The Legend of Broken

by Caleb Carr

  “My dear Niksar,” Arnem interrupts a bit impatiently. “You don’t find it strange that wolves should know to pick an ignorant new recruit, at an ideal distance from the river, when there are so many easier targets? The cattle, for example—what pack of wolves risks a struggle against men, when grazing livestock are to be had? No …” Arnem gazes out at the faraway edge of Lord Baster-kin’s Plain a final time, as if he will tease more clues from it with his eyes alone. “There is more to this business than we yet know. Something, and even more likely someone, was certainly lying in wait for just such a target as our unfortunate new recruit …”

  A few quiet moments pass, as Niksar and Pallin Ban-chindo watch their chief further puzzle with the problem. Eventually, Niksar must step forward. “Sentek? The council in the Sacristy—”

  “Hak!” Arnem noises, rousing himself. “Curse me for a buggered Bane …” It is another of the popular oaths, the use of which mark the sentek as an outsider among the ruling classes of Broken, but which have helped forge his close bond to his men. “Yes, Niksar, we must be away. Ban-chindo—eyes and ears open, eh? If anything of further interest happens, you’ll bring the news to me yourself—understood?”

  “I—am to report to the High Temple?” the young man replies, once more the very image of Broken pride. “Yes, Sentek!”

  “Good. Come, Niksar, before Korsar’s impatience turns to rage.”

  And the two officers of the Talons finally vanish into the chisel-scored walls of the guard tower, and down its worn stone steps.

  The carving of Broken’s outer walls took more than twenty years to complete, even under Oxmontrot’s ferocious direction. It meant death for thousands of laborers, and misery for many more. But the impenetrable barrier that finally surrounded the Mad King’s fortress-city was, on its completion, a source of awe even for those who had suffered cruelly during its construction. And there were many ways to suffer: for in the early years of Oxmontrot’s reign, the first of the banishments took place, as a pragmatic means of ensuring that those citizens of the infant kingdom who were too feeble—in body or mind—to contribute to the great undertaking would not occupy its members’ energies with pointless care-giving, consume any of the initially thin streams of foodstuffs that came up the mountain, or waste space in the crude shelters that were built for the healthy. Cruel reasoning; yet effective.

  Arnem and Niksar make their way swiftly to the foot of the guard tower steps, and, once outside, proceed along a pathway that runs at the base of the city’s outer walls, and is kept clear at all times for the passage of troops. Taking a left turn, Arnem decides to cut the distance to Yantek Korsar’s quarters by taking Broken’s main avenue, the Celestial Way, which bisects the city by originating near the southern wall, running north between the Fourth and Fifth Districts, then continuing on, through the market stalls of the Third District and then the more formal shops and sturdy residences of the Second, before finally terminating in the public square before the steps of the High Temple. Weary of his family worries, the sentek turns his mind to his duties, and to the possibilities that may be unfolding: Must it be the Bane? he wonders, in silent frustration. Will no more worthy enemy present themselves? He thinks of his months fighting Torganian raiders amid the frozen passes of the Tombs, and of the ferocity of those southern tribes: surely, he has not survived many years of faithful service only to discover that the soldiers of Broken are to be given the humiliating task of chasing a race of wretched exiles through an impenetrable wilderness. And why chase them? Simply because of the occasional crimes of the Bane Outragers? Whatever god does rule the affairs of men, Arnem decides, he or she would not permit so noble an instrument as the Talons to be bent to so petty a purpose. Perhaps it will be an eastern campaign: an attempt to finally confront the horsed marauders who press Broken’s borders with a regularity that nearly matches that of the rising Sun, out of whose blinding brightness they prefer to attack; or perhaps the fearsomely organized soldiers of Lumun-jan have returned once more—

  Neither these ambitious ruminations nor his underlying anxieties about the possible connection between the dilemma facing his family and this unexpected council can dull the physical instincts first sharpened during Arnem’s childhood: as he and Niksar pass the mouth of an offal-strewn alleyway that feeds the Celestial Way from the west, the sentek ducks to keep his head from being struck by a hurtling object. A clay wine jug smashes into the mortared base of a house just a few feet from him, with force enough to kill. As he looks up he sees Niksar searching the area, his short-sword drawn; and then they glimpse a thickly made, unkempt man standing in the alleyway. The man grins and lets out an idiot’s laugh.

