Despite his lingering soldier’s worries concerning the missing members of the Merchant Lord’s Guard, Arnem can perceive, when he studies Isadora’s face an instant more, that—relieved though she may be at his return, and determined as she may also be to display the confident demeanor that his men have come to expect from her—she will not be truly easy in her mind until all of her young ones are brought home. With this in mind, he addresses the former seneschal of the great Kastelgerd that is, apparently, no longer the center of Rendulic Baster-kin’s power.
“My lady and I have asked much of you, Radelfer, in recent days—do not doubt my awareness of that,” the sentek says. “But I have one last service—nay, call it rather a request—that I would make.” Arnem faces the Path of Shame, where only his two most trusted linnets, Akillus and Niksar, remain in attendance. “Akillus,” he says. “Accompany Radelfer back to our camp, and let it be known that our main force may return to the city, under the cautions I previously declared. And Radelfer, if you will accompany my officers, you can perform this final favor: my children have grown to trust you, and if you will bring them here to their mother and their home, in the same wagon that transported them safely out of Broken, Akillus will escort you with a half dozen of his best men.” Radelfer shows every sign of being pleased to be entrusted with this task, and he wheels on his mount, quickly joining Akillus as the latter sets a rapid pace for the now utterly reduced South Gate.
“And Niksar?” Arnem continues. “Ride, if you will, to the Fourth District. Inform Sentek Gerfrehd—or any other senior officer who is currently commander of the watch—that we have returned, and are beginning our pursuit of the Merchant Lord’s Guard. They may join us or not—but as we have had naught but favorable signs regarding our undertaking from the Grand Layzin and the God-King, they should feel no sense of divided loyalties. After that—proceed with the undertaking in the First District that we have previously discussed.”
“Aye—Yantek!” Niksar says, pleased, like the others, to be entrusted with an important mission that will, it seems, begin the process of healing divisions within the city and the kingdom. His impressive white mount rears once to great effect, and then both horse and rider are off toward the palisade of the Fourth District.
Kriksex, meanwhile, nods to his own men, and then faces Arnem a final time. “Well, Yantek,” he says. “I have not grown so old that I cannot perceive your family’s desire to be reunited in privacy—a natural enough wish. Therefore, with your permission, my men and I will begin the hunt for the fleeing members of the Guard—”
And then, suddenly, Kriksex’s face becomes frozen, as do those of the several veterans who remain in a rough circle around the three members of the Arnem clan who are present. At first, Arnem himself is somewhat mystified by this change in aspect; but Isadora is not deceived for a moment, and the hand that does not hold her husband goes to her mouth, to stifle a cry of grief. It is only when Dagobert cries out to him, however, that Arnem realizes the truth:
“Father!” the youth says in alarm, immediately drawing his marauder sword. “Guardsmen!”
The veterans surrounding Arnem’s party fall slowly to the ground, each crying out in pain as the point of a Broken short spear crashes through the front of his well-worn armor and tunic. With the collapse of Kriksex and the other staunch defenders of the Fifth District and the Arnem family, a new group of faces are revealed: crouching low, the men hide under broadcloth cloaks, and only when they are sure that their far worthier victims are dead do they release their instruments of cowardly attack, and then stand to throw off their cloaks, revealing their well-worked armor, as well as tunics bearing the crest of Rendulic Baster-kin. Arnem realizes that his son was correct, and that his own instinctive uneasiness about the treachery of the Guard has once again been proved reliable: for, when he looks toward the South Gate, now, he sees that a fauste or more of these suppos soldiers—perhaps some sixty in all—have gathered to use numbers against the skill of the relatively small number of Talons who have been left behind to guard their position at the gate. No longer supported by their Bane allies, the Talons have been left, like their commander and wife and son, in a seemingly perilous position by the zeal of their comrades, who have enthusiastically taken to the job of hunting down the Guardsmen throughout the rest of the city: for experience dictates that those overdressed, over-painted dandies should be running in the direction of the gates at the other end of Broken, in order to avoid a fight as they flee the city. But instead, this one unit of “soldiers”—who are little more than ruffians and murderers, as they have just proved once again—have doubled back on the Talons’ point of entry into the city, correctly calculating that they would find their enemy unprepared for such a counterattack.
Arnem stares at the linnet who leads the band before him, then says, as he draws his short-sword, “For once, the Guard shows something approaching cleverness—although your cowardly methods remain miserably consistent.” Pushing Isadora and Dagobert back toward the family’s garden gateway as he draws his own sword, Arnem continues, “I assume that your group broke off from the rest of your fauste simply to undertake the task of revenging yourselves upon my family, before you rejoin your fellow fugitives?”
“You assume correctly, Sentek,” says the Guardsman to whom Arnem has spoken. “Although I would hardly call it a ‘task’—rather, a pleasure. And we are hardly fugitives, yet—for this action may turn the battle. Our master may be taken, and yourself praised throughout the city; but those positions may still be reversed, should you fall, along with your family and the traitors who have followed—”
Arnem has been relying upon the Guardsman’s typical inability to refrain from gloating: as the man prattles on, his intended victim suddenly pushes his wife and son within the family’s garden, and then just as quickly bars the door within the gateway. At once, the Guardsmen begin to beat upon the wooden planks of the door with fists, feet, and the pommels of their swords. The weakness of the Arnems’ position quickly becomes plain, even to Dagobert:
“Father—they shall be upon us in a matter of moments!”
“And moments are all that we now require,” Arnem answers calmly, bracing his shoulder against the gateway door. Then, taking Dagobert’s marauder sword from the young man, he tosses it aside. “Akillus and his men, and perhaps even soldiers from the Fourth, should be here soon. To meet the challenge that faces us until their arrival, however, that blade will not serve you best.”
“Sixt,” Isadora says, with quiet urgency. “What can you be planning? You saw what they did to poor Kriksex and those other men—they will not hesitate to treat us in like manner, once they have broken down that door.”
“And that, wife, will be the moment at which I observe how much our son has truly learned during his afternoons in the Fourth Quarter, as well as from his comrades of late,” Arnem answers, pulling Isadora to him, kissing her once again and then, with his shoulder still hard against the rattling gate, nodding toward the house. “Get your mother inside, Dagobert: see to it that she locks herself in that basement that none of us are supposed to know she frequents as often as she does. Then, get upstairs, and get yourself a decent Broken short-sword. One of my best, along with the largest of my shields.”
“Truly?” Dagobert replies, swallowing his own fears and trying to match his father’s confidence as he pulls his mother toward the house.
“Truly,” Arnem calls after them. “You recall the first rule of Broken swordsmanship?”
Dagobert nods. “Yes—‘the slash wounds, but the lunge kills.’ ”
Arnem acknowledges the statement with a proud smile. “As the eastern marauders, with their curved weapons, have so often paid with their lives to discover. Go on, then: it’s a new, straight blade for you, and one decent shield for us to share—for it’s a great deal of lunging that lies ahead!”
“But, Sixt,” Isadora insists, “come with us! Defend the house, if you must defend anything, for the two of you cannot pos
sibly—”
“Isadora,” Arnem counters, “the two of us cannot possibly do anything else. If they trap us inside, we shall all be consumed by flames—and your beauty was not created to suffer so ugly a fate. Hurry along, then, my lady. Two good Broken soldiers have always been worth any ten Guardsmen—a simple statement of fact that Dagobert and I will now demonstrate to you, as well as to those murderous pigs outside!”
As the Guardsmen’s blows upon the gateway door begin to crack its boards, Sixt Arnem lowers his shoulder ever more, digging his boots into the wild terrain of his children’s very unorthodox garden as he watches Isadora and Dagobert vanish into the house at its opposite end.
8.
THE WHITE PANTHER and her extraordinary rider have reached the entrance to Broken’s Stadium with extraordinary dispatch: for the Celestial Way, from its southern to its northern extremes, has remained empty of all save the most furtive souls, and even the few of those that Caliphestros and Stasi spy cry out in alarm upon observing them, and hurry ever faster in any direction that will take them away from the otherworldly sight. Yet it has not been fear of panther, sorcerer, or any other attackers alone that has kept the inhabitants of the great granite city within their homes. Soon after Stasi had begun her run north, Caliphestros had begun to see public notices fixed to all windowless sides of buildings—homes, markets, and district temples—and eventually to the great columns that have for so long commanded many of the garden gateways of the First District. At first, Caliphestros had not been able to make out their meaning, so intent had Stasi been on hurtling north toward the enormous ovular structure behind the High Temple that the old man had long since come to suspect was her destination. Eventually, however, the returned exile had stopped even trying to slow his companion, for he found that the content of the proclamations was identical, and that he could read a section of the order as he passed by each copy—and the command he soon pieced together had proved most singular, indeed:
This unique quality had not simply arisen out of the fact that the order bore the rarely seen personal seal of the God-King Saylal. Rather, its most curious quality was that it had not committed that sacred ruler to either side in the civil unrest that had broken out in and around the Fifth District and at the South Gate of Broken, and which by now, Caliphestros had rightly presumed, was spilling over into the other districts of the city. Lords and citizens alike were commanded to remain in their homes and carry on no commerce during “this time of confusion and crisis”; yet neither one nor the other of the obvious adversaries in this “present unpleasantness” had received royal endorsement. Such had been a clever ploy, indeed, Caliphestros had realized: for not only could the God-King and the Grand Layzin treat the matter as one of secular politics, but they could quite truthfully claim, later, to have always favored whichever side emerged victorious.
Yes, clever, Caliphestros had thought, as he had struggled to stay astride Stasi’s powerful neck and shoulders: almost perversely clever, just as Saylal himself has always been …
When the pair arrive at the entryway to the Stadium, Caliphestros breathes easier for a moment, as Stasi pauses for the first time: the structure’s portcullis—an almost insignificant (by any military standard) expanse of crosshatched boards that serves as more of a warning than a true barrier—has been shut, for the first time that Caliphestros can ever recall its having been. But, while the grating may itself be less than impressive, it has been fastened at its base with a prodigious iron chain and equally impressive lock to an iron loop that was long ago sunk into the granite of the mountain. A smaller chain has been strung through a section of the crosshatching some five feet up from the base, and its two ends are fixed to a large slab of wood that bears Lord Baster-kin’s command that the Stadium will remain closed until the young men of Broken have bested the Bane.
Staring at the lock upon the ground and recognizing its basic mechanism, Caliphestros begins to rummage through one of the small sacks that he has kept slung over his shoulders.
“Fear not, Stasi,” he announces. “I have a set of tools that will allow us, eventually, to—”
Just what his devices will allow him to do is never announced: for Stasi, evidently, knows the sound of her companion’s rummaging and studious voice, and decides that she will settle the matter of the portcullis herself. Before Caliphestros can coherently object, the panther takes several long strides backward and, lowering her head so that the thick bone of her forehead faces the entryway, begins a hard run that makes her intention unmistakable.
“Stasi—!” her rider scarcely has time to call out, before realizing that nothing he will say can prevent her attempt. With this in mind, he lowers his seating and increases his hold, closing his eyes as he does. Almost before he can comprehend what has taken place, he hears an enormous sound of shattering wood, of which only harmless pieces fall upon his back, so quickly is the white panther continuing to move. Once inside the gateway, Stasi pauses to look back with satisfaction at her work: a gaping hole in the portcullis to one side of the intact chain and lock, and an impact so extreme that the largest pieces of wood that have been blasted away are only now settling to the ground. Smiling and smoothing the fur upon the panther’s neck with one hand as he rubs her forehead with the other, Caliphestros determines: “You were right, my girl—a far superior plan. On, then!”
And, understanding his words entirely, Stasi turns, seeming to know her way about the Stadium (although it is scent alone that is driving her, Caliphestros knows), and makes for the doorway that leads to the dark stairway that winds down to the cages beneath the sands of the arena.
Only here do the travelers finally encounter a human presence: one of the keepers of the beasts in the iron cells. He is a filthy man in equally dirty clothing; and despite the fact that he holds a spear before him, he beholds the approach of the white panther and her rider by torchlight with both amazement and an appreciative awe.
“Kafra be damned,” he says, throwing his spear aside. “I will not stand in the way of such wondrous determination, to say nothing of a sight that defies all that the priests have taught us.”
“A wise decision,” Caliphestros answers. “But where are the other men who work with you in this”—the old man glances about—“this little piece of Hel?”
“Gone,” the man answers. “As soon as Lord Baster-kin ordered the Stadium locked and abandoned, my lord Caliphestros.”
“So you know me,” the legless rider muses, with a mix of satisfaction and disdain. “It would seem that I am not entirely forgotten in Broken.”
“Forgotten?” the keeper echoes in wonder. “You are a legend in Broken—as is the panther you ride upon. Although it was not known until very lately that you traveled together.”
“ ‘Travel’—yes, and a good deal more,” Caliphestros answers. As Stasi turns her head from side to side, her unstoppable determination is suddenly confused by the many scents and increased cries of the beasts in the cells around her: cells that are lit only by long stone openings in the top of each wall that catch pieces of sunlight from barred openings in the base of the Stadium walls, as well as by the torches that burn in sconces outside each place of confinement. The former Second Minister of the realm tries to calm his mount as he attempts to gain more information from the keeper. “You say the rest of your ilk are gone. Yet why did you stay, if that be so?”
“The animals, my lord,” says the keeper. “They would have slowly starved. As it is, I have had difficulty procuring even spoilt meat to keep them alive.”
“And why take such pains to preserve what Kafra and his priests have long taught are mere beasts, to be used and abused as man might see fit?”
“Because, my lord,” the keeper responds, “savage as they may be, I have grown to know these creatures, a little, and to know what they have endured at the hands of Broken’s idle wealthy: young men and women who have used me ill as well, in my time. To simply leave them to die, especially the wretched death of want, would have
been—inhuman …”
Caliphestros’s expression softens. “And so mercy finds its way even into this place. For that statement, jailer, you may leave with your life. But first, surrender your keys.”
The keeper gladly takes from his belt an iron ring which holds the many keys to the cells about them, and tosses it at Stasi’s feet. “Thank you, my lord,” he says, and then, before the “nefarious sorcerer” has a change of heart, he turns and flees.
Urging Stasi to bend and allow him to the ground, Caliphestros groans as he rolls to the hard floor, then immediately reaches into one of his sacks for several balls of his various medications, which he places in his mouth. He begins to chew vigorously, despite their bitter taste, that their effect may ease the pain of his trip through the city all the faster; and then he slips his walking apparatus from his back and straps it to his legs, beseeching he knows not what or whom to allow the powerful drugs he has eaten to take hold of his senses quickly. Once they have, he grasps one of the iron bars of the cells and tries to pull himself upright. The task is beyond his capabilities, however, and he is grateful when he feels Stasi’s muzzle, and behind it the force of her mighty neck, gently lift him upright. He places his crutches under his arms and, as he feels his medicines take full effect, he announces: