9
In the garden of the Arnem household, violence of equal savagery, but very different in kind, has been taking place. Having quickly found one of his father’s good short-swords, along with a shield that is nearly as tall as he is, Dagobert has rejoined the Yantek of the Broken Army outside. Arnem swiftly inserts his own, more practiced left arm into the leather straps that are riveted into the back of the shield; and, seeing how much more easily his father wields the thing, Dagobert realizes that his true moment to join the army has not yet come, that he must allow both his body to grow and his arms to learn their trade still more before he can be called a true soldier. But, whether true soldier or apprentice, other matters soon command his attention, as the garden gate finally gives way before the pounding assault of the Guardsmen outside it.
“Stand close by me, my son,” Arnem says, with no trace of condescension, but the respect he feels must be shown to a warrior, however young, who has acted in the defense of his mother and his home for many days, now. “These shields are so contrived that one will protect us both, if we use it correctly. Your blade goes where?”
“Above the shield, Father,” Dagobert answers, proud that, even through his fear of the oncoming group of Guardsmen, he remembers the soldiers in the quadrangles of the Fourth District practicing the correct performance of the position to be taken by two men who have but one shield. He moves his arm quickly so that the point of his blade extends just up and over the protective expanse of layered metal, leather and wood, which leaves room for Arnem to stand that much closer to him.
“Precisely so,” the yantek answers, as he places his own sword in a like position. “I see that you did not neglect to wear your
“You shall quickly use the shield to drive them into the ground, Father, that we may lower our blades on their necks,” Dagobert recites by rote, using repetition of the basic rules of Broken infantry training† as a way of calming his nerves.
Glancing about as he nods in acknowledgment, Arnem quickly surveys the garden as if seeing it for the first time. “It happens that, from a military standpoint, you and the rest of my clever children have built this garden well. The Guardsmen”—Arnem now looks above his shield to see the first two of the wary killers approaching slowly, then resumes his survey of the ground about him—“will stay to the center path, rather than brave the stream or the mounds of trees and wilderness you have created about us. They will never have seen such a place within the walls of Broken before, I’ll wager—”
“Father!”
Arnem turns forward once more at Dagobert’s cry, in time to see the first two Guardsmen coming even faster up the garden path, closely followed by a third and fourth. Arnem instantly perceives that their tactics — if indeed they can be called such — are weak: the first pair will come high, as expected, while the second are crouching and will attempt to slip beneath the shield that Arnem holds. The moment has come for him to truly discover if Dagobert has learned not only the terms used in the tactics of combat at close quarters as taught by the army of Broken, but their practice, as well—
And it takes little time to see that he has. As Arnem quickly raises his shield just high enough to force the first attackers to raise their heads as they try to leap above it, the better part of both father’s and son’s swords suddenly extend with brutal force such as one might expect from Arnem, but that in Dagobert’s case is surprising — and all the more impressive. Without hesitation, Dagobert finds the throat of the Guardsman on the left, while his father drives his sword through one eye and then into the brain of the man on the right. Both father and son are sprayed with the blood of these first two enemies, but that does not stop them from quickly retracting their swords when Arnem shouts:
“Below!”
The yantek lowers his shield with speedy force, so that it catches the next two men on their shoulders, driving their faces into the moist Earth of the garden path as they attempt to swing their swords. There the intruders die as quickly as the first two Guardsmen, with the long, tapering points of two Broken short-swords wedging into and then through their spines from the back, just below the head. Seeing the brutal yet efficient manner in which Arnem drives his second opponent’s face deeper into the ground with his foot in order to withdraw his sword more quickly, Dagobert matches the motion, and then hears his father order:
“Withdraw — two paces only, Dagobert.”
Moving to ground as yet unstained by blood and unencumbered by bodies, and leaving the remaining opponents, now, with the additional obstacle of their own dead in the pathway, Sixt and Dagobert Arnem resume their ready stance. Seeing that the Guardsmen, thinking to have learned a lesson, intend now to charge three abreast, Arnem orders his son back yet another long stride, which their enemies take as a sign of full retreat, and from which they derive enough enthusiasm to increase the pace of their onslaught.
But Arnem has already noted that, from where they now stand, Dagobert and he will have two trees of middling but stout enough width on their flanks, to effectively increase their protection from those directions. “We block the man in the center,” Arnem says, noting that this group of Guardsmen is not immediately followed by the remaining three. Among these last few is the blustering leader, whose inability to refrain from proclaiming his own plans, and those of the Guard generally, enabled Arnem and his wife and son to escape in the first place. Now this man urges the oncoming group forward with threats and oaths, all of which are unnecessary. The three attackers, when they arrive before their seeming victims, reveal what they evidently think a most cunning plan: the two men on the left engage both Arnem and Dagobert, but do not hurl themselves upon their position; rather, their role is simply to ensure that the man and youth before them are unable to move from their position, while the third Guardsman, after feigning an attack on Dagobert’s left, hurries around the tree to his side and breaks off from the fight, making directly for the door of the Arnem house. Momentarily surprised by this, both Dagobert and his father glance quickly back to watch this man, which allows the Guardsman on their right time to similarly dart about that position for the door. Once there, both men raise their legs and begin to alternately kick at the thick wood and pound upon it, not with the heavy iron butts of the short spears that they have foolishly left in the bodies of Kriksex and the other veterans they have murdered, but again with the far less effective pommels of their swords.
Suddenly realizing the pair’s intention — to split the Arnems’ strength by posing a threat to the house and Isadora within — Arnem shouts, “We do not break the concentration of our force, Dagobert. First, this man!” At which he lifts his shield, swiftly hacks the sword arm of the Guardsman who was in the center of the path off below the elbow, then pulls the piteously screaming man forward so that Dagobert — who has divined his father’s purpose, and raised his own blade into a side stance with both arms in preparation — can and does deliver the killing blow, driving his sword under the flailing, partially severed arm of the man and deep into his chest. It could almost be called a
To realize such an advantage, however, the Guardsmen would have had to have gained experience of such combat, and against such opponents, on at least a few earlier occasions, rather than spending nearly all their time bullying citizens of and visitors to Broken, and occasionally doing such murder as has served the purposes of their now-fallen (though they know it not) commander. And so the leader of the small group and his two remaining lackeys remain at the garden gateway, watching as the latest of their contrived assaults is foiled: Arnem, when he is still several steps from the terrace outside the door of his house, hurls the dead Guardsman’s sword with prodigious force into the back of the kicking, hammering attacker directly before him, and the flying blade catches the man in the left shoulder, nearly penetrating to the front of his chest but not completely disabling him. Arnem therefore cries out:
“Engage the wounded man, Dagobert — leave the other to me!”
