The Legend of Broken (33 page)

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“And what are your feelings today, Sentek?” asks Visimar, as he brings his mare to a halt alongside Sixt Arnem, who is seated atop the great grey stallion known as the Ox, reviewing the fitness of the Talons, as they pass along the Daurawah Road, leading east from the base of Broken’s mountain toward the great port. Having had no time to accustom himself to command of his kingdom’s entire army before being ordered to destroy the Bane, Arnem is glad to be at his familiar post as commander of this elite legion. Only the endless questions with which Visimar has confronted him since they departed Broken have disturbed his thoughts; for they are of such a nature that the sentek finds it difficult—even, at times, impossible—to give forthright answers. He has tried every way he knows to distract Visimar: he has even told him the details of the attempted poisoning of the God-King. But all to no avail; for it seems that Visimar’s knowledge of that subject, too, somehow exceeds his own.

“Today?” the sentek finally concedes, looking at the bright blue sky that continues to be dominated by a peculiarly hot sun. It is a sky that would rouse little interest in high summer; but during the height of spring, it is unsettling. “Today is no different, old man. This strange heat bodes ill for our undertaking. I should think little of it, had the past winter been a mild one—but such harsh cold has not visited Broken since the winter of the Varisian war. Indeed, we had killing frosts well into early spring. Yet you know all this, Visimar. So, tell me—how can such heat come so early in the year?”

Although evasive, the sentek’s reply is relevant to the business at hand: for on this, the second morning of the expedition’s steady march toward the port of Daurawah, the sun’s continued hammering of the farming dales of central Broken is unobstructed by even the suggestion of a cloud. The sentek (setting, as always, an example) wears his lightest suit of leather armor beneath a wine-red cloak of cotton, not wool, and forgoes either steel cuirass
†
or shirt of chain mail, ordinarily the prudent uniform of the Talons in the field. But the spring morning is too warm for such precautions, and the Talons are still at least two days’ march from the Cat’s Paw and the Bane army—two days that were to have been used to find forage for their horses and supplies for the men in the towns at the rich heart of the kingdom. Arnem does not think his command in true danger of anything more than a skirmish with raiding Bane Outragers, as yet; but his mind is vexed, by the strange weather as well as by the odd gloom of the towns through which the Talons have thus far passed.

There the soldiers have been greeted, not with the gratitude a prosperous people owe their defenders, but with the sullen antagonism (or even open hostility) that a mistreated populace feels for troops who require more food and forage than the townspeople seem able to offer. Arnem, aided by Visimar, has begun to see that the cause of these unhappy confrontations is not ill will toward the soldiers themselves, but resentment of Arnem’s masters in Broken. The anxiety that has crept into the hearts of subjects who have always composed the most secure communities in the kingdom has also meant that these same subjects now angrily refuse to trade the valuable fruits of their various labors in the busy markets of Broken: finding prices for their goods in the great city impossibly low, of late, they are instead hoarding their supplies, not only of grain and other foods, but of fabrics and the handiwork of craftsmen other than weavers, solely for their own use—despite the considerable and even dangerous loss of profit that they will thereby suffer.

Yet there have been no widespread crop failures or shortages of other kinds such as would explain this bitterness among the kingdom’s prosperous weavers, millers, fishermen, and freehold and tenant farmers, the last of whom till Broken’s rich soil for the great landowning families of the mountain city’s fashionable First District. Nor has there been, according to the priests who maintain each town’s small temple, any faltering in observance of the basic Kafran tenet that devout living, combined with hard labor, will produce bounteous harvests, rich profits, and the robust health of physical beauty: all principle signs of the golden god’s favor. Instead, popular anger seems fixed, first, upon those foreign raiders from the North, now turned “men of commerce,” who bring plundered stores of goods in their longships to Daurawah, and second on those agents of uncertain employ who purchase and transport such wares up the mountain to Broken, that they may be sold again for far less than Broken’s own farmers, weavers, and artisans can afford to ask for their goods. It is because of this that the people of the provinces are withholding the fruits of their own labor, and surviving by bartering them locally; and the worry occasioned by this fact, in turn, causes Arnem to sigh at Visimar’s repeated desire to talk of what the sentek calls “irrelevant events from the past”:

“You are aware of the intent behind my question, I think, Sentek,” Visimar says. “Certainly, I do not seek your opinion of the weather.”

Hoping that concession on his part will produce movement on to more pressing affairs, Arnem holds his hands out in resignation and says, “If you are asking whether I have this morning found such words as have eluded me for the last eight years, I can only tell you—as I have for two days, Anselm—that I have not.” Arnem refers to his companion by the latter’s assumed appellation, lest any passing soldier recognize the legendary, indeed the infamous name of Visimar, which, for close on twenty years, has ranked second only to that of Caliphestros in its power to frighten the children of Broken: children who have grown up to become, in many cases, the sentek’s youngest pallins, such as Arnem’s companion on the walls of several nights earlier, Ban-chindo. Such young men are scarcely more than boys, at heart, however powerful their bodies have grown during many months of relentless training. And the faces of those youngest soldiers have appeared ever more boyish still, it seems to Arnem, with every mile that the column has put between itself and home.

“I begin to wonder if my aide was not correct, old man,” Arnem says, half-seriously. “Perhaps bringing your blasphemous old bones along
was
a mistake.”

“I am not quite so ‘old’ as the suffering inflicted by the priests of Kafra makes me appear, Sentek,” Visimar replies. “And, if I may voice the obvious, you are no devout member of that faith, to speak of ‘blasphemy’ as though you mean it. Was it not your doubts about the absurd faith of the golden god that inspired you to invite me on this march? I believe so—and I believe that you know it, in your heart.”

Arnem’s aspect darkens. “I warn you, Visimar,” he says quietly, after he has made sure that no other has heard the old man’s words. “Try my patience all you like—but unsettle my men, put doubt into their heads, and I shall pack you off to the merchants and priests in Broken, and let them finish their work.” The sentek turns to watch the last unit of cavalry pass by, two abreast, and then studies the first of the infantry, who march four-wide: a tight formation designed to keep each of the two
khotors
ready to wheel quickly into the infantry and cavalry
quadrates
†
that are their standard defensive battle formation, should the Bane be foolish enough to attack so far from Davon Wood. For all the wise caution of the formation, it also makes the words that pass between Arnem and his officers, and especially his conversations with “Anselm,” more audible to his men; and this is why the sentek warns his guest so quietly, yet so sternly.

For his part, Visimar watches the soldiers pass for a moment; and, having taken their measure, he nods judiciously. “You are right, Sentek,” he says, surprising Arnem. “I shall endeavor to be more careful.” He seems to genuinely regret that he was briefly provocative. “Too many years of playing the madman in back alleys and taverns have, I fear, made me foolhardy. It is the great danger of disguise—if we play our assumed roles too long, we risk losing our way back. Do you not think so, Sentek?”

Two days ago, the remark would have startled Arnem, who had not known, as he left Broken, exactly what “role” his impetuously chosen companion would play during this campaign, other than (as he told Niksar) the sort of idiot that soldiers are fond of having about camp. Men faced with the reality of death nearly every day (whether from wounds or from pestilence) are as superstitious as old women; and one of the most popular superstitions among Broken troops is that a madman’s touched mind allows him to make sense of what sane soldiers cannot—the chaos of conflict.
‡
It is an ability that transforms such peculiar souls into agents of good fortune, who may increase a man’s, and even an army’s, chances of surviving the shapeless tumult of war.

Such had been Arnem’s outward justification for enlisting “Anselm”; and the older man has played his role well. He has also, more importantly, given not only Arnem, but the sentek’s troops, some explanation for the blackness of mood displayed by the farmers, fishermen, and
seksents
††
along the Daurawah Road: for their complaints have been voiced, not only to Arnem and his officers (particularly to those linnets-of-the-line
†
who are generally the first officers to enter each community), but to the sentek’s bemused legionaries. The whole of Arnem’s column are now aware that the affairs of the kingdom of Broken are badly out of joint: never a safe thing for soldiers to have gnawing at their minds. The schemes regarding trade might be counted as simply another ploy of the ruthless ruling class of Broken to increase their profits; but such weakening of the kingdom’s own industry by illegal imported goods is forbidden by Kafran law. In addition, the supposed “traders” bear the appearance of raiders, with whom the merchants of Broken are forbidden to treat. Most unsettling of all, reports are rife that the authorities who are entrusted with protecting Broken’s commerce from such foreign goods (from the Grand Layzin and the powerful Merchant Lord, all the long way down to local magistrates) are aware of the true origins of many of the shipments of goods with which unscrupulous men line their pockets at the expense of humbler subjects. There are even rumors that these lofty royal servants do worse than ignore these merchant dealings—they
profit
from them …

In reaction to the villagers’ complaints, Arnem has explained to his officers (at Visimar’s—or “Anselm’s”—urgings, which are supported by the madman’s “visions”) that the grumblings are fantastic concoctions, designed to explain away the ill fortune of those subjects lacking the nerve to survive in the heated competition of Broken’s marketplaces; and each officer has been careful to pass this on to his men. At the same time, the sentek has also explained earnestly to those town elders whom he has encountered that neither he nor his officers have been made aware of any such treasonous shifts in trade practices, and that the leaders of the army possess no authority to address purely commercial issues—the conduct of trade being, within the Kafran faith, ultimately a sacred, not a secular, activity. Nevertheless, Arnem has repeatedly pledged that, when he reaches Daurawah, he will seek out nefarious traders, and will extract from them, not only the names of their partners within Broken, but whether they possess written dispensation to carry on so sacrilegious a form of commerce. Throughout the first days of his march, this has sufficed to placate the townspeople, and he has departed each community with such meager stores of provisions and fodder as its elders can supply—

And yet …
Such coolness on the part of subjects who have always been happy to welcome Broken’s soldiers as the embodiment of the God-King’s love for even the humblest of his people, has caused confusion to spread through the ranks of the Talons. While as yet mild, it occupies a growing portion of their own, and their commander’s, thoughts.

“They will see far more unsettling things, when they actually find themselves in an engagement,” Visimar continues to muse. “And should they continue to meet with this ingratitude on the part of the very subjects for whose sake they will be fighting, and in many cases dying—they may lose the will
to
fight, and especially to die …”

With the two men’s remove from the troops now safe, Arnem finds that he is grateful to voice and hear voiced the anxieties that have plagued him since the night of Korsar’s banishment. He has not dared express such doubts to anyone—not even to the loyal Niksar, or, in full, to his wife—but somehow, he feels safe sharing them with one who obviously (if somewhat surprisingly) comprehends them: even if that one has ever been rumored to have been nearly as evil as the dreaded Caliphestros himself. Indeed, some within Broken consider Visimar to have been the
more
evil of the pair, for while Caliphestros cut up the fresh bodies of citizens killed by violence, execution, or poor health, it was Visimar who supervised the acquisition of the bodies. And the more handsome the corpse, whether male or female, the more eager the creature of the sorcerer was to buy or steal it.

The sentek takes the hem of his cloak and moistens it with a large skin of water that hangs from his saddle, then leans down to wipe sweat from the Ox’s glistening shoulders. “I was not aware,” he says, dismounting and using more water to clean the Ox’s neck and face, “that explorers of the dark arts were also interested in military matters.”

“You mock me, Sentek,” says Visimar, still good-naturedly. “But I was once given a unique perspective from which to study your mind and heart—as was my master. I know your moods; and I comprehend your devotion to the rites of Kafra—or rather, its compromised nature.”

Pain seizes Arnem’s body: it is the physical discomfort, not of illness, but of shame. Visimar has brought their conversation—not for the first time—to the brink of a terrible truth the two share: that Arnem had not merely been
among
the soldiers that escorted the
Halap-stahla
ritual party that mutilated Caliphestros, so many years ago, and then, some months thereafter, the
Denep-stahla
that left Visimar in his present condition; no, the full truth is that Arnem
commanded
those detachments. He and his troops played no active part in the repugnant rituals, of course; but they protected the priests from any interference by the acolytes of the sorcerer and his principal assistant, or by the ever-watchful Bane.