of the rank of ‘linnet’ with what, it would seem, was the Broken Dialectal term for the modern German Lanze, or ‘lance.’ Hence, the term is another with a distinctly Romani, or Latin, influence, analogous to the ‘first spear’ [again, pilus prior] rank of the Roman infantry, but transplanted to the cavalry, where it anticipated the later European terms ‘first lance’ and ‘lancer.’”
§ “ball-headed spurs” An interesting detail that may reveal something of the people of Broken’s earliest history and attitude toward animal life during their pagan era. Spurs had been in use at least since the Roman Empire, yet the Romans almost exclusively used a “prick” or “spike” spur, a simple, straight piece of iron tapered to a sharp point, and meant to inspire their mounts to obedience and speed, like most spurs, through pain. The ball-headed (or, in the parlance of modern dressage, the “Waterford”) spur, however, has persisted among various riding cultures as something of a counterargument to the belief that horses will respond only to discomfort, for the small, spherical piece of metal used causes little pain and no bloodletting, and has sometimes been called an instrument of cooperation rather than absolute command. One can find advocates even today of both types of spurs — a fact that indicates that the ball-headed model is at least as effective as the elaborate forms of pricking and cutting spurs that have been developed since the Romans, particularly in the American West, Latin America — and, of course, nowhere more so than in that homeland of animal extermination and abuse, Texas. —C.C.
† “… cavalry sword …” By the time of the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the various styles or “models” of the classic gladius, the Roman short sword (which had been “borrowed” from Rome’s Spanish Celtic enemies), the shape and image of which are closely identified in the popular consciousness with the Roman legions to this day, had been largely replaced by a somewhat longer blade of lesser width (or, in some cases, simply greater tapering), the spatha, which fell somewhere between the gladius and the various, classically medieval blades, most notably those Viking models referred to in the Broken Manuscript as “raiding” swords; especially popular among horsemen, this is likely the version of the “Broken short-sword” that Arnem and his mounted troops carried. —C.C.
† “The scouts shrug” There truly are moments in the Manuscript when any reader will find his or her own credulity at the choice of words strained past belief; and the use of the word “shrug” is certainly among them. However, research reveals that “the raising and contracting of the shoulders to express uncertainty or indifference” (in the nearly identical language of several prominent dictionaries) has been going on since at least the fourteenth century, when Middle English gave us the shrugge. Why note such examples? Because they continue to demonstrate, first, the surprisingly direct and “modern” sound of so many texts from the early Middle (or Dark, or Barbarian) Ages, and, second, the extent to which the florid language that we so often associate with those epochs was the invention of later authors who were anxious to propagate a mythic chivalric code that had supposedly existed since ancient times, and had been passed down directly to modern European nobility. —C.C.
† “‘an easy gallop’” A moment of validation for the Manuscript, and for its translator: some may wonder why Niksar does not order the men to ride at a canter, which is actually defined as an easy gallop; but the word did not come into use until the mid- to late eighteenth century. —C.C.
† “fire-wounds” Gibbon writes, “The modern German term for ‘gangrene,’ Wundbrand, must have closely, if not precisely, matched the Broken dialectal term, Wundbrend, meaning, as it does, ‘wound of fire’ or ‘fire wound.’ This burning sensation, which nearly always originates in the extremities, is one of the first, but hardly the most horrifying, of the symptoms of gangrene. And, as Visimar himself notes, his initial term for the illness, Ignis Sacer [‘Holy Fire’], was indeed the popular Latin term for the terrible malady that, into our own age, features gangraena [gangrene] as one of its principal (and fatal) properties, but is not ‘true’ or ‘pure’ gangrene. The Holy Fire, I am told, is still imperfectly understood; but we can say with confidence that it was the same malady that eventually took on the rather more colourful title of ‘St. Anthony’s Fire’ (St. Anthony, as you know, being the patron of the victims of pestilence).” St. Anthony [ca. A.D. 251–356] was an Egyptian Coptic Christian, and the patron of an extraordinarily large range of diseases, infectious and otherwise, having spent much of his life working among their victims. Prominent among these illnesses was the “disease” which Visimar here describes, which was indeed and actually not gangrene proper, but a form of poisoning, ergot poisoning (or “ergotism”), which results in gangrene, but is not identical with the form of gangrene that Arnem associates with battlefield wounds; the first is caused by alkaloid agents, and is accompanied, as well, by other, often outlandish symptoms (hallucinations, convulsions, loss of feeling, rotting flesh, and miscarriages, the last so often that ergot was often deliberately employed as an abortifacient), while the latter is the “simpler” result of festering wounds. Not a few experts think that many mass outbreaks of delusional madness throughout history and the world have been the result of the first malady, ergotism: the deranged behavior surrounding the seventeenth-century Salem, Massachusetts, witch trials are a celebrated, but by no means the only or strongest, candidate (for an even more widespread, calamitous, and recent possible outbreak, see John G. Fuller’s classic in the field, The Day of St. Anthony’s Fire, which describes the near-self-destruction of a small French town in 1951—possibly due to ergot, possibly to mercury poisoning). Ergotism was also destructive and globally widespread enough to be one of the few such diseases to receive particular mention in the medical texts of nearly all ancient and medieval societies — Eastern, Middle Eastern, and Western.
An important point that must be reemphasized: Both the narrator and Visimar have by now suggested that two diseases are at work, in the kingdom of Broken; yet we will see that they were often lumped together — by average people ignorant of even the limited medical facts available to them at the time, as well as by Kafran healers and physicians little better informed — under the heading “a plague” or “a pestilence.” This was not an uncommon occurrence; indeed, it is not unheard of, in our own time. The desire of doctors to explain a constellation of symptoms by finding one malady that covers them all has long been entrenched in medical minds; and is often as responsible as blatant ignorance for incorrect treatments. —C.C.
† Wildfehngen Gibbon writes, “Although many, if not all, military commanders of high rank engage in some similar practice, German commanders especially have ever employed idiosyncratic terms of affection, when speaking of and to their rank-and-file soldiers: terms which, when translated literally, simply lose much of their weight and meaning. These range from the relatively simple meine Jungen and meine Kinder [‘my boys,’ ‘my children’] to the host of more esoteric names of which this Wildfehng (or the plural, Wildfehngen) seems to be an ancestor (for we find a very similar word still in modern German, in the form of Wildfang, which may imply anything from a madcap male ‘wild child’ to a female ‘tom-boy,’ that is, a particularly boyish and boisterous young girl). English commanders, like all others, share such terms of affection for many of their troops, but it is really in the ancient warrior culture of Germany that we find the practice at its most elaborate, profound, and sometimes paradoxical: for however ‘wild’ such troops may have been or may be, they were, have been, and are expected to obey strict codes of honorable conduct, the breaking of which can bring punishments that make even the justly notorious extremes to which our own British naval officers often go when dealing with disciplinary infractions seem rather mild in comparison.”
† Gerolf Gledgesa The name is the sort of mix that we can now identify as fairly common: Gerolf is clearly Germanic (implying a combination of the often-used roots “wolf” and “spear”), while names or terms close to Gledgesa are found only in Anglo-Saxon, suggesting the possibility of this character’s having come from Saxon Britain. The surname connotes “fiery terror,” and the justification for it becomes clear, as his personal history is recounted; but its ultimate irony will only grow apparent later. —C.C.
‡ Ernakh Significantly, Gibbon makes only a few references to the Huns — doubtless among the principal peoples identified by the rulers and soldiers of Broken as “eastern marauders”—in his six-volume Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; and, in this particular case, he evidently did not know (or did not think it worth noting) that Ernakh was originally the name of the third son of that greatest of all Huns, Attila. Whether the nurse/housemaid Nuen had this fact in mind when she named her own offspring, or whether Ernakh was merely a traditional and perhaps common Hunnish name, we do not know. —C.C.
† Donner Niksar Gibbon writes, “We will discover soon enough just what this noble yet unfortunate young son of Broken’s achievements were; what should concern us, for the
