The bird’s head swivels and bobs upon his ever-active body, and he soon leaps down upon Keera’s hand, his small feet creating a trembling, vital sensation throughout the forager’s hand and body. That sensation is as nothing, however, to when the starling looks up at the Bane woman with his black eyes and declares, “Kee-rah!”
“My lord—!” the tracker exclaims softly.
“Oh, it’s nothing to do with me,” Visimar replies. “One of the many successful experiments, based on previous years of the study of bird as well as other animal life besides our own, that my master conducted in the Wood and elsewhere. Little Mischief—for such is the name Lord Caliphestros gave him—will now know you forever. I cannot pretend to understand how or why; but I do know that it can be of great use …” Visimar’s eyes fix on the starling’s intently for a moment, and he says, “Little Mischief—you go with Kee-rah—just to the top of the hill. See what the men on the walls of Boh-ken are about, and in what numbers.” Visimar looks up. “Keera?”
Keera is too entranced by the magic of the moment to think of hesitating at the order. “Aye, Lord Visimar!” she replies, turning her pony to the east, and making for the crest behind which her fellow Bane have been so hard at work to create their illusion. The trip of woman and bird is a short one, however; in just a few minutes Keera races back to Visimar, enthusiasm in her features. “They do just as we hoped, my lord!” she calls. “Men line the walls between the guardhouses, and bring heavy ballistae up to assist them.”
Visimar nods knowingly. “Oxmontrot was wise, to make his walls wide enough to support such engines of war,” he says. “Although, in this case—as in so many—his descendants will, it appears, make a weakness of his wisdom.” Attempting to stare once again into the eyes of the starling that perches upon Keera’s fingers, Visimar is forced to purse his lips and whistle sharply; for the bird is still entranced by Keera’s features, just as he was in the treetops of Davon Wood.
“Hear me, now, Little Mischief!” Visimar says, with urgency; for the sound of his whistling has finally attracted the starling. “Go to Kaw-ee-fess-tross, and say this:” He uses words that Little Mischief—who richly deserves his name, Keera has decided—understands: “So-jers. So-jers, sojers, so-jers, Boh-ken, eees!”
The repetition of the first word, Keera supposes, is intended to indicate that there are many soldiers; the last, that these soldiers have gathered at the East Gate. When she sees Visimar detect a gleam, if not of comprehension, then at least of correct memorization, in the starling’s black eyes, Keera watches the old man pull a bit of parchment from his robe, and, with his free right hand, place it upon his thigh and print a strange symbol upon it with charcoal.
Catching sight of her interested expression, Visimar explains, “It is merely a coded method that my master and I had of relating meeting places and enemy movements, when he was in the Wood and I in the city, before our communication was severed by my Denep-stahla …” Having completed the brief scratch of charcoal, Visimar holds it up to his Bane friend; but Keera must ask, “Are they wholly of your own invention, then? For they are not the same as those that appear on the ancient rocks we use for mapping trails.”
“Not wholly our own,” Visimar explains. “But this is also a runic way of writing, although one not quite dead: merely borrowed by my master from tribes to the north, so that there was little chance that the Kafran, who take little interest in those kingdoms and nations about them, would comprehend them.”
Folding the parchment carefully, Visimar produces a string, with which he clearly means to tie the simple message to the talons of the waiting Nerthus; but the great owl takes this as something of an insult, in one motion batting the string away and then using the same talon to clutch the parchment tight, as if to tell Visimar that she no more needs binding to achieve an important assignment than does the starling that is her constant source of irritating (if often affectionate) company and competition. A somewhat chastised Visimar takes the owl’s meaning perfectly:
“Very well, then, Nerthus, carry your message to Caliphestros freely, just as Little Mischief does—but hurry, great and beautiful lady. For time now presses, as the storm approaches the city …”
And so, with Heldo-Bah, Veloc, and their detachment of Bane warriors continuing to delightedly raise as much dust and noise as they can about the eastern road to Broken, the two birds take flight. Watching them go with a smile, Keera asks a final question: “One point still puzzles me, Visimar: why does Lord Caliphestros wait for the rain to begin before our main assault?”
“Because the rain will spark the fire automatos,” Visimar replies. “The most fiercely burning flame known, even in the mightiest kingdoms—and all our subsequent plans depend on that ancient fire.”
Keera grows bewildered. “Water will spark fire, my lord?”
Visimar shakes his head. “Again, I do not pretend to understand it, Keera, any more than I understand the Riddle of Water, Fire, and Stone. I can only tell you this: that my master’s science has never failed, to my knowledge. And so, yes, when the great storm begins, I will wager that we shall see a most remarkable and shocking sight …”
5.
NOT MANY MOMENTS LATER, at the crest of the trail that connects a patch of ground south of Broken’s walls with the larger, lower plain upon which Sentek Arnem and Yantek Ashkatar’s allied force received its final training and orders, loud sounds of amazement—some amused, some awed, but by now, all accepting—can be heard emerging from the sentek’s newly reconstructed tent. Arnem has established his main headquarters for the attack upon the city at the terminus of this trail, so that his tent, like the rest of his camp, is at least partially protected from the eyes of the sentries upon the southern walls of the city by the few stands of firs that have withstood the rocky ground and centuries of wind upon the summit of the mountain. But the sounds of consternation within that tent are not sparked by the plans for deployment of the main part of the allied force, but by the silhouettes of the two birds that can be seen flying away from just outside the shelter, to seek safety among the nearby trees. For these birds—Little Mischief and Nerthus—have brought to Lord Caliphestros what he claims is positive assurance that the deception being supervised by Visimar and Keera below the East Gate of Broken has been a wholehearted success; and that, therefore, the second stage of the allied action must commence immediately.
After handing that assurance over to Sentek Arnem, Lord Caliphestros chose to move atop Stasi to a point nearby the commander’s tent, so that his presence would not unduly influence any reactions to the idea of intelligence coming from such a source as birds. And now, as the various commanders emerge from their latest council and move off to prepare for the second and third phases of the attack, Caliphestros remains at that nearby, shadowy spot, keeping his companion—who senses the coming climaxes, both in human affairs and in the weather atop the mountain—calm; and it is here that Arnem finds the pair, gazing almost wistfully off toward the great shadow that is the South Gate of Broken.
“I shall say this, my lord,” Sixt Arnem announces, as he watches his trusted commanders move off toward their various tasks, then joins the legless old man. “Your years in the Wood have taught you endurance, but they have also made you forget how remarkable many things that you have come to take for granted must appear to men from either Okot or Broken. New realities or notions are not so easy to accept; and the facility with which you have brought myself, Yantek Ashkatar, and our respective officers to accept and appreciate the new realities with which you have acquainted us is to be commended—with no little awe, I might add.”
“The sentek speaks truly, Lord Caliphestros,” Ashkatar says, his characteristic laugh rolling up from his powerful chest as he follows Arnem. “No one shares your hatred for the men who rule in Broken more than we Bane; yet there were times when, even as I believed that you offered us hope, I could not understand—and, I will admit, even doubted the sense of—your orders and actions: the endless di
gging on our march home to Okot, after our initial meeting, or the very identity of your companion, the white panther, one of the great legends of our people … Once explained, of course all doubt was put away; but every day, every hour, every moment, it has seemed that not only our officers but our men have been asked to accept strange or incredible notions—yet they do so now as if they were the most common of commands. And here the sentek and I stand, by way of profound example, prepared to gamble the timing of the stages of our attack on communications brought by messengers who have feathers rather than feet!”
“This all may be true,” Caliphestros says at length. “But had I not happened upon men and women prepared to believe in all I have learned, any ‘new realities’ of my own would have been explained in vain. And now—but one more ‘new reality’ left to prove …” Straightening up, he searches the officers who move away from the tent. “Are Linnets Crupp and Bal-deric here?”
“We are, my lord,” Crupp answers, as he and Bal-deric step forward.
