The Legend of Broken

“I shall say this, my lord,” Sixt Arnem announces, as he watches his trusted commanders move off toward their various tasks, then joins the legless old man. “Your years in the Wood have taught you endurance, but they have also made you forget how remarkable many things that you have come to take for granted must appear to men from either Okot or Broken. New realities or notions are not so easy to accept; and the facility with which you have brought myself, Yantek Ashkatar, and our respective officers to accept and appreciate the new realities with which you have acquainted us is to be commended — with no little awe, I might add.”

“The sentek speaks truly, Lord Caliphestros,” Ashkatar says, his characteristic laugh rolling up from his powerful chest as he follows Arnem. “No one shares your hatred for the men who rule in Broken more than we Bane; yet there were times when, even as I believed that you offered us hope, I could not understand — and, I will admit, even doubted the sense of — your orders and actions: the endless digging on our march home to Okot, after our initial meeting, or the very identity of your companion, the white panther, one of the great legends of our people … Once explained, of course all doubt was put away; but every day, every hour, every moment, it has seemed that not only our officers but our men have been asked to accept strange or incredible notions — yet they do so now as if they were the most common of commands. And here the sentek and I stand, by way of profound example, prepared to gamble the timing of the stages of our attack on communications brought by messengers who have feathers rather than feet!”

“This all may be true,” Caliphestros says at length. “But had I not happened upon men and women prepared to believe in all I have learned, any ‘new realities’ of my own would have been explained in vain. And now — but one more ‘new reality’ left to prove …” Straightening up, he searches the officers who move away from the tent. “Are Linnets Crupp and Bal-deric here?”

“We are, my lord,” Crupp answers, as he and Bal-deric step forward.

“And our various ballistae ready to take up their positions?” Caliphestros then indicates the roiling clouds that continue to darken the light of early morning. “For we must be ready when this storm strikes.”

“And we shall be, my lord. Please do not doubt that.” It is Bal-deric who now speaks. “The first group of machines reached their positions before this council dispersed. As for the others—” Bal-deric indicates the trail up from the training ground, alongside which sit not only Arnem’s command tent, but the second collection of Caliphestros’s ballistae. “We await only word from the Southwestern Gate, as well as any movement by the Guardsmen themselves, at which time we shall wheel them into both place — and action.”

“You must not make your actions too dependent upon such messages and signs,” Caliphestros replies, with more urgency than any officer present has seen him exhibit before. “The rain, gentlemen!” The old man leans forward to take up a nearby piece of fir branch and then waving it before Stasi’s jaws, at which the white panther begins to playfully yet fearsomely gnaw at the section of wood and needles. “When the rain strikes, the South Gate must be coated—” He points the branch toward the ballistae’s carts and their beds full of clay containers, each ready for launching. “And if indeed it is, you shall see something never before witnessed upon this mountain.” At last allowing Stasi to take the fir branch from him, that she may continue gnawing upon it, Caliphestros adds only: “I have said enough, I’m certain you will agree. Sentek Arnem — I leave the rest to you …”

While Caliphestros proceeds, as he has so often done on this march, to seek solace in the company of the white panther alone, Sixt Arnem declares, “Well, then, Bal-deric — finish the installation of your ballistae at the Southwestern Gate, and begin your bombardments. And with luck — we shall soon know you have completed the job properly by the cries of terror among Lord Baster-kin’s Guard!”

Happily, those cries do soon come, in good time for Linnet Crupp and Caliphestros to be prepared to move their second set of ballistae to join the others well before the rain climbs up the slopes of Broken. Preparations are nearly complete: what Lord Baster-kin sees as an ill-disciplined attack — one first striking at the East Gate, then at the Southwest — conducted by allies who know little about each other (and trust less), has in fact, to this point, been an elaborate performance carried on precisely to lead him to such a conclusion. How wrong or right he will have been to trust in his native prejudices, in the beliefs and disbeliefs handed down to him by generations of haughty but undeniably effective predecessors, must now be put to a mortal test. But the point of true attack shall not come at Broken’s East Gate, its strongest, nor at its Southwest, where Baster-kin has now been induced to have men and machines waiting, as well; rather, the assault will be launched, as it was always intended it should be launched, at the South Gate, another formidable portal before which it is particularly difficult to assemble a large host with supporting machines, and above all, a spot which Lord Baster-kin, who would never have been likely to expect such an assault, has been carefully convinced to think the allied force has struck from its list of candidates.

