The Legend of Broken

Father and son quickly exchange positions upon the terrace, Dagobert taking the right and striking at the man who is reaching for the blade in his back, but who is quick, nonetheless, to lift his own sword with his intact right arm to meet Dagobert’s initial blow. In an instant, all the training he has witnessed and been allowed to take part in during drills upon the quadrangles of the Fourth District moves directly through the youth’s thoughts and into his limbs, and he finds that, although the Guardsman’s physical power is prodigious, even given his wound, he simply has not the skills that Dagobert has learned through long hours of practice. Dagobert more than stands his own — but soon grows worried, as, glancing at the garden gateway, he sees that the remaining assassins have gathered their courage and are making for the engagement outside the door of the Arnem house.

“Father—?” he just has time to say, before his opponent has the opportunity to raise a leg and plant it in his chest, knocking him back upon the terrace. Dagobert has the presence of mind to keep hold of his sword, and fends off his wounded opponent’s first attack; but he will have to struggle to regain his footing, a fact not lost on Arnem, who quickly dispatches his own Guardsman, using several blows struck with all the fury of a father, not a commander. Yet he is nonetheless forced to leave Dagobert to continue to contend with his own enemy, and to rush back into the garden pathway, blocking it with his shield and preparing to meet odds of three to one: ominous, he knows, whatever his earlier claims, even when one is facing unpracticed killers.

But face them he does, just as Dagobert gets to his own feet and regains a fighting stance against his own Guardsman, who is growing weak through the pain and loss of blood caused by the sword in his shoulder. Yet the two fights remain stalemates, at best: Arnem levels his forearm so that his shield faces the three healthy Guardsmen horizontally, which fends two of them off, if only for the most part: the yantek takes a cut to the upper portion of his shield arm, but it is not deep enough to stop him from keeping the two men at bay, while his sword goes to work on the third. Dagobert, meanwhile, struggles hard to hold his ground, yet cannot quite gain the decisive position against his opponent. The moment has come for the two defenders of the Arnem home to receive some kind of aid — and it comes from a most unexpected source:

The door of the house, which Sixt and Dagobert have worked so hard to keep closed, suddenly flies open, and — with a cry that is reminiscent of the women warriors of her own, once-powerful northern people, most of whom are long since dead or scattered, by now — Isadora drives a northern raider’s sword (also taken from Sixt’s collection) through the back of the man facing Dagobert with her own right arm. In her left hand she carries a Broken wooden-shafted long spear, which she tosses into the air just above her head and right shoulder, snatching it with her right hand as if she, too, knows the ways of Broken’s best soldiers, and then hurls it with impressive force at the Guardsman who is engaging her husband’s sword arm, and therefore stands clear of her husband’s shield and is the easiest target. The spear catches the man fully in the chest, knocking him back several feet and to the ground, where he lies in a momentary, dying attempt to regain his footing, before coughing out his last, bloody breaths.

Dagobert pauses only an instant to gaze at his mother in bewilderment, before she cries: “Well? You two may have thought me useless in this fight, Dagobert, but I refuse to be — now, go and assist your father!”

And with his own warlike cry, Dagobert propels himself over most of the terrace and into the man on Arnem’s left, who has not expected such assistance from either the youth or the woman. Initially as bewildered as was his son at Isadora’s fearsome appearance, Sixt nonetheless loses no time, now, in dispatching the man on his right, outdoing his swordsmanship (if any Guardsman can truly be said to possess such a skill) with several terrible strokes of the sword arm that have brought him such fame from the eastern frontiers of the kingdom to the Atta Pass. After knocking the Guardsman’s blade from his hand, it takes the yantek but two mighty strokes down on either side of his enemy’s neck to nearly hack the man’s head and neck off by slicing through each of his collarbones. Without pause, Arnem turns to assist his son: but finds that Dagobert has become determined enough by the assistance of his mother not to require such help from both of his parents to face the last of the Guardsmen, the leader and braggart who had been tasked with the murder of the three people who now stand still alive. Driving his sword in a final moment of screaming rage into the fool’s gaping mouth — a most fitting final thrust — Dagobert pulls his blade free as the man falls to the ground, instantly dead. The eldest Arnem son then finally crouches upon one knee, working hard to catch his breath.

Upon seeing the blood that now flows, more freely than dangerously, from her husband’s arm, Isadora loses her momentary fury and resumes her more familiar role as healer. Tearing a sleeve of her own gown free to use as a bandage, she wraps it around Sixt’s wound, and then looks over her shoulder at her son.

“You are not hurt, Dagobert?” she calls, firmly but nonetheless with a mother’s care.

The youth shakes his head, still working hard to get air into his lungs. “Only winded, Mother — nothing more. See to Father …”

“Oh, I shall see to him,” Isadora replies, and as she turns back to Sixt she suddenly pulls the bandage she has applied painfully tight, bringing a cry of pain from the yantek. “Oh, hush!” she instantly commands. “The bandage must be tight — and you have a great deal of gall, to cry out like a girl when your son might be lying dead upon the threshold of our own home!”

Arnem, his pain forgotten, issues a grunt of indignation. “This is wifely gratitude, is it, woman? When all I have done—”

“All you have done you could not have done without me,” Isadora says firmly, jerking the bandage yet one painful pull tighter. “And that is the last I wish to hear of any of it. I’ve told you before, Sixt, your soldierly vanity is often more than I can bear, but to crow at a moment like this—”

Isadora would go on, but her attention is suddenly drawn, like that of both Sixt and Dagobert, to the destroyed garden gate, where Akillus has appeared with several of his scouts. The newly arrived Talons survey the butchery in the garden with wonder and awe, before rushing toward their commander and his wife.

“Sentek—” Akillus manages to say with great concern, before Isadora commands him:

“Yantek, Akillus! Call him by his true rank, if you intend to appear after your presence is required.”

Humbled by Isadora’s harsh tone, which he has never before endured, Akillus nods in her direction. “Forgive me, my lady. It is only — well, we ran into the rest of these murderous swine at the South Gate; Niksar, of course, cut short his mission to the Fourth District, wishing to take some men and assist Radelfer in moving the rest of your children to a safer spot, while my scouts and I cleaned up the — problem.” Akillus glances about, observing the blood-spattered, heavily breathing form of Dagobert, who stares back at him with the gaze of a soldier who has just seen his first true action: not gloating, not proud, even, but knowing full well that he has done, as he said earlier, what needed to be done. “We achieved that purpose. And do not worry — our men are now in control of most parts of the city. I have dispatched one fauste of cavalry through the East Gate to pursue those remaining Guardsmen who managed to flee the city, as well.” To Isadora’s now-worried expression, which plainly displays that she is too fearful to ask, Akillus smiles and says, “Rest assured, my lady. Niksar has reentered the city, while Radelfer and the children remain just outside, awaiting your arrival. Their passage shall be unimpeded by danger — of this, I believe, you may be certain.”

Arnem nods, then thinks to ask, “And what of Lord Baster-kin?”

“Dead, Yantek,” Akillus answers, in a strangely confused voice.

“Dead?” Isadora whispers, as she and Sixt are finally joined by their exhausted son. The word escapes her, not with any satisfaction, but with something that her husband would almost take for relief tinged with regret.

“At the hands of the priests who took him?” Dagobert asks.

“No,” Akillus answers. “Those priests are dead to a man. Killed by more of Baster-kin’s men, who thought to turn the battle through your death and his survival. Those who were responsible for his death, and their present intentions — well, that is a matter that may require your intervention, Yantek. That is, if your wound will not prevent you from such duty—”

“My ‘wound’ scarcely deserves the name, Akillus,” Arnem answers, walking with his wife, his son, and his chief of scouts toward the open gateway to the Path of Shame. “But I would like your men to get these damned bodies out of my children’s garden before they return home.”

“Of course, Yantek!” Akillus replies promptly, ordering his men to the task, which they undertake with an amazement that matches their chief’s.

“All right — tell me, then, Akillus,” Arnem says. “What other killers took Baster-kin’s life, if not the priests? And where are they now?”

“Just within the South Gate,” Akillus answers. “Halted while attempting to make their way back to Davon