The Legend of Broken

the signs of daily life? Where are their children?

Heldo-Bah and Veloc draw up next to Keera, each man more winded than their leader, and both, like her, staring about in consternation.

“Where—?” Veloc draws in one enormous breath, in order to speak the question that all are asking themselves: “The healers — their wives, their husbands—?” (For women are among the most skilled of the Bane healers.) “Have they been attacked?”

“I’ve warned them!” Heldo-Bah declares in a gasping roar, putting his hands to his knees and bending over, the better to take in air. “How many times have I warned them? Move the healers, I’ve said, they are atop the cliffs, too far north, they will be the first to go, should the Tall find us, but who listens to a criminal—yaeeyah!” The gap-toothed forager squeals in pain as Veloc swats an open hand across the exposed back of his head. Heldo-Bah thinks to retaliate, but a look at Veloc, who nods quickly at the still-silent Keera, reminds him that the only order of business, now, is to discover what can have happened here.

Anxious to redeem himself for his thoughtlessness, Heldo-Bah approaches a hut. “Well, we’re not going to learn anything if we don’t look …”

Keera spins about when she hears this. “Heldo-Bah!” she calls, displaying something as close to panic as she ever has. “Do not enter — if the Death has taken the healers, it will take you too!”

Heldo-Bah knows not to enter, at this moment, into an argument with Keera over whether he is really foolish enough to enter a plague hut; and so he limits his reply to, “Believe me, Keera, I have no intention of going inside!” Heldo-Bah draws to a stop; and then advances on his toes. “These huts have not been attacked,” he calls, spying slapdash crescent Moons that have been painted on each structure’s door. “They’ve been abandoned — abandoned and sealed, Keera!” The door to the hut he approaches is shut tight, and across every window opening thick planks have been fixed. Any gaps around the door and between the window openings and the boards have been filled with a thick paste, white streaked with purple: almost a mortar, which has not yet had time to fully dry.

“Stay well back!” Keera commands, now facing each hut in turn, noticing the same purple-streaked white paste about every opening, and retreating as if from some deadly enemy. “Quicklime and meadow bells — it is plague of the bowels, then,” she says. “They will have removed all of the families to—”

A new voice interrupts. “Ho! Foragers! What are you doing here?”

The three foragers close ranks to watch as a Bane soldier emerges from the dawn mist east of the healers’ huts. He wears the standard protection of the Bane army: a hauberk, extending from elbow to neck to knee, and composed of iron scales stitched onto deerskin. It is armor far more ambitious in design than it is effective in battle,† during which the comparatively broad spacing of the large scales caused by the limitations of Bane metalworking too often allows both spear and sword points to penetrate gaps, while the size of the scales makes movement difficult. Like Welferek, the soldier carries a short-sword in the Broken mold, save that his is an obvious Bane imitation, its steel being of a visibly inferior quality. The same is true of the single-piece helmet that covers his head and nose: the brass fitted to the edges of the iron sections cannot hide the inferior grade of the iron itself.‡ What he lacks in quality weapons, however, the young man makes up in self-possession: the Bane army is a relatively new creation, less than a dozen years old, and the men who fill its ranks hide their inexperience and inferior arms with all the courage they can muster, although they disdain the arrogant pride of the Outragers, for whom they have as little liking or use as do the foragers.

“Entry to this settlement has been forbidden by the Groba,” the soldier says firmly. But, as he comes closer, he notes the hefty sack that each of the newcomers carries. “Ah,” the soldier noises with a nod. “Foragers.” The lad is still raw enough to feel that he must not allow his lack of experience to show, especially at this crucial hour; and so he buries it beneath a tone of haughtiness. “But I perceive that you are only just returning. You answer the call of the Horn?”

“Oh, admirable,” Heldo-Bah answers, spitting onto the ground near the soldier’s boots. “You must already have achieved high rank, with that kind of quick thinking—” Veloc delivers a sharp elbow in his friend’s side for this, which allows Keera to ask:

“Where have they been taken? The families that lived here — surely the plague cannot have taken them all.”