  “Off to lick royal arse, are you, Tall?” the drunkard cries. “May you choke on it!” The man vanishes back through the alleyway in the direction of the Fifth District, Niksar moving to pursue him; but Arnem grasps the younger man’s arm.

  “We’ve far more important business, Reyne,” the sentek says; yet he pauses long enough to consider the drunkard’s words. “Tall?” he says in wonderment, as Niksar sheathes his sword. “That man was too big to be a Bane—I thought only they used that term for our people.”

  Arnem is answered by yet another voice, this one disembodied, disturbingly serene and floating out of the shadowy rear doorway of the nearby house:

  “The Bane aren’t the only people who resent your kind, Sentek …”

  Arnem and Niksar watch in some confusion as the shadows produce an ancient, bearded man. His hair is no more than a mist surrounding his head, while his robe, once an elegant design in black and silver, is now a faded testament to years of hard luck. The man steadies himself on a staff as he limps painfully forward. “Have you visited the Fifth District of late?” the old man asks.

  For the second time tonight, Arnem must prevent apprehension from manifesting in his demeanor. “Indeed,” he says, approaching the man calmly. “It’s where I was born, as were my family. We live there still.”

  “You? Then you are …?” The old man stares at Arnem with recognition that makes the sentek ever more uneasy. “You are Sixt Arnem …” Milky eyes turn first to the stars and the ascendant Moon, and then squint at the beacons outside the High Temple in the northern distance, until at last the old man murmurs, “But am I ready …?”

  “ ‘Ready’?” Arnem echoes. “Ready for what?”

  “For what is likely beginning,” the man says calmly. “You go to the Sacristy, Sentek—I suspect …”

  Unlike Arnem, Niksar is unable to master his wariness of the agèd specter, and approaches his commander. “Come, Sentek. He is mad—”

  Arnem holds a hand up to silence his aide, then says, “So, we’re bound for the Sacristy?”

  The old man smiles. “You will hear lies there, Sentek—though not all who speak them will be liars.”

  Arnem frowns, growing less patient and more relaxed. “Ah. Riddles. For a moment, I thought we might actually avoid them.”

  “Mad or taunting, his words are treasonous,” Niksar says; then he scolds, “Be careful what you say, old fool, or we must arrest you.”

  “The Bane are the cause of your summons.” The old man raises his staff from the ground. “This, I believe, can be stated with certainty.”

  “There’s no prescience in that,” Arnem says, affecting carefree laughter. “You’ve likely heard the screaming on the Plain.” The sentek resumes his march. “Why Kafra should have chosen to number those wretched little beings among his creations, I’ll never—”

  Arnem and Niksar have not gone a dozen paces before the old man declares, “It was not any god who created the Bane, Sixt Arnem—we of Broken bear that responsibility!”

  The two officers quickly retrace several of their steps. “Stop it,” Arnem tells the old man urgently. “Now. Whatever your madness, we are soldiers of the Talons, and there are things that we cannot hear—”

  Arnem suddenly ceases to speak, as his eyes go wider. The old man’s face is still nothing but a st
range mask of misfortune—but his robe … Something about the faded silver and black, and the fine cut—something about the robe looks disturbingly yet inexplicably familiar.

  “You do not remember me—do you, Sentek?” the old man asks.

  “Should I?” Arnem asks.

  His mouth curling, the old man replies, “No longer. And not yet …”

  Arnem tries to smile. “More riddles? Well, if that’s all you offer—”

  “I have given you what I have to offer, Sentek,” the old man says, raising his staff a few inches higher. “If you go to the Sacristy tonight, you shall hear lies; but not all who speak them will be liars. And it will be your task to determine who disgraces that allegedly exalted chamber with deceit!”

  Rage flushing his cheeks, Niksar can no longer contain himself: “We should kill you here,” he declares, a hand to his sword. “You speak one heresy after another!”

