“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 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 supposèd 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 possibly—”
“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: