will be damned if I will do any such thing!”
“You will be damned, whatever your actions!” Keera declares, quietly but passionately. “Which is why we thought it best not to consult you on the matter.” She turns and takes the few steps needed to put her angry face in his. “In the name of our people, in the name of my family that saved you, in the name of my children, who, for whatever innocent reasons of their own, love you as they would any true uncle, you
Realizing that he has already been utterly outmaneuvered, Heldo-Bah allows his face and shoulders to sag with displeasure. “Very well,” he at length replies.
“It will at the least allow you to collect your silver from Linnet Niksar,” Veloc says tauntingly.
“And so — bring forth a blindfold, Visimar,” the sentek says, glancing at Caliphestros. “But I will make one request: may we make our visit as brief as possible? For it has been brought to my attention that you are correct in assuming my wife is in grave danger, Lord Caliphestros, and my men and I must march at once to her relief — a march upon which I should be proud to have the Bane army accompany us.” Arnem turns his eyes to the Bane leader. “Father?”
“We may be brief,” says the Father in reply, impressed by Arnem’s courage and invitation, both. “So long as we are thorough, as well.”
Arnem agrees with a silent nod, and looks again at the remarkable man atop the equally remarkable panther. “I assume your former acolyte will be accompanying us, my lord?”
Caliphestros smiles, now: the true smile of a man who has begun to be restored. “You assume correctly, Sentek …,” he says, at which Visimar brings forward a strip of clean cotton that Niksar has reluctantly produced for him.
“Must I, too, bind my eyes, master?” Visimar asks Caliphestros.
“You need not,” the latter replies with a small laugh. “But you must stop calling me ‘master.’ If I have learned nothing else from the last ten years, and from this noble tribe that has survived in so harsh a wilderness, it is that such titles, while they may belong within the kingdom of Broken, have no place outside it.”
“Then bind my eyes alone,” Arnem repeats, as the Groba Father issues a last set of quiet instructions to Ashkatar and Keera, and they then begin to make their way to the line of the Broken soldiers. “And do not despair, Niksar — for you must command, now, and that will be worry enough.” The sentek smiles briefly. “That and — paying your losses …” Arnem studies the faces of his “captors,” then dismounts the Ox, steps forward, and bids his mount farewell as he prepares to submit to the binding of his eyes.
At this moment, Caliphestros allows Stasi to stray somewhat closer to Arnem. It is not the Ox’s being led back to the line of the Talons by Niksar that causes the legless old philosopher to so approach: for both Arnem and the Ox know that, if plunged into a fury, the panther could take down even so impressive and mature a Broken warhorse as Arnem’s, and likely would: the last time Stasi saw such an animal, after all, was on that terrible day that her family was lost to her, seemingly forever. Rather, the old scholar desires a moment of confidentiality with the man he long ago and correctly surmised would be the only possible choice to fill Yantek Korsar’s position as commander of both the Talons and the army of Broken: “Again I urge you to remember one thing, above all, on this journey, Sentek,” he says. “The actors in this drama may all be playing far different roles than you have been trained to believe. Keep your mind open to the full range of possibilities, for such is the only true path to knowledge. Of any kind.”
Arnem smiles: a genuine and conciliatory expression of hope that the two men may soon be reconciled. “Ever the pedant, even without your legs, eh, Caliphestros?” he says, in such a way that the panther’s rider cannot but laugh again at his own manner. “Well, fear not,” Arnem adds. “I am prepared to heed your advice, I assure you.”
With Arnem’s sight securely if temporarily taken from him, all parties to the truce begin the processions — one short, one longer — back to their respective safe territories, when Arnem suddenly stops and turns back toward his own men.
“Radelfer,” the blindfolded sentek calls. “Will you tell my children where I have gone, and that I have every expectation of returning tomorrow?”
“I shall, Sentek,” Radelfer responds. “And, I believe I can now tell them that they need not fear for your safety — that you travel with an honorable people.”
And it is in this mood of perhaps promising confusion that the meeting under the snapping sheet of white cotton concludes, and the development of events that will only be more decisive commences.
“Feel and smell the breeze,” Arnem says, being led away by Visimar behind Caliphestros and Stasi.
“I have done so for quite some time, now,” Caliphestros answers, turning toward the Broken commander as they reach the members of the Bane Groba.
“It heralds rain,” the Groba Father comments, as the procession back toward the Fallen Bridge begins. “Will that interfere with what you have planned, Lord Caliphestros?”
A deeply satisfied smile enters the scholar’s features. “Only if it arrives too early, Father. But that it
3:{xi:}†
The “Battle” for Broken
1
During Sentek Arnem’s brief visit to Okot, when that good man and great soldier did indeed learn that the members of the Bane tribe were neither demons, degenerates, nor defective human beings bent on betraying the current truce in order to further prepare their own assault on Broken, the wise and cunning Caliphestros had not been idle. Working, for the time being, without the assistance of the three Bane foragers upon whom he had come to rely, but with the once-familiar aid of his partially crippled acolyte, Visimar, as well as among a people who had come to accept his presence and give him whatever help they could, he had located the two largest carts in the town, as well as any and all brass pots, jugs, amphorae, and other containers that were available or could be made so. The latter were stacked and cradled inside the beds of the former, and the whole lot drawn up to the aged scholar’s cave laboratory: drawn, that is, by powerful Bane warriors, for the Bane had no oxen or cattle or horses of their own. Once there, each container was filled by Caliphestros and Visimar with one of several, usually foul- smelling substances: the true and mysterious fruits of the peculiar labors that Keera had, from time to time, observed Caliphestros undertaking during his time among her people, ingredients which together formed the mysterious answer to the Riddle of Water, Fire, and Stone, an answer whose components needed to be treated gently, Caliphestros emphasized, during the journey back to Arnem’s camp on Lord Baster-kin’s Plain.
Despite the two old scholars’ inscrutable activities (the true explanation of which, Caliphestros had told the Bane again and again, would best be supplied when the results of the experiment took form before the gates of Broken), Sentek Arnem’s visit and behavior had established such an air of surprise and open trust in Okot, and so quickly, that it was a foregone conclusion that the Groba — when they met with him on the morning after his arrival, before his return to his camp — would indeed order Yantek Ashkatar to take as many of his men as Arnem deemed fit and place them under the sentek’s command, to be a part of the force that would now march back up Broken’s mountain to determine what, precisely, was the truth of the situation inside the city. There had, of course, been some argument from the Priestess of the Moon, who objected to there being no role in the campaign assigned to her Woodland Knights; but, when Sentek Arnem had assured both her and the Groba Elders that feeling in Broken against the Outragers ran every bit as high as did the Bane’s toward Lord Baster-kin’s Guard, and that their presence would only complicate and perhaps defeat the purpose of the endeavor, the Groba Father had decreed absolutely that the Outragers would not participate, even if only in a rearguard action to ensure that no troops from Broken slipped past the Talons and Ashkatar’s attack, to launch another assault on Davon Wood.