  The old man only smiles again, looking at Niksar. “That has been said,” he replies, raising the hem of his robe with his free arm. “Before …”

  In the dimness of the avenue, with Moonlight playing off water that flows quietly in the gutter, Arnem and Niksar can see that the old man’s left leg is far darker than his right; but it is only when the agèd arm taps the staff against that left limb, producing a hollow knock, that the two men guess the truth. The old man smiles at their horror, and continues to tap the wood strapped to the stump of his thigh.

  “The Denep-stahla!” Niksar whispers.

  “The young linnet knows his rituals,” the old man answers, dropping the hem of his robe. He continues to tap his staff against the makeshift lower leg, producing a sound that is more muted, but no less dreadful, than that which preceded it.

  Arnem’s gaze does not leave that leg: for the sight has brought with it understanding of his earlier uneasiness, as well as memories of his own days as a linnet, when he was part of more than a few escort parties that accompanied the priests of Broken to the Cat’s Paw river, where they performed, where they still perform, their sacred, bloody rites of punishment and exile. Although a post of honor, it was not a commission to which Arnem was suited, and he did not hold it long—long enough, however, to plant the seeds of his doubts about the faith of Kafra.

  At length, he looks the old man in the eye again. “Have we met before?”

  “You will remember my name at the appropriate time, Sentek,” the cripple answers.

  “And how did you escape the Wood?”

  Again the agèd lips curl grimly. “The unholy are often cunning. But should you not be concerned about something else?” The old man pauses, but Arnem says nothing. “I am here, Sentek—is it not against the laws of Broken for exiles to return to the city without permission? Have I been granted such?”

  With the old man’s words making ever less sense, and his infernal tapping growing ever more relentless, Arnem approaches him one last time. “If you have endured the Denep-stahla, friend, then you have been given trouble enough for one lifetime—and ample reason for your madness. Leave the city—we will forget this encounter.”

  But the old man only shakes his head slowly. “You will try, Sentek. But do not trust my word alone. Wait for another voice to sound, this night—to sound more times than it ever has before …”

  Arnem tries to dismiss this latest riddle by lifting a stern finger; the movement is awkward and ineffective, however, and becomes instead a simple signal to Niksar. The two men move speedily down the Celestial Way once more. In the distance, however, they can still hear the steady tap of the old man’s staff against his wooden leg, prompting Niksar to say, a bit nervously, “Well—an attempt at murder and an insane heretic. Not the best of omens for this council, Sentek.”

  “Have any officers been attacked in this area?” Arnem asks, wanting to forget the old man and, above all, hoping Niksar will not ask why the peculiar character believed Arnem might remember him.

  “There have been a few incidents, but most have occurred within the Fifth District itself. It’s the newcomers—young people from the villages along the Meloderna, for the most part—who continue to pose the problem. They’re coming in increasing numbers, and when they arrive …”

  “And when they arrive, they find no priests of Kafra handing out gold on the streets. They find they have to work, just as they did at home.”

  “But most know nothing of the kinds of work to be found here,” Niksar says, nodding. “And so they pass their days begging, and their nights in taverns. Or at the Stadium.”

  “They ought to pass them in the barracks,” Arnem declares. “A few years of campaigning would take the idiocy out of them …”

  Turning off of the Celestial Way, Arnem and Niksar enter a street that leads directly to the main gate to the Fourth District, home to Broken’s army—and also Arnem’s only true sanctuary, of late, being as his own house is relentlessly filled with such turmoil as only a petulant youth doing hourly battle with his mother can generate. As soon as the two officers see the district’s massive pine palisade ahead, they quicken their march; and they grow visibly relaxed as they near the enormous gate flanked by square sentry towers, which, like the palisade, are constructed of mighty pine logs, neatly hewn, notched, and joined, which, where upright, are narrowed to sharp points. Together, these elements form an awe-inspiring main entryway to a world unlike all other parts of Broken, one that, no matter how often Arnem passes through it, has an exhilarating effect on his spirit. The groan of the iron-banded gate as it opens, the steady rhythm of booted feet on the upper walkway, the smell of horse dung and hay from the stables, and the eternal pall of dust raised by the ceaseless drilling of the city’s soldiers: these are finally enough to take Sixt Arnem’s mind from matters of family and faith, and to fix it on the calling that is his terrible passion:

  “Kafra’s stones, Niksar,” Arnem says, as he puts a fist over his heart in salute to a sentry. “A war would do this kingdom good!”

