“Our own reports confirm this, Sentek,” Akillus adds. “All is uncertainty!”
Arnem nods coolly, turning again to issue orders to Ernakh. “Inform Linnets Crupp and Bal-deric that they are to consult Lord Caliphestros on the types of ballistae that he wishes made, and to begin building them straightaway. We shall spend no more than one day and one night more upon this ground, before advancing on Broken.” Ernakh leaps up on his own small mount and is off, at which Arnem turns to Caliphestros.
“Well, my lord,” he says, no little uneasiness in his voice. “The moment has come: you must brew your answer to the Riddle of Water, Fire, and Stone, and the rest of us must make our own preparations.”
“Do not look so troubled, Sentek — if only for your men’s sake,” Caliphestros answers with a small laugh. As he dismounts from Stasi’s shoulders, the old man accepts Keera’s help in strapping his walking device to his thighs, then takes his crutches from her. “Unity will be as necessary to our endeavor as will force itself. Baster-kin, remember, believes he has righteousness on his side — he thinks he fights the good fight, and he will resist so long as he can. Our only friends remain speed and hope — the hope that, thanks to this mist, he does not yet know our exact position.”
“Very well, Lord Caliphestros,” Arnem says, turning the Ox to cross the training ground and begin the organization of his attack. “I shall heed these reasons for encouragement — but I nonetheless wait to see what miracle you will draw out of those containers!”
As the various officers’ forms fade again into the mist, Caliphestros looks up the mountain, even though, from where he, the foragers, and Visimar stand, only the glow of braziers and the very tops of the walls and guardhouses of Broken can be seen. “No miracle, Sentek,” he says softly. Then, in a louder voice, he addresses his former acolyte. “No miracle, eh, Visimar?”
“Oh, no?” Heldo-Bah says skeptically, as he starts to unbind the containers in the carts, with the aid of the other foragers. “What then, old man?”
“Tell me, Heldo-Bah,” Caliphestros replies. “You are a more worldly man than most in this camp; did you ever hear mention, among the traders and mercenaries who frequented Daurawah — or anywhere else, for that matter — of what the Kreikisch called the fire automatos?”†
Heldo-Bah stops his work, and stares at Caliphestros with a combination of awe and disbelief. “You haven’t …”
“I have,” Caliphestros answers, as Visimar laughs lightly at the Bane’s wonderment.
“But the fire automatos is a myth!” Heldo-Bah protests, his voice controlled, so as not to spread what he thinks will be panic, but his feet stomping like a child’s, as is his habit when presented with something that is too much for him to bear. “As much a myth as your ‘Riddle of Water, Fire, and Stone’!”
“What is a myth?” Keera and Veloc ask, almost in unison.
“Oh, Moon—!” the gap-toothed Bane says, with the same hushed urgency.
But Keera interrupts him. “Heldo-Bah — I have warned you about your blasphemies!”
“Blasphemies?” Heldo-Bah replies. “What do blasphemies matter? Keera, these two old madmen have rested our entire endeavor upon a fantasy!”
Yet Caliphestros and Visimar continue only to laugh quietly, as the former instructs the latter on where each canister should be placed. “Neither the Riddle nor the fire automatos are myths, Heldo-Bah,” Caliphestros says, still chuckling. “In fact, the fire is the answer to the Riddle …”
Heldo-Bah attempts no argument, but only nods his head in resignation. “Oh, I am certain it is — and so, go ahead, laugh, you fools,” he says. “When you should be praying — praying that you get your rain!”
“It will come,” Caliphestros replies; and then, in a slightly more serious voice, he adds, “But will it come with enough violence? No matter, right now. Heldo-Bah, if you know of the fire automatos, you must know that we will need every breakable container in the cooks’ wagons and the baggage train — rather than weeping, why don’t you start to gather them?”
Heldo-Bah makes no further protest, but wanders off meekly, still nodding obediently and speaking in a voice that sounds remarkably like a moaning infant: “Dead men … we are all dead men …”
3
To see the khotor of Sixt Arnem’s Talons, as well as the two hundred and fifty of Bane tribe’s best warriors, put their full commitment to the task of preparing an attack on Broken, under the direction of subcommanders so expert in their various trades that their like could not be found for hundreds of miles in any direction from the city on the mountain (as well as from Davon Wood), is to watch men and women assembled and readying themselves to do in the best manner possible the most fearsome work, the most awful work, that humankind ever undertakes. For, as Caliphestros explains to those about him, it is only when the essential violence of war combines itself with the arts of learning, of construction and experimentation, of the conditioning and steeling of the body and the mind — as well as with that finest of arts, discovery—that war connects itself to that in Man which is, in truth, both superior and moral. Are these qualities not better attained through other activities? On the greater number of occasions, quite probably so; indeed, this may perhaps be a universal truth. But, like the rain for which Caliphestros waits so impatiently yet confidently on the Broken cavalry training ground, as he mixes his strange brew of materials taken from bogs and mines deep within the Earth, war will visit the lives of all men and women, eventually. And it is in the question of how closely each armed force does or does not labor to connect its practice to those other, nobler studies, rather than allowing it to be confined to mere bloodshed, that will determine any army’s true if relative morality (or lack thereof).
Such connections have rarely been in evidence so completely as they are during the relatively few (but ample enough) hours that the Bane warriors and the Talons spend on the cavalry training ground below the southern walls of Broken, during the first night, the following day, and the second evening following their arrival, in preparation for their advance, under cover of darkness, on the walled city. The men’s and women’s activities would not seem, to those who have witnessed or read of various great clashes of arms through the ages and around the known world, particularly exotic: those Bane (and they are not the majority of their contingent) who have at least some experience on the backs of horses are taught by the Broken cavalrymen to handle the smaller ponies with ease, and to coordinate their movements with larger Broken cavalry fausten. This group is led by a restored Heldo-Bah, never so cured of doubt as by action. Together, Bane and Tall riders will provide the attacking army with that single element that besieging forces too often ignore and lack: mobility, the ability to test the enemy for points of strength and retreat from and report on their positions, and doing the same if they find weaknesses that can be exploited rapidly. Yet it is in a third role, that of a diversionary force, that cavalry plays perhaps its greatest role during any siege; and Caliphestros lectures Heldo-Bah until the latter cannot stand to hear another word from the old man’s mouth on just what part the allied and especially the Bane cavalry shall play, along these lines.