would observe the proceedings from the large rocks I took note of on our journey to Okot. You know the place of which I speak, Keera?”

“I do, my lord,” Keera replied, somewhat unnerved at the mention of the very spot where the foragers had left behind the arrogant but deadly Outrager, Welferek. “We had an — encounter near there, at the beginning of this business.”

Heldo-Bah and Veloc exchanged looks, Heldo-Bah’s merry but Veloc’s somewhat sheepish.

Caliphestros stared hard at the tracker. “And I am certain that your brother will join me, Keera, in urging, even insisting, that you join me there — you are the only parent your children possess, now, and they need you far more than does Yantek Ashkatar.”

Keera looked quickly to her brother, who only nodded sternly. “He is right, Keera,” Veloc said. “And, if it offers you any consolation, I anticipate being ordered to join the two of you, that I may be able to prepare records for a saga recounting the tale of this battle.”

“So I go alone to draw Tall blood?” Heldo-Bah said, at once proud and a little uneasy about losing his comrades. “Well — I cannot argue your reasoning, Lord of Science, and still less can I condemn yours, Keera. And, as it will no doubt infuriate that little vixen, our Priestess, I suppose I must accept even yours, Veloc. Finally, the truth is, this will be hard and bloody work, best undertaken by those who truly relish the opportunity …”

As if to confirm Heldo-Bah’s statement, a sudden, single sounding of the Bane Voice of the Moon was heard, telling all who had been laboring on the mountain ridge or anywhere else outside Okot that the time had come to gather for battle. The blast was short, for the enemy was near and growing nearer.

A certain light entered Caliphestros’s eyes, once more, and he urged Stasi to climb to the top of their temporary cave, which offered a fine view, not only of far-off Broken mountain and the city atop it, but of the Cat’s Paw in the middling distance, and Lord Baster-kin’s Plain just beyond that waterway. The three foragers scrambled to follow, fighting both the steep, slippery slope of the cave’s rock and the mounting wind, which was creating the haunting notion that there was a mareh behind every tree, inside every cave, and ready to strike from behind every rock.

So much the stranger was it, then, that when the foragers at last joined Caliphestros and Stasi, they found the old man with a look of terrible joy upon his face, and the panther snarling with enthusiasm to descend from the mountain they were perched upon, and make for the enemy that was approaching and, even more importantly, for those ever-burning lights beyond the walls of the city in the far distance.

“They are actually doing it,” Caliphestros called to the foragers when they reached him. “See there!” He pointed to the long line of torches as, in the manner of a stream of liquid, the soldiers left the safety of the Plain and began a careful crossing of the Moonlit river’s last remaining bridge. “The fools enter the Wood without pause! Baster-kin will risk the lives of what looks to be a full khotor of his own Guard in order to eclipse the power and prestige of Sentek Arnem’s Talons, and the regular army as whole — he would secure the land and riches of the Wood for the merchants and the royal faction alone! Never has he been so foolish.”

And with that, the party began a run, first to Okot, so that Keera might briefly take leave of her children, and then to the rocks that overlooked the southern side of the Fallen Bridge (and, in the middling distance to the southeast, the Ayerzess-werten). Their dash took a number of hours, although far less, as always, than it would have taken any ordinary forest travelers at night. The length of time might have been still less, had they not paused for an unforeseen interruption; an interruption that would not so much solve the enigma of Caliphestros, to Keera, as leave old questions answered, and new ones posed …

3:{vi:}

Somewhere on the trail between Okot and their destination, the foragers,

Caliphestros, and Stasi stumble upon a remarkable sight …

It was, of course, the white panther who sensed the presence first, although it was not long before Keera did so, as well. When the grade of the swiftly moving group’s path began to slowly flatten, indicating that the valley of the Cat’s Paw was growing closer, Stasi stopped, so suddenly as to almost hurl her rider onto the ground before her. To Caliphestros’s repeated inquiries concerning the cause of her refusal to move forward, the panther only put her nose high in the air, searching the wind that continued to blow from the west; and, once she had determined the definite direction from which the scent she detected came, she continued forward, although not along the same direct course toward the riverbed that she had previously been following. Caliphestros turned to the tracker, who continued to run beside them.

“Keera!” he called. “Stasi will not respond to my direction — this has never happened before, without her first leaving me behind! Have you sensed anything that would make her behave so?”

A strange expression entered Keera’s features, Caliphestros noted, one to match Stasi’s behavior. “I fear I have only too good an idea of what she is about, my lord,” the tracker replied, tilting her ear rather than her nose into the same breeze that seemed to have agitated Stasi so, as she continued to match the panther’s pace. “I can just hear a male brown bear making the sounds and performing the dance of mating†—yet the female scent that