“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.
“Listen to me, old man,” Heldo-Bah says, holding a long, smoldering shard of the fallen South Gate before him as a barrier. “This is no time to be running off. You’ve heard what Linnet Niksar said: there is to be a new order in this kingdom, one that will sweep away the past and be of enormous importance to the safety of the Bane tribe — especially now that the Broken army’s commander knows, if only roughly, where Okot is! So long as this is the case, and great as my respect for your companion — or rather, now, your companions—may be, you are not going anywhere, just yet.”
“It is not a moment for wisdom and justice to desert this city and this kingdom, Lord Caliphestros,” Veloc says, attempting greater conciliation than his fellow forager, but achieving even less effect. Caliphestros remains upon Stasi’s back, his face a stone mask that betrays no emotion save determination: an immovable determination to get out of the city that once was so welcoming to him, but which ultimately came close to costing him his life and, says the expression in his eyes, has not in fact changed so much that it may not try to do so again, should he stay.