But, as is known to those who have studied war in the East, the greatest generals do not attack where their enemies are, but where they are not: a thought that would seem obvious, save for the incredible frequency with which commanders violate it. In addition, those same eastern military teachers exhort that battles are played out in the minds of those who conceive them long before the first screaming clash of arms takes place; and they are won ere the opposing commander ever offers his sword or his head in subjugation. These are all factors of importance, because Caliphestros is a man who has been as far to the East as anyone not born there, and he has studied these theories and practices of war well. Thus, it is his vision above all that plays out in the “Battle” for Broken, which is indeed a nearly concluded affair by the time that Linnet Bal-deric’s conventional ballistae begin to hammer the Southwest Gate of the city with enormous pieces of ancient granite: stone once cleared from within the walls of the city to allow its creation, but that never found its way back within to facilitate the construction of proper homes for the residents of the Fifth District, and which serves instead, now, to give force to the left claw of Sentek Arnem’s massively reimagined Krebkellen.

Despite the superiority of the allied force’s battle plan in Caliphestros’s mind, he is, by his own admission, no commander of men in the field; and it is thus for Sentek Arnem and Yantek Ashkatar to ensure the resolve of the warriors under their command once true battle has been joined. So far as the Bane fighters are concerned, Ashkatar knows that he need not concern himself with the contingent at the East Gate of the city: his men upon ponies had been tasked with but one responsibility — the creation and maintaining of so much mayhem that to those within Broken it would appear a fearsome company of horses and men were moving into position to attack. Such was and remains an assignment perfectly suited to the talents of Heldo-Bah, Ashkatar long ago determined: Visimar and Keera might have overseen its proper initiation, to ensure that it did not descend into the kind of ecstasy of madness on Heldo-Bah’s part of which the file-toothed Bane is more than capable — and this they have indeed managed to do, with the somewhat less effective help of Veloc, whose soul remains perilously balanced between the glistening heights of philosophy and the tempting depths of depravity. Yet the true rallying and spurring on of the eastern deceivers has been the work, above all, of the irrepressible and constantly screaming Heldo-Bah.

Back where the work of truly preparing an assault is being done, both Ashkatar’s and Sixt Arnem’s styles of inspiring and motivating their troops are once again on display, just as we have observed them so before in these pages. Ashkatar’s remains that strange combination of affectionate encouragement and harsh warning, punctuated by hard cracks of his ever-reliable whip, which keeps the men and women who form his ranks in motion. Yet, with the greater portion of the Bane horsemen at work to the east, what exactly are the rest of the Bane warriors responsible for, as the tasks of Sentek Arnem’s ballistae do the main work of the battle’s opening phase? We shall come to such matters soon enough: suffice to say now that Bane axes (new axes, forged for them by Caliphestros from the steel that the tribesmen believe comes from the stars and is gift from the Moon) can be heard within the mountain’s highest stands of trees, resounding as they strike the trunks of the mighty, lonely fir giants. It is not surprising, given all this activity, that Ashkatar’s already thunderous voice, made even more terrifying by the manner in which it resonates up from just below the peak of the mountain, is full of oaths both profane and affectionate — so affectionate, that the occasional Bane warrior takes no offense to seemingly insulting references to such things as his or her parentage:

“You, there!” he might bellow at a member of a felling crew. “I will not see such fainthearted effort from a whelp of mine!” And then the whip will crack, making a sound as harsh as the first cracks of the tree’s felling; and, finally, the commander’s voice sounds again: “Oh, you are no offspring of mine? Wipe that look from your face, soldier, there’s many a Bane on this mountain today to whom I am more than Yantek! Ha! Swing that axe as I would, you lazy pup!”

And the wonder is that the warriors under his command actually take heart from such perhaps absurd but