“And our various ballistae ready to take up their positions?” Caliphestros then indicates the roiling clouds that continue to darken the light of early morning. “For we must be ready when this storm strikes.”
“And we shall be, my lord. Please do not doubt that.” It is Bal-deric who now speaks. “The first group of machines reached their positions before this council dispersed. As for the others—” Bal-deric indicates the trail up from the training ground, alongside which sit not only Arnem’s command tent, but the second collection of Caliphestros’s ballistae. “We await only word from the Southwestern Gate, as well as any movement by the Guardsmen themselves, at which time we shall wheel them into both place—and action.”
“You must not make your actions too dependent upon such messages and signs,” Caliphestros replies, with more urgency than any officer present has seen him exhibit before. “The rain, gentlemen!” The old man leans forward to take up a nearby piece of fir branch and then wave it before Stasi’s jaws, at which the white panther begins to playfully yet fearsomely gnaw at the section of wood and needles. “When the rain strikes, the South Gate must be coated—” He points the branch toward the ballistae’s carts and their beds full of clay containers, each ready for launching. “And if indeed it is, you shall see something never before witnessed upon this mountain.” At last allowing Stasi to take the fir branch from him, that she may continue gnawing upon it, Caliphestros adds only: “I have said enough, I’m certain you will agree. Sentek Arnem—I leave the rest to you …”
While Caliphestros proceeds, as he has so often done on this march, to seek solace in the company of the white panther alone, Sixt Arnem declares, “Well, then, Bal-deric—finish the installation of your ballistae at the Southwestern Gate, and begin your bombardments. And with luck—we shall soon know you have completed the job properly by the cries of terror among Lord Baster-kin’s Guard!”
Happily, those cries do soon come, in good time for Linnet Crupp and Caliphestros to be prepared to move their second set of ballistae to join the others well before the rain climbs up the slopes of Broken. Preparations are nearly complete: what Lord Baster-kin sees as an ill-disciplined attack—one first striking at the East Gate, then at the Southwest—conducted by allies who know little about each other (and trust less), has in fact, to this point, been an elaborate performance carried on precisely to lead him to such a conclusion. How wrong or right he will have been to trust in his native prejudices, in the beliefs and disbeliefs handed down to him by generations of haughty but undeniably effective predecessors, must now be put to a mortal test. But the point of true attack shall not come at Broken’s East Gate, its strongest, nor at its Southwest, where Baster-kin has now been induced to have men and machines waiting, as well; rather, the assault will be launched, as it was always intended it should be launched, at the South Gate, another formidable portal before which it is particularly difficult to assemble a large host with supporting machines, and above all, a spot which Lord Baster-kin, who would never have been likely to expect such an assault, has been carefully convinced to think the allied force has struck from its list of candidates.
But, as is known to those who have studied war in the East, the greatest generals do not attack where their enemies are, but where they are not: a thought that would seem obvious, save for the incredible frequency with which commanders violate it. In addition, those same eastern military teachers exhort that battles are played out in the minds of those who conceive them long before the first screaming clash of arms takes place; and they are won ere the opposing commander ever offers his sword or his head in subjugation. These are all factors of importance, because Caliphestros is a man who has been as far to the East as anyone not born there, and he has studied these theories and practices of war well. Thus, it is his vision above all that plays out in the “Battle” for Broken, which is indeed a nearly concluded affair by the time that Linnet Bal-deric’s conventional ballistae begin to hammer the Southwest Gate of the city with enormous pieces of ancient granite: stone once cleared from within the walls of the city to allow its creation, but that never found its way back within to facilitate the construction of proper homes for the residents of the Fifth District, and which serves instead, now, to give force to the left claw of Sentek Arnem’s massively reimagined Krebkellen.
