The Legend of Broken

to bellow, would scarce rise above the sound of the waters. And so, with expert movements, he produces a leather sling from inside his tunic and reaches down, picking up the first acorn-sized stone he can locate. He flings the stone in Heldo-Bah’s direction, intending, he tells his sister, to strike a tree in front of his friend. But Veloc misses his mark (or does he?) and the stone catches Heldo-Bah on the rump, drawing from him a single sharp cry of pain, and then, to judge by the contortions of his face, more variations on his formidable store of angry oaths. Heldo-Bah is yet close enough to the Ayerzess-werten for his voice, like Veloc’s, to be swallowed up by the din of the river; and so his tirade poses scant danger of revealing the foragers’ presence. He returns to his comrades, still mumbling curses as he prepares for a new battle of name-calling.

But rage becomes consternation when he finds his friends busily concealing their sacks and then their bodies within a series of crevices and caves that cut through a massive crag a short way upriver from the most treacherous ledges surmounting the Ayerzess-werten: ever cautious, Keera has so arranged matters that whoever is approaching from the southeast will have to cross those same dangerous spots before reaching the foragers. Heldo-Bah slackens the straps of his bag, which he sets on the crag.

“What in the name of Kafra’s golden anus has got into you two?” he seethes.

Keera claps one of her strong hands over Heldo-Bah’s mouth, and relates with a mere look the urgency of silence — an order that might seem superfluous, near the Ayerzess-werten, save that Keera is so deeply fretful. Veloc, for his part, tries to convey that men are approaching, with admittedly peculiar movements of his hands: the sole result is that Heldo-Bah’s brow dances in bewilderment. Only when Keera puts her mouth tight to one of her blockheaded friends’ malodorous ears and whispers, “Men come this way — from the south—not Bane,” does Heldo-Bah grow silent and begin, with the alacrity he reserves for moments of unidentified danger, to search the crag for an especially deep crevice of his own, which he finds some twenty feet above the spot chosen by Veloc and Keera. He scouts the maw-like opening for obvious signs of animal habitation, and, finding none, stuffs his sack into the moist dankness below, and then wedges his body in tight above his goods, ever cautious to crush nothing of value. Finally, he produces all of his marauder knives, as well as his gutting blade,† and steadies himself for the fight that they all sense may be coming.

Soon, Keera can make out more than mere scents: voices are distinct, even against the noise of the Ayerzess-werten. But they are not martial voices, or at least Keera does not believe they can be — no soldiers, not even the often arrogant, inexperienced young legionaries of Broken, would be so foolish as to allow the cacophonous blare of their calls and acknowledgments to resonate among the stands of especially giant and aged trees that mark the line where the rich soil of the Wood gives way to the rock formations of the Ayerzess-werten. There is always the possibility that those who approach are trolls, goblins, or even giants, and that they speak without care because they fear neither humans nor panthers; but why would such beings give off such a human stench? Keera takes some little comfort when she turns to see that Veloc has laid a series of arrows along the ridge of the crevice in which they have hidden, that he may snatch and loose them all the faster in the event of an attack, and that he already has his bow in hand.

Every echoing voice out among the trees makes this prospect of a desperate struggle against some unknown group seem steadily more inevitable. Yet, in the midst of the foragers’ preparations, another puzzle emerges: the mix of sounds takes on a different quality, losing its loudest male voices altogether. In the wake of this change, a new sound makes its way to the crag, one that is wholly unexpected by any of the foragers:

“Weeping,” Keera whispers, and Veloc, emboldened, moves higher up to join Heldo-Bah in trying to steal a glimpse of what comes.

Seeing nothing, Veloc hisses down to his sister, “Who weeps?”

“A child,” Keera answers, tilting her head to the southeast and cupping a hand around one ear. “A woman, as well.”

“Ho!” Heldo-Bah noises, pointing. “Look to those beeches!”

And, indeed, from a stand of beech trees, the bush-like branches of which swarm with bright spring leaves, the careless newcomers emerge; but they are neither of the Tall, nor any race of woodland creatures. They are, in fact, Bane, but Bane who observe none of the tribe’s ordinary precautions for forest roving; Bane who seem to care no more for the threats that may lurk in the Wood or the rocky riverbank than they do for the dangers of the Cat’s Paw itself.

More surprising still, given their noisiness, is that they number but four — and one of these is a bawling infant, while two of the remaining three are women. The younger woman wears a well-shaped gown that, to Keera’s eye, hangs as though it has silk in its weave; while the second woman, although aged, is covered from head to ankle in an outer gown that also hangs softly; and the blanket in which the younger woman has wrapped the infant is no mean sheet, either. These are all signs that the wanderers are not destitute Bane, by any means; yet agonies of the body and spirit care nothing for rank, and the younger woman is so beside herself with torment that Keera worries she may somehow harm the child. The gestures the four employ when speaking and noising to each other allow Keera to conclude that the women and babe are of the same family, of which the man (perhaps a successful craftsman) is almost certainly head: but the pallor of their drawn faces and the stiff movements of their bodies speak of shared troubles having naught to do with mere age. Instead, all three of the adults display signs of severe illness, and from time to time each joins the infant in openly crying out in pain and despair.

Indeed, it would not surprise any of the foragers to see blood on the wanderers’ clothing, for they behave as if they might be wounded. Perhaps, thinks Keera, they were set upon by those men whose voices are no longer part of the moaning chorus. Yet there is no evidence of any such misfortune. Worst of all, they are making directly for the sharpest precipice overlooking the Ayerzess-werten, and seem to take no interest at all in Heldo-Bah’s plainly visible warning rag.

Keera, her own vexed mother’s heart straining, can no longer contain herself: “Stop!” she shouts, believing that the newcomers must be blind, lost, or simple, and therefore unaware that they are stumbling directly toward dangers that every healthy Bane knows are among the worst in the Wood. Her warning has no effect, however, either because her voice is consumed by the roar of the falls, or because the family chooses to take no note of it. But Keera will not be deterred; and, before Heldo-Bah or Veloc can scramble down to stop her, the tracker is out of the lower crevice as if hurtled, standing in plain view and again shouting, “No! The river!”

The members of the family on the rocky ledge still do not hear her, causing Keera to begin running toward them. She has only managed some ten paces before being stopped by the strangest of the family’s behaviors: the man, his movements awkward and painful, approaches the young woman and the infant, and places his hands on the child, as if to take it. The hysterical woman† then releases the most shrill of all her cries of pain and lets go of the child, after which she collapses onto the slippery moss. Keera continues forward, but more slowly, now that the man has removed the babe from any harm that its mother might have inflicted in her madness. The older woman attempts to comfort the writhing tangle of hair and silken broadcloth on the ground; yet she cannot even kneel, so painful are her own movements. Despite their distress, the man ignores them both, staring down at the infant in his arms with what seems an expression of deep, fatherly love. But there is something else in the expression: some part of what Keera has taken for love soon reveals itself to be an obsession that drives the man, slowly yet relentlessly, toward the farthest point on the ledge above the Ayerzess-werten.

Two realizations rob Keera of breath: first, she sees that she has been wrong, terribly wrong, to think the mother the greatest danger to the infant; and second, she comprehends that the father’s apparent love for the child has been perverted into something else; something not directed toward saving the babe, at all …

“No!” Keera cries again, with every bit of her exhausted heart; but, protest as she may, the man, now amid the cloudy spray sent up by the Ayerzess-werten, never halts his slow advance to the fatal precipice. And as he goes, he begins to raise the child up gently, holding it as far out as the excruciating pain afflicting his body will permit.

Keera realizes that, quick as she may be, she cannot move quickly enough to subdue the man — particularly as she must approach him over wet, mossy rocks that only become more difficult and dangerous, the faster one tries to cross them. And so, perceiving no other choice, she spins about and signals to her brother in wild-eyed dismay.

“Veloc!” she cries, so strongly that he can hear her over the falling waters. “Your bow — bring him down! Kill him!”

But Veloc, on the crag’s higher perch with Heldo-Bah, has left both his arrows and his short bow below. He