The Legend of Broken

“I had heard you were in the city once more — and atop the white panther I once nearly killed,” calls the voice of Rendulic Baster-kin. “I must confess I did not credit the report—why, I wondered, if the great Caliphestros had managed to survive his punishment, would he return to Broken, merely to liberate a simple, vicious beast?”

Taking a moment to ensure that his response will be steady, Caliphestros calls out: “As to their viciousness, under the correct circumstances, I can certainly attest — as can you yourself, I have heard, Baster-kin.” The old man slides from Stasi’s lowered shoulders once again, even before he has had a chance to arrange his walking equipment. “But as to their simplicity,” he continues, while the panthers proceed to snarl, pace, and coil their powerful muscles. “I believe you will learn that they possess almost every quality, save that …”

Baster-kin looks about him to observe the mounting fear of the three Guardsmen who form his escort — and who have just committed the great sacrilege of murdering an escort of unsuspecting attendants from the High Temple (for they do indeed know that their only hope of survival is to save their lord and kill those who lead his enemies) — and, with a harshness unusual even for him, he shouts:

“Why do you quake, you miserable dogs? They are but two panthers, and both afraid of the sound of my voice. Hold your blades forth, as I do”—at which the Merchant Lord suddenly produces a blade from beneath his cloak and assumes a stance that would indicate his every intention to battle Stasi and her daughter—“and prepare to kill the beasts, before we finally finish the crippled old heretic who rides with them, using sorcery to direct their actions!”

But Rendulic Baster-kin, whose judgment of such situations is usually sound, is mistaken about this moment, in two critical ways: Caliphestros, as we have often seen, does not direct Stasi’s actions; and it is therefore even less likely that he controls her daughter’s. Even more importantly, only one of the noble creatures fears the sound of Baster-kin’s voice. Stasi’s daughter does indeed hear and view the onetime Merchant Lord with both hatred and hesitancy, as she did in the Stadium during the events that led to the death of Adelwulf; freed from the restraints of the Stadium’s chains, however, she at least can smell the fear rising off the three Guardsmen, and her green eyes go cold as she eyes them. And for her part, Stasi feels not the slightest worry at the sound of Baster-kin’s barking: she is consumed only by a craving for vengeance that has finally been unleashed, after so many years during which the possibility of its realization has been delayed, leaving her to languish in sorrow. In her mind, now, she returns to the patch of forest where her family was taken from her; but her leg is no longer wounded, nor are any such mounted Broken spearmen as inflicted that original, disabling hurt to be seen. She fixes her gaze on Baster-kin with a rage such as she scarcely ever exhibits, even in the wilds of Davon Wood.

What Caliphestros observes next would make most men pale with horror, fear, and revulsion. But the aged exile has also had many years to allow his desire for this moment to outpace such emotions. As he drags himself to a nearby gateway, insisting on pulling himself into as upright and dignified position as he can in the few brief minutes that the contest before him will take, he feels neither compassion for what he once would have called his fellow humans, nor repugnance at the sight of what ensues:

The panthers slam into the three Guardsmen that face them before the latter can even fully raise their sword arms. One of the murderous humans is sent into the air and lands a remarkable distance away, his body lofted and his throat torn out by a fast movement of the right forepaw of Stasi’s daughter; and although the man gasps desperately as blood spurts from a gaping series of long, parallel wounds in his neck, it is to no avail, and he dies within moments. A second member of Baster-kin’s escort, meanwhile, has received the younger panther’s head fully in the chest and ribs, the bones of which shatter and are driven into his heart. To ensure his death, the daughter’s enormous, piercing teeth soon close upon his neck, nearly severing the now-useless ball of bone and flesh that once sat atop his shoulders from his body.

Stasi, in the meantime, has dispatched the last of the Guardsmen with equal speed and skill, enfolding him in her ripping claws and throttling teeth when he makes a foolish attempt to protect his leader. She has been careful to carry the man, with the force of her attacking leap, out of the reach of Baster-kin’s blade: a blade, the force behind which has been momentarily weakened by the realization that the white panther does not in fact fear him at all: that it was only her wound that held her back, so long ago, during their encounter in the Wood. Soon enough, Baster-kin’s third murderous escort has also left the realm of the living, when Stasi’s great frontal killing teeth pierce his skull and instantly bring death. Now, both panthers turn upon their old antagonist, uncertain as to which will undertake the task of sending him to join his hirelings.

As Caliphestros watches what he believes is the approaching doom of his own tormentor, he expects the former Merchant Lord’s pride to finally crumble. Even at such a moment, however, Baster-kin somehow regains his defiance: a defiance born of years of suffering his own father’s drunken diseased abuse, and of having risen above that abuse to become the most powerful and, it is true, the best of all the Merchant Lords in Broken’s history. He begins to shout senselessly, urging the panthers to come for him; and whether such is true courage or madness brought on by the moment, Caliphestros cannot say. But he can see that it causes still another moment of hesitation in the younger panther, a moment that, given Baster-kin’s own physical strength, could be perilous. Rightly turning to face the white panther first, Baster-kin stands his ground, as if he is actually ready to accept her initial charge: a charge that, at the last instant, he uses his powerful legs to deftly avoid, turning quickly to make sure that Stasi has tumbled to the ground beyond him before he rashly and viciously pursues her, his blade held high. Caliphestros calls out a warning, and Stasi is able to regain her feet; but when man charges panther, this time, the peril of an unhappy outcome all too similar to that which took place in the Wood (whether death or another grievous wound) is enough to strike Caliphestros dumb with terror. Yet just as it seems that Baster-kin may indeed inflict a cutting blow to Stasi, the man whose might was once unquestioned in his realm is suddenly thrown forward, his mouth open as if he would cry out in pain — that is, had he not been struck in the back with so great a force that his spine is shattered, stilling his tongue. His hand loses its grip upon his sword, and he clutches for long moments after it, unable to recover the weapon or even to move his lower body before he sees the sky above him blotted out by the head of one of the panthers.

Stasi’s daughter has indeed been inspired by her mother to overcome the uncertainty caused by so many years of terror at the sound of Baster-kin’s voice; and at the last instant she has found the courage to charge and cripple her tormentor, and then throw him into the air with such force that he now lies upon his back. Stasi joins her child, wishing to at least share in the finishing of this life that has for so long broken their lives; and as Baster-kin feels the white panther’s teeth slowly grasp his body and turn it over, he quickly catches sight of another image previously unknown to these most sacred streets of Broken:

It is that of three Bane, emerging from the opposite side of the street adjoining the Celestial Way down which Baster-kin and his men had hoped to make their escape. The three have the rough manner and appearance of Bane foragers, or rather, two of them do — the third, a woman, is neither so covered in light mud (mud that was, Baster-kin realizes, not so long ago the dust that he believed was a sure indication that his enemies meant to attack at the East Gate of the city), nor so seemingly bent upon revenge as are her companions. She runs quickly to Caliphestros’s side, slinging the old man’s right arm about her neck and helping him keep his mutilated body, suddenly further weakened by the thought of losing his companion, upright. Looking back at the two Bane men, Baster-kin sees one staring at him with a grim look that perceives naught but justice being done; the third, however, smiles with a set of filed and broken teeth.

“It is only fair, my lord,” says this man, his words delightedly bitter in tone, and his manner no less fiendish for his size. “Try to fight her now as she once tried to fight you — unarmed, wounded, and unable to move …”

But Baster-kin has no chance at reply before the jaws above him — which belong to Stasi’s daughter, although he cannot see her — close upon and crush his spine, sinking in far enough to bring blood gushing from the great vessels of his neck. Next, he sees the white panther slowly envelop his skull with her mouth, preparing to use those same stabbing, killing teeth to drive directly into his brain: a death far more merciful than the onetime Merchant Lord granted many a man and creature. As the younger panther joins the white to watch the instant of her tormentor’s death, Baster-kin has only enough life left in him to hear the same Bane forager call out, as he moves with the second male in the party toward Caliphestros:

“And now, my legless lord — would you mind telling us just exactly where you were in such a hurry to get to, before we arrived opposite those pigs on the ground?”

They are strange words to be the last I hear, particularly, when they come from such a creature, Baster-kin thinks, as the white panther’s jaws close; but then, the golden god