  The Fourth District of Broken is a series of open drilling and training quadrangles, each bounded on all sides by low wooden barracks. The quarters of the Talons are hard by the eastern gate of the city, traditionally the first point of an enemy’s attack, as the eastern face of the mountain is easiest to ascend (although even that approach presents a devilish set of problems). Yantek Korsar, as commander not merely of the Talons but of the entire army, keeps his headquarters and personal residence near this same gate, so that his gruff manner and eternal vigilance can be sensed by any soldier, no matter how humble. After passing through drilling courts where linnets bark orders at night patrols, keeping them moving and ready to respond to any sudden threat, Arnem and Niksar enter a wide, empty parade ground, at the end of which rises a log structure higher than the barracks around it. Making quickly for this building, the two officers bound onto its wooden stairs, Arnem’s doubts and concerns having transformed into the anticipation that he always feels with a new commission. The city must be in real danger, he allows himself to think; it is the only explanation that makes the list of worthies called to the Sacristy this night comprehensible. He shall get the “true” war he craves, a war that a professional soldier can be proud of, and one that will begin to finally purge the city of that mischievous idleness, the effects of which he himself witnessed only moments ago.

  At the top of the stairs, a sentry must move with great agility to bring his right fist to his chest while using his left hand to get a nearby door open in time for the rushing Arnem and Niksar to pass through it without incident. Both officers return the salute without breaking stride; and once inside, they find Korsar’s enormous frame seated at a broad table, his weathered face and full white beard suspended over a parchment map of the kingdom: an encouraging sign, Arnem thinks—

  But when Korsar looks up, the sentek needs only a brief glance to realize that Niksar’s earlier assessment was disturbingly accurate: although the oldest and most experienced commander in Broken, Korsar’s deep blue eyes—the right bent by an ancient sca
r across his brow—bear an unmistakable sense of doom, augmented by resignation.

  “You’ve precious little to be excited about, Arnem,” the yantek says, standing and rolling his map. “It looks as if it’s the Bane, after all.”

  As he lifts his fist to his chest in salute, Arnem notices that Yantek Korsar has donned his finest armor, meticulously worked leather embellished with elaborate silver embroidery. “But why all the secrecy, Yantek?” Arnem asks. “And at this hour? We saw torches in the Wood not long ago, and heard screaming—have Outragers gotten into the city?”

  “So it seems,” Korsar replies, as a pair of aides fix to his shoulders a deep blue cloak edged with the fur of a Davon wolf, one that the yantek himself killed during a foray into the Wood many years ago. “And they’re growing extraordinarily audacious—to say nothing of powerful!”

  “Yantek? What are you saying?”

  “Only that they’ve tried to murder the God-King, Arnem. Or so say the Layzin and Baster-kin.”

  Korsar’s flippancy is as unsettling as what he relates, and Arnem feels his own confidence draining still more. “The God-King? But how?”

  “How does one murder a god?” Yantek Korsar picks up the foot-long wood and brass baton—topped by a small, sculpted image of Kafra with the body of a panther and the wings of an eagle—that is the emblem of his rank and office, and taps Arnem’s shoulder with it. “Sorcery, my boy,” Korsar goes on, smiling for the first time; but the smile quickly transforms into a frown of skeptical distaste. “Sorcery …”

  With a startling flood of nerves such as he has rarely experienced in battle, Arnem suddenly recalls the identity of the mad old man in the street. But it can’t be, he thinks; I myself saw him die …

  “What in the name of all that’s unholy is wrong with you?” Korsar has paused to study Arnem; and what he finds is not much to his liking.

  Arnem quickly attempts to recover his wits. “Only the activity we observed in the Wood, Yantek,” he says swiftly. “Just before your orders arrived: should we not suspect some connection to all of this?”