But the soldier’s eyes are on the most notorious member of the party: “You’re Heldo-Bah, aren’t you? I recognize you.”

“Tragically, I can’t return the compliment,” Heldo-Bah replies.

“It’s no compliment, friend, believe me,” the soldier says, with a sour laugh. He half-turns, and assumes a more respectful tone. “And that would make you Keera, the tracker?”

“Please,” Keera says, uninterested in reputations or conversation. “What’s happened to them? And what —”

Suddenly, she turns fully about on the toes of one foot, stopping when she faces just north of east. She puts the infallible nose the air once again, and having sniffed, her face goes pale, as she turns back to the soldier. “Fire,” she says, in almost a whisper. “They are burning huts!”

The soldier nods at the huts around them. “And they’ll be burning these, soon enough. Sealing them has not confined it.”

“But what do they burn now?” Veloc asks impatiently.

“The northeastern settlement; it was taken first—”

“No!” Keera cries, loosening the straps of her bag, dropping it, and dashing in the direction of the smoke on the wind. “That is my home!” Veloc follows quickly, as Heldo- Bah picks up Keera’s sack and throws it on his back beside his own. He looks at the soldier, shaking his head and spitting again.

“Well done, fool. Speaking without thinking: continue with it, you’ll rise to sentek like a star crossing the heavens …”

Heldo-Bah rushes to catch his friends, and contrition enters the young soldier’s face; he has enough pride of rank left, however, to call, “But you can’t go there — we’ve surrounded it, they’ll not let you near!”

Heldo-Bah, the added weight of Keera’s bag scarcely slowing him, bellows back, “We’ll just brave that risk!” as he moves on, through the sealed, ghostly huts, and into the shadow world of the woodland morning.

The northeastern is in many ways the most important of the Bane settlements, for it has always been the belief of the Groba that, should the Tall ever determine the location of Okot, they will enter by way of this less direct approach. And so, for several years, the residents of the settlement have been witness to the construction of a stout palisade just beyond the outer limit of their several rings of huts: the Groba’s attempt, in pursuit of the Lunar Sisterhood’s vision, to offer at least the appearance of a defense. But Okot as a whole is too vast and ill- arranged a community for even its tireless builders to enclose it in one palisade; and so, half a mile to either side of the large gate in the wall that guards the northeastern route into the central square of the town, the fortification simply stops. It has ever been the ambition of the Groba Elders to continue its construction, but both the builders and the current commanders of the Bane army are hard-pressed to see the reason for any more of a show than has already been constructed — and they are confident that the palisade would be but a show, should the Tall army ever arrive in force with their engines of war.

Keera reaches the westernmost end of the palisade, covering the mile’s distance from the lime-sealed healers’ huts in mere moments. But here she hesitates: the upper flames of the enormous pillar of fire ahead are already visible. Her anxious pause allows Veloc and Heldo-Bah to catch her up, and Veloc lays hold of her right wrist.

“Sister,” he says, himself filled with anxiousness. “I beg you, let us go in first. If nothing else, let Heldo-Bah go. He knows how to manage these boys that the Groba calls soldiers, and he knows Ashkatar† well—”

“Although I’m not entirely sure how much help that will be,” Heldo-Bah murmurs, making sure that Keera does not hear.

“—and he can prevent any more confrontations that eat up precious time,” Veloc goes on, giving Heldo-Bah a warning glance. “He can ensure that we get news without delay. Correct, Heldo-Bah?”

“Of course,” Heldo-Bah answers, his gentler tone reflecting a change in his heart. “Keera — I will. I pledge it.”

Keera had thought to be the first to the flames; all through the run from the river, she had become ever more determined to confront whoever has control of the disastrous state of affairs. But now, faced with the sight of