Despite the superiority of the allied force’s battle plan in Caliphestros’s mind, he is, by his own admission, no commander of men in the field; and it is thus for Sentek Arnem and Yantek Ashkatar to ensure the resolve of the warriors under their command once true battle has been joined. So far as the Bane fighters are concerned, Ashkatar knows that he need not concern himself with the contingent at the East Gate of the city: his men upon ponies had been tasked with but one responsibility—the creation and maintaining of so much mayhem that to those within Broken it would appear a fearsome company of horses and men were moving into position to attack. Such was and remains an assignment perfectly suited to the talents of Heldo-Bah, Ashkatar long ago determined: Visimar and Keera might have overseen its proper initiation, to ensure that it did not descend into the kind of ecstasy of madness on Heldo-Bah’s part of which the file-toothed Bane is more than capable—and this they have indeed managed to do, with the somewhat less effective help of Veloc, whose soul remains perilously balanced between the glistening heights of philosophy and the tempting depths of depravity. Yet the true rallying and spurring on of the eastern deceivers has been the work, above all, of the irrepressible and constantly screaming Heldo-Bah.
Back where the work of truly preparing an assault is being done, both Ashkatar’s and Sixt Arnem’s styles of inspiring and motivating their troops are once again on display, just as we have observed them so before in these pages. Ashkatar’s remains that strange combination of affectionate encouragement and harsh warning, punctuated by hard cracks of his ever-reliable whip, which keeps the men and women who form his ranks in motion. Yet, with the greater portion of the Bane horsemen at work to the east, what exactly are the rest of the Bane warriors responsible for, as the tasks of Sentek Arnem’s ballistae do the main work of the battle’s opening phase? We shall come to such matters soon enough: suffice to say now that Bane axes (new axes, forged for them by Caliphestros from the steel that the tribesmen believe comes from the stars and is a gift from the Moon) can be heard within the mountain’s highest stands of trees, resounding as they strike the trunks of the mighty, lonely fir giants. It is not surprising, given all this activity, that Ashkatar’s already thunderous voice, made even more terrifying by the manner in which it resonates up from just below the peak of the mountain, is full of oaths both profane and affectionate—so affectionate, that the occasional Bane warrior takes no offense to seemingly insulting references to such things as his or her parentage:
“You, there!” he might bellow at a member of a felling crew. “I will not see such fainthearted effort from a whelp of mine!” And then the whip will crack, making a sound as harsh as the first cracks of the tr
ee’s felling; and, finally, the commander’s voice sounds again: “Oh, you are no offspring of mine? Wipe that look from your face, soldier, there’s many a Bane on this mountain today to whom I am more than Yantek! Ha! Swing that axe as I would, you lazy pup!”
And the wonder is that the warriors under his command actually take heart from such perhaps absurd but nonetheless endearing berating. Ashkatar’s treatment of the female fighters of the Bane tribe, meanwhile, is not tempered by any belief that women possess more fragile souls than do men: if they did, he is quick to remind them, they would have done well to have stayed home. Far from being no less demanding of his women, Ashkatar’s whip sometimes cracks more often in their company; and when, as Arnem and Caliphestros have predicted, the thunderous pounding upon the Southwest Gate caused by Bal-deric’s ballistae causes a sudden panic upon the eastern walls, and Lord Baster-kin is heard to shout his own commands (equally loud, but far less endearing) that more than half his artillery be shifted to the Southwest Gate, it is the women archers of the Bane who are ordered forward to harass the movement, under cover of stout blinds assembled by all the bowmen of each people’s contingent, as well as under the great shields of Taankret’s Wildfehngen.
But it is the insults and derision thrown at the men of the Guard as they pass from the East to Southwest Gate by the Bane women warriors that are especially disheartening to Baster-kin’s inferior soldiers. For to take an arrow, to such men, is terrifying or deadly enough—to take it to the loud sounds of women in a seeming constant state of uncontrolled laughter, is quite another. Yet when one linnet of the Guard has the temerity to suggest to Lord Baster-kin that some of the Guard’s few bowmen be moved to address the problem, words are heard raining down from the Southwest Gate (for it is to this position that Baster-kin has himself moved, to supervise the re-construction of many of the ballistae that he had only just succeeded in getting his men to fully assemble on either side of the East Gate) that are as something more than music to Bal-deric’s ears: