“Precisely so,” the yantek answers, as he places his own sword in a like position. “I see that you did not neglect to wear your sarbein—good. They will be enough, on the chance that these men are even less experienced than I believe, and attempt to come at us below the shield, exposing their necks. In that case, I shall—”
“You shall quickly use the shield to drive them into the ground, Father, that we may lower our blades on their necks,” Dagobert recites by rote, using repetition of the basic rules of Broken infantry training as a way of calming his nerves.
Glancing about as he nods in acknowledgment, Arnem quickly surveys the garden as if seeing it for the first time. “It happens that, from a military standpoint, you and the rest of my clever children have built this garden well. The Guardsmen”—Arnem now looks above his shield to see the first two of the wary killers approaching slowly, then resumes his survey of the ground about him—“will stay to the center path, rather than brave the stream or the mounds of trees and wilderness you have created about us. They will never have seen such a place within the walls of Broken before, I’ll wager—”
“Father!”
Arnem turns forward once more at Dagobert’s cry, in time to see the first two Guardsmen coming even faster up the garden path, closely followed by a third and fourth. Arnem instantly perceives that their tactics—if indeed they can be called such—are weak: the first pair will come high, as expected, while the second are crouching and will attempt to slip beneath the shield that Arnem holds. The moment has come for him to truly discover if Dagobert has learned not only the terms used in the tactics of combat at close quarters as taught by the army of Broken, but their practice, as well—
And it takes little time to see that he has. As Arnem quickly raises his shield just high enough to force the first attackers to raise their heads as they try to leap above it, the better part of both father’s and son’s swords suddenly extend with brutal force such as one might expect from Arnem, but that in Dagobert’s case is surprising—and all the more impressive. Without hesitation, Dagobert finds the throat of the Guardsman on the left, while his father drives his sword through one eye and then into the brain of the man on the right. Both father and son are sprayed with the blood of these first two enemies, but that does not stop them from quickly retracting their swords when Arnem shouts:
“Below!”
The yantek lowers his shield with speedy force, so that it catches the next two men on their shoulders, driving their faces into the moist Earth of the garden path as they attempt to swing their swords. There the intruders die as quickly as the first two Guardsmen, with the long, tapering points of two Broken short-swords wedging into and then through their spines from the back, just below the head. Seeing the brutal yet efficient manner in which Arnem drives his second opponent’s face deeper into the ground with his foot in order to withdraw his sword more quickly, Dagobert matches the motion, and then hears his father order:
“Withdraw—two paces only, Dagobert.”
Moving to ground as yet unstained by blood and unencumbered by bodies, and leaving the remaining opponents, now, with the additional obstacle of their own dead in the pathway, Sixt and Dagobert Arnem resume their ready stance. Seeing that the Guardsmen, thinking to have learned a lesson, intend now to charge three abreast, Arnem orders his son back yet another long stride, which their enemies take as a sign of full retreat, and from which they derive enough enthusiasm to increase the pace of their onslaught.
But Arnem has already noted that, from where they now stand, Dagobert and he will have two trees of middling but stout enough width on their flanks, to effectively increase their protection from those directions. “We block the man in the center,” Arnem says, noting that this group of Guardsmen is not immediately followed by the remaining three. Among these last few is the blustering leader, whose inability to refrain from proclaiming his own plans, and those of the Guard generally, enabled Arnem and his wife and son to escape in the first place. Now this man urges the oncoming group forward with threats and oaths, all of which are unnecessary. The three attackers, when they arrive before their seeming victims, reveal what they evidently think a most cunning plan: the two men on the left engage both Arnem and Dagobert, but do not hurl themselves upon their position; rather, their role is simply to ensure that the man and youth before them are unable to move from their position, while the third Guardsman, after feigning an attack on Dagobert’s left, hurries around the tree to his side and breaks off from the fight, making directly for the door of the Arnem house. Momentarily surprised by this, both Dagobert and his father glance quickly back to watch this man, which allows the Guardsman on their right time to similarly dart about that position for the door. Once there, both men raise their legs and begin to alternately kick at the thick wood and pound upon it, not with the heavy iron butts of the short spears that they have foolishly left in the bodies of Kriksex and the other veterans they have murdered, but again with the far less effective pommels of their swords.
Suddenly realizing the pair’s intention—to split the Arnems’ strength by posing a threat to the house and Isadora within—Arnem shouts, “We do not break the concentration of our force, Dagobert. First, this man!” At which he lifts his shield, swiftly hacks the sword arm of the Guardsman who was in the center of the path off below the elbow, then pulls the piteously screaming man forward so that Dagobert—who has divined his father’s purpose, and raised his own blade into a side stance with both arms in preparation—can and does deliver the killing blow, driving his sword under the flailing, partially severed arm of the man and deep into his chest. It could almost be called a dauthu-bleith, for the speed with which it puts an end to the man’s suffering, were it not for the murderous intent that had spurred the attacker on in the first place. “Now for the other two,” Arnem orders, stepping forward to snatch the sword from the severed hand and arm of the dead Guardsman. “Quickly, Dagobert,” he continues, turning and bounding toward the house. “Before those that remain at the gate realize their momentary advantage!”
To realize such an advantage, however, the Guardsmen would have had to have gained experience of such combat, and against such opponents, on at least a few earlier occasions, rather than spending nearly all their time bullying citizens of and visitors to Broken, and occasionally doing such murder as has served the purposes of their now-fallen (though they know it not) commander. And so the leader of the small group and his two remaining lackeys remain at the garden gateway, watching as the latest of their contrived assaults is foiled: Arnem, when he is still several steps from the terrace outside the door of his house, hurls the dead Guardsman’s sword with prodigious force into the back of the kicking, hammering attacker directly before him, and the flying blade catches the man in the left shoulder, nearly penetrating to the front of his chest but not completely disabling him. Arnem therefore cries out:
“Engage the wounded man, Dagobert—leave the other to me!”
Father and son quickly exchange positions upon the terrace, Dagobert taking the right and striking at the man who is reaching for the blade in his back, but who is quick, nonetheless, to lift his own sword with his intact right arm to meet Dagobert’s initial blow. In an instant, all the training he has witnessed and been allowed to take part in during drills upon the quadrangles of the Fourth District moves directly through the youth’s thoughts and into his limbs, and he finds that, although the Guardsman’s physical power is prodigious, even given his wound, he simply has not the skills that Dagobert has learned through long hours of practice. Dagobert more than stands his own—but soon grows worried, as, glancing at the garden gateway, he sees that the remaining assassins have gathered their courage and are making for the engagement outside the door of the Arnem house.
“Father—?” he just has time to say, before his opponent has the opportunity to raise a leg and plant it in his chest, knocking him back upon the terrace. Dagobert has the presence of mind to keep hold of his sword, and fends off hi
s wounded opponent’s first attack; but he will have to struggle to regain his footing, a fact not lost on Arnem, who quickly dispatches his own Guardsman, using several blows struck with all the fury of a father, not a commander. Yet he is nonetheless forced to leave Dagobert to continue to contend with his own enemy, and to rush back into the garden pathway, blocking it with his shield and preparing to meet odds of three to one: ominous, he knows, whatever his earlier claims, even when one is facing unpracticed killers.
But face them he does, just as Dagobert gets to his own feet and regains a fighting stance against his own Guardsman, who is growing weak through the pain and loss of blood caused by the sword in his shoulder. Yet the two fights remain stalemates, at best: Arnem levels his forearm so that his shield faces the three healthy Guardsmen horizontally, which fends two of them off, if only for the most part: the yantek takes a cut to the upper portion of his shield arm, but it is not deep enough to stop him from keeping the two men at bay, while his sword goes to work on the third. Dagobert, meanwhile, struggles hard to hold his ground, yet cannot quite gain the decisive position against his opponent. The moment has come for the two defenders of the Arnem home to receive some kind of aid—and it comes from a most unexpected source:
The door of the house, which Sixt and Dagobert have worked so hard to keep closed, suddenly flies open, and—with a cry that is reminiscent of the women warriors of her own, once-powerful northern people, most of whom are long since dead or scattered, by now—Isadora drives a northern raider’s sword (also taken from Sixt’s collection) through the back of the man facing Dagobert with her own right arm. In her left hand she carries a Broken wooden-shafted long spear, which she tosses into the air just above her head and right shoulder, snatching it with her right hand as if she, too, knows the ways of Broken’s best soldiers, and then hurls it with impressive force at the Guardsman who is engaging her husband’s sword arm, and therefore stands clear of her husband’s shield and is the easiest target. The spear catches the man fully in the chest, knocking him back several feet and to the ground, where he lies in a momentary, dying attempt to regain his footing, before coughing out his last, bloody breaths.
Dagobert pauses only an instant to gaze at his mother in bewilderment, before she cries: “Well? You two may have thought me useless in this fight, Dagobert, but I refuse to be—now, go and assist your father!”
And with his own warlike cry, Dagobert propels himself over most of the terrace and into the man on Arnem’s left, who has not expected such assistance from either the youth or the woman. Initially as bewildered as was his son at Isadora’s fearsome appearance, Sixt nonetheless loses no time, now, in dispatching the man on his right, outdoing his swordsmanship (if any Guardsman can truly be said to possess such a skill) with several terrible strokes of the sword arm that have brought him such fame from the eastern frontiers of the kingdom to the Atta Pass. After knocking the Guardsman’s blade from his hand, it takes the yantek but two mighty strokes down on either side of his enemy’s neck to nearly hack the man’s head and neck off by slicing through each of his collarbones. Without pause, Arnem turns to assist his son: but finds that Dagobert has become determined enough by the assistance of his mother not to require such help from both of his parents to face the last of the Guardsmen, the leader and braggart who had been tasked with the murder of the three people who now stand still alive. Driving his sword in a final moment of screaming rage into the fool’s gaping mouth—a most fitting final thrust—Dagobert pulls his blade free as the man falls to the ground, instantly dead. The eldest Arnem son then finally crouches upon one knee, working hard to catch his breath.
Upon seeing the blood that now flows, more freely than dangerously, from her husband’s arm, Isadora loses her momentary fury and resumes her more familiar role as healer. Tearing a sleeve of her own gown free to use as a bandage, she wraps it around Sixt’s wound, and then looks over her shoulder at her son.
“You are not hurt, Dagobert?” she calls, firmly but nonetheless with a mother’s care.
The youth shakes his head, still working hard to get air into his lungs. “Only winded, Mother—nothing more. See to Father …”
“Oh, I shall see to him,” Isadora replies, and as she turns back to Sixt she suddenly pulls the bandage she has applied painfully tight, bringing a cry of pain from the yantek. “Oh, hush!” she instantly commands. “The bandage must be tight—and you have a great deal of gall, to cry out like a girl when your son might be lying dead upon the threshold of our own home!”
Arnem, his pain forgotten, issues a grunt of indignation. “This is wifely gratitude, is it, woman? When all I have done—”
“All you have done you could not have done without me,” Isadora says firmly, jerking the bandage yet one painful pull tighter. “And that is the last I wish to hear of any of it. I’ve told you before, Sixt, your soldierly vanity is often more than I can bear, but to crow at a moment like this—”
Isadora would go on, but her attention is suddenly drawn, like that of both Sixt and Dagobert, to the destroyed garden gate, where Akillus has appeared with several of his scouts. The newly arrived Talons survey the butchery in the garden with wonder and awe, before rushing toward their commander and his wife.
“Sentek—” Akillus manages to say with great concern, before Isadora commands him:
“Yantek, Akillus! Call him by his true rank, if you intend to appear after your presence is required.”
Humbled by Isadora’s harsh tone, which he has never before endured, Akillus nods in her direction. “Forgive me, my lady. It is only—well, we ran into the rest of these murderous swine at the South Gate; Niksar, of course, cut short his mission to the Fourth District, wishing to take some men and assist Radelfer in moving the rest of your children to a safer spot, while my scouts and I cleaned up the—problem.” Akillus glances about, observing the blood-spattered, heavily breathing form of Dagobert, who stares back at him with the gaze of a soldier who has just seen his first true action: not gloating, not proud, even, but knowing full well that he has done, as he said earlier, what needed to be done. “We achieved that purpose. And do not worry—our men are now in control of most parts of the city. I have dispatched one fauste of cavalry through the East Gate to pursue those remaining Guardsmen who managed to flee the city, as well.” To Isadora’s now-worried expression, which plainly displays that she is too fearful to ask, Akillus smiles and says, “Rest assured, my lady. Niksar has reentered the city, while Radelfer and the children remain just outside, awaiting your arrival. Their passage shall be unimpeded by danger—of this, I believe, you may be certain.”
Arnem nods, then thinks to ask, “And what of Lord Baster-kin?”
“Dead, Yantek,” Akillus answers, in a strangely confused voice.
“Dead?” Isadora whispers, as she and Sixt are finally joined by their exhausted son. The word escapes her, not with any satisfaction, but with something that her husband would almost take for relief tinged with regret.
“At the hands of the priests who took him?” Dagobert asks.
“No,” Akillus answers. “Those priests are dead to a man. Killed by more of Baster-kin’s men, who thought to turn the battle through your death and his survival. Those who were responsible for his death, and their present intentions—well, that is a matter that may require your intervention, Yantek. That is, if your wound will not prevent you from such duty—”
“My ‘wound’ scarcely deserves the name, Akillus,” Arnem answers, walking with his wife, his son, and his chief of scouts toward the open gateway to the Path of Shame. “But I would like your men to get these damned bodies out of my children’s garden before they return home.”
“Of course, Yantek!” Akillus replies promptly, ordering his men to the task, which they undertake with an amazement that matches their chief’s.
“All right—tell me, then, Akillus,” Arnem says. “What other killers took Baster-kin’s life, if not the priests? And where are they now?”
“
Just within the South Gate,” Akillus answers. “Halted while attempting to make their way back to Davon Wood.”
“To Davon Wood?” Dagobert says. “Then it was Bane who killed him?”
“Actually, several Bane are attempting to stop those who killed him from leaving,” Akillus says, still, apparently, amazed by the tale he tells. “But I will allow you to judge the situation for yourselves. For, if true, it is—most remarkable. Most remarkable, indeed …”
10.
THE FIRST SIGHT that Sixt, Isadora, and Dagobert Arnem encounter as they make their way back onto the Path of Shame is that of still more Talons, who cheer their emergence with unaffected enthusiasm. The bodies of Kriksex and his treacherously slain veterans have been removed, and upon asking, Arnem learns that pyres appropriate to their loyalty as well as their struggle are being built just outside the city walls. This fact satisfies the yantek, but does little to ease the sorrow of Isadora and Dagobert, who had come to know and rely upon the men with the utmost confidence and affection during the siege of the Fifth District. Having seen this same look in reaction to fallen protectors many times during his military campaigns, Arnem does not even attempt to speak words of sorrowful comfort to his wife and son, but tightens the hold he has on each of them with his two arms, ignoring the pain of his wound in favor of giving the only consolation that experience has taught him will, for the moment, have any effect.
Fortunately, the moment for such undiluted sorrow is brief: as the three follow Akillus into area before the South Gate, which is strewn with Guardsmen’s bodies and smoldering sections of collapsed oak, a human confrontation comes into view that is just what the chief of scouts had said it would be: most remarkable. Remarkable, and fairly confounding, since the participants in the disagreement seemed to have become fast comrades during the march on Broken. Those who are attempting to leave the city are Caliphestros, riding the white panther Stasi, who travels, now, alongside another, more golden beast—the white panther’s lost daughter, Arnem concludes, knowing well the famous tale of Lord Baster-kin’s panther hunt in Davon Wood. But in front of these three, and blocking their every move to escape with the speed and fearlessness that the sentek has come to expect from them, are the Bane foragers Keera, Veloc, and Heldo-Bah, the last of whom issues indictments of the onetime Second Minister of Broken that almost seem intended to provoke an attack. Observing this strange scene are still more of Arnem’s Talons, who are not at all sure what role, if any, they are meant to play in it, and who are glad to observe the approach of their commander.