The Legend of Broken

“And moments are all that we now require,” Arnem answers calmly, bracing his shoulder against the gateway door. Then, taking Dagobert’s marauder sword from the young man, he tosses it aside. “Akillus and his men, and perhaps even soldiers from the Fourth, should be here soon. To meet the challenge that faces us until their arrival, however, that blade will not serve you best.”

“Sixt,” Isadora says, with quiet urgency. “What can you be planning? You saw what they did to poor Kriksex and those other men — they will not hesitate to treat us in like manner, once they have broken down that door.”

“And that, wife, will be the moment at which I observe how much our son has truly learned during his afternoons in the Fourth Quarter, as well as from his comrades of late,” Arnem answers, pulling Isadora to him, kissing her once again and then, with his shoulder still hard against the rattling gate, nodding toward the house. “Get your mother inside, Dagobert: see to it that she locks herself in that basement that none of us are supposed to know she frequents as often as she does. Then, get upstairs, and get yourself a decent Broken short-sword. One of my best, along with the largest of my shields.”

“Truly?” Dagobert replies, swallowing his own fears and trying to match his father’s confidence as he pulls his mother toward the house.

“Truly,” Arnem calls after them. “You recall the first rule of Broken swordsmanship?”

Dagobert nods. “Yes—‘the slash wounds, but the lunge kills.’ ”

Arnem acknowledges the statement with a proud smile. “As the eastern marauders, with their curved weapons, have so often paid with their lives to discover. Go on, then: it’s a new, straight blade for you, and one decent shield for us to share — for it’s a great deal of lunging that lies ahead!”

“But, Sixt,” Isadora insists, “come with us! Defend the house, if you must defend anything, for the two of you cannot possibly—”

“Isadora,” Arnem counters, “the two of us cannot possibly do anything else. If they trap us inside, we shall all be consumed by flames — and your beauty was not created to suffer so ugly a fate. Hurry along, then, my lady. Two good Broken soldiers have always been worth any ten Guardsmen — a simple statement of fact that Dagobert and I will now demonstrate to you, as well as to those murderous pigs outside!”

As the Guardsmen’s blows upon the gateway door begin to crack its boards, Sixt Arnem lowers his shoulder ever more, digging his boots into the wild terrain of his children’s very unorthodox garden as he watches Isadora and Dagobert vanish into the house at its opposite end.

8

The white panther and her extraordinary rider have reached the entrance to Broken’s Stadium with extraordinary dispatch: for the Celestial Way, from its southern to its northern extremes, has remained empty of all save the most furtive souls, and even the few of those that Caliphestros and Stasi spy cry out in alarm upon observing them, and hurry ever faster in any direction that will take them away from the otherworldly sight. Yet it has not been fear of panther, sorcerer, or any other attackers alone that has kept the inhabitants of the great granite city within their homes. Soon after Stasi had begun her run north, Caliphestros had begun to see public notices fixed to all windowless sides of buildings — homes, markets, and district temples — and eventually to the great columns that have for so long commanded many of the garden gateways of the First District. At first, Caliphestros had not been able to make out their meaning, so intent had Stasi been on hurtling north toward the enormous ovular structure behind the High Temple that the old man had long since come to suspect was her destination. Eventually, however, the returned exile had stopped even trying to slow his companion, for he found that the content of the proclamations was identical, and that he could read a section of the order as he passed by each copy — and the command he soon pieced together had proved most singular, indeed:

This unique quality had not simply arisen out of the fact that the order bore the rarely seen personal seal of the God-King Saylal. Rather, its most curious quality was that it had not committed that sacred ruler to either side in the civil unrest that had broken out in and around the Fifth District and at the South Gate of Broken, and which by now, Caliphestros had rightly presumed, was spilling over into the other districts of the city. Lords and citizens alike were commanded to remain in their homes and carry on no commerce during “this time of confusion and crisis”; yet neither one nor the other of the obvious adversaries in this “present unpleasantness” had received royal endorsement. Such had been a clever ploy, indeed, Caliphestros had realized: for not only could the God-King and the Grand Layzin treat the matter as one of secular politics, but they could quite truthfully claim, later, to have always favored whichever side emerged victorious.

Yes, clever, Caliphestros had thought, as he had struggled to stay astride Stasi’s powerful neck and shoulders: almost perversely clever, just as Saylal himself has always been …

When the pair arrive at the entryway to the stadium, Caliphestros breathes easier for a moment, as Stasi pauses for the first time: the structure’s portcullis — an almost insignificant (by any military standard) expanse of crosshatched boards that serves as more of a warning than a true barrier — has been shut, for the first time that Caliphestros can ever recall its having been. But, while the grating may itself be less than impressive, it has been fastened at its base with a prodigious iron chain and equally impressive lock to an iron loop that was long ago sunk into the granite of the mountain. A smaller chain has been strung through a section of the crosshatching some five feet up from the base, and its two ends are fixed to a large slab of wood that bears Lord Baster-kin’s command that the Stadium will remain closed until the young men of Broken have bested the Bane.

Staring at the lock upon the ground and recognizing its basic mechanism, Caliphestros begins to rummage through one of the small sacks that he has kept slung over his shoulders.

“Fear not, Stasi,” he announces. “I have a set of tools that will allow us, eventually, to—”

Just what his devices will allow him to do is never announced: for Stasi, evidently, knows the sound of her companion’s rummaging and studious voice, and decides that she will settle the matter of the portcullis herself. Before Caliphestros can coherently object, the panther takes several long strides backward and, lowering her head so that the thick bone of her forehead faces the entryway, begins a hard run that makes her intention unmistakable.

“Stasi—!” her rider scarcely has time to call out, before realizing that nothing he will say can prevent her attempt. With this in mind, he lowers his seating and increases his hold, closing his eyes as he does. Almost before he can comprehend what has taken place, he hears an enormous sound of shattering wood, of which only harmless pieces fall upon his back, so quickly is the white panther continuing to move. Once inside the gateway, Stasi pauses to look back with satisfaction at her work: a gaping hole in the portcullis to one side of the intact chain and lock, and an impact so extreme that the largest pieces of wood that have been blasted away are only now settling to the ground. Smiling and smoothing the fur upon the panther’s neck with one hand as he rubs her forehead with the other, Caliphestros determines: “You were right, my girl — a far superior plan. On, then!”

And, understanding his words entirely, Stasi turns, seeming to know her way about the Stadium (although it is scent alone that is driving her, Caliphestros knows), and makes for the doorway that leads to the dark stairway that winds down to the cages beneath the sands of the arena.

Only here do the travelers finally encounter a human presence: one of the keepers of the beasts in the iron cells. He is a filthy man in equally dirty clothing; and despite the fact that he holds a spear before him, he beholds the approach of the white panther and her rider by torchlight with both amazement and an appreciative awe.

“Kafra be damned,” he says, throwing his spear aside. “I will not stand in the way of such wondrous determination, to say nothing of a sight that defies all that the priests have taught us.”

“A wise decision,” Caliphestros answers. “But where are the other men who work with you in this”—The old man glances about—“this little piece of Hel?”

“Gone,” the man answers. “As soon as Lord Baster-kin ordered the Stadium locked and abandoned, my lord Caliphestros.”

“So you know me,” the legless rider muses, with a mix of satisfaction and disdain. “It would seem that I am not entirely forgotten in Broken.”