Oath and the Measure (24 page)

“There is indeed,” one of the sages replied, his bald head nodding in agreement. “Volume thirty-five, page two seventy-eight, seventh article, second subarticle.”

Lord Alfred bent over the book, thumbing through the pages swiftly. Angriff slid from the fork of the tree and sat in the center of the circle, head cocked like a hawk, listening attentively.

“ ‘In the midst of the Barriers of Swords,’ ” he read, “ ‘whether at midsummer or solstice or at the festival of Yule, any Knight who leaves the circle in the midst of trial or contest shall forfeit his sword.’ ”

Alfred MarKenin looked up and blinked in bafflement.

“ ’Tis talk of the circle, in sooth,” he agreed, “but its import here I do not understand.”

“Simple,” Lord Boniface explained, more confident now, striding to the center of the circle. “When Lord Angriff Brightblade lifted himself from the ground in … in avoidance of my onslaught, he in effect removed himself from the circle and thereby incurred the penalty of the Measure.”

The last words fell in the midst of silence. Gunthar Uth Wistan stepped forward angrily, but Angriff restrained him, a look of perplexed amusement in his eyes.

“You can’t beat him in a fair tilt,” Gunthar muttered, “so you’re at him with … with
arithmetic!
”

Boniface’s gaze never wavered from Lord Alfred MarKenin. After all, advised by the deliberation of the sages, he and the council would decide on the issue. Alfred stared one long last time at each of the contestants, then drew the red curtain across the front of the balcony.

They were less than an hour in deciding. When the curtains opened, Boniface saw the troubled countenance of Lord Stephan Peres. Lord Boniface smiled, expecting the good news.

Angriff sat on the ground, calm and abstracted, staring
up into the canopy of leaves and beyond those leaves at the dusk and the first evening stars.

“The council is … undecided on the matter at hand,” Lord Alfred proclaimed, to an intake of breath among the encircling Knights. “But never fear. For when council is undecided, judgment in the Measure of Tournaments reverts to the Scholars of the Measure, according to volume two, page thirty-seven, article two, subarticle three ”

“Subarticle two,” corrected the balding sage, closing his eyes reverently.

Alfred sighed and nodded, his voice resigned and thin. “Subarticle
two
of the aforesaid Solamnic Measures …”

“Thereby and therein,” continued the second sage, a small gray-haired man whose beard billowed over his red robes, “the Solamnic Academy rules in favor of Lord Boniface of Foghaven. Let Lord Angriff Brightblade forego the use of his sword in the contest in question.”

He knew it was complicated, that it smacked of skulduggery and legalism, but he had won. Lord Boniface hid his exultation, staring solemnly across the ring at his opponent. Tiberio Uth Matar was not so sly. He began to chuckle, to gloat, and even a cold glance from Lord Alfred himself failed to silence him.

Angriff smiled and dropped his sword. Tiberio stepped to the center of the circle where, according to the Measure, he picked up the discarded blade. Serenely, haughtily, Tiberio scrambled onto the limb himself and, breaking off a branch no more than a foot long, no wider than a finger, dropped it rudely into the lap of Angriff Brightblade.

“Here is your sword, Brightblade,” he called out mockingly. “The tree that took your weapon should give one back again!”

Boniface snapped at his insolent second, but Angriff only laughed. Slowly, confidently, Lord Brightblade stood in the center of the Barriers and held forth the olive branch.

“So be it, Tiberio,” he declared quietly. “As I heard the Measure, it said nothing of ending the contest. My sword is
surrendered, but not myself.”

He turned calmly to Lord Boniface, a look of infinite mischief deep in his dark eyes.

“Well, well, Bonano,” he said, using a childhood nickname discarded when the two of them had become squires. “Shall we finish this? Man to man and sword to branch?”

“Don’t be a fool, Angriff,” Boniface protested hotly, and turned to walk from the ring and the contest.

“If you step from the ring, you forfeit your sword,” Angriff taunted. “Volume something-or-other, some page, some article, and so forth.”

Boniface wheeled about, wrestling with his own anger. Angriff made him feel small, foolish, like a boy punished with a switch. Coldly he stepped forward, sword at the point of address.

“Point of order,” he said, in his voice an urgency, a plea. “Does the contest continue in accordance with the Measure?”

Completely bewildered by now, Lord Alfred turned to the scholars. Two heads, one bald and the other gray, bent together for the shortest of moments, and they turned to address the council, a unified front of two.

“We find for Lord Angriff,” they said in unison.

“Think twice, Angriff,” Alfred urged, but Boniface had closed at once, seeking to break the paltry weapon with a single, powerful swipe of the sword. Angriff stepped aside, deflecting the terrible downstroke with the slightest brush of the olive branch. Following the momentum of his sword, Boniface tumbled to his knees. His helmet slipped down over his eyes, and from somewhere deep in one of the loges, a faint, muffled laugh burst forth.

Furious, Boniface righted himself and slashed out at Angriff, blade whistling through the evening air. Angriff ducked under the attack and rose quickly, flicking the branch in the face of his opponent. Boniface lurched forward, enraged, off balance, but his blade slid by the dodging Lord Brightblade. Laughing, Angriff brought the
branch down with blinding speed on the bare wrist of his old friend’s sword hand. With a crack, the limb broke in two, and crying out, Boniface dropped the sword. Angriff scooped up the blade and, in less time than it took those watching to blink, pressed its blunt point against the hollow of Boniface’s throat.

“I believe I win, Bonano,” he announced. “Even by the Measure.”

That was why Boniface had to kill Angriff. It had taken twelve years for the chance to arise, when Castle Brightblade had undergone siege and relief of the garrison hinged on the arrival of Agion Pathwarden and the reinforcements from Castle di Caela.

It was Boniface who had sent word to the bandits as to the road Sir Agion would follow, as to the strength of the party and to the place where terrain and surprise and vantage point would leave the Knights most vulnerable to ambush. His words had cut off the hope of Angriff Brightblade, and it was his belief that Angriff would draw in the garrison and fight the peasantry to the last man.

Covering his tracks had been simple. They had departed from Castle Brightblade in the middle of the night and were back before sunrise the next morning. Boniface had taken only one Knight with him, a whey-faced novice from Lemish whose name he could not even remember. In addition, there had been an escort of three, perhaps four foot soldiers. The soldiers were disposable: He handed them over to the bandits, and their bodies were lost amid the carnage when the bandits waylaid Agion. The Knight was a handy scapegoat in the weeks that followed.

But most importantly, Angriff Brightblade had been undone.

Twelve years can quicken a thirst for revenge, even to the point that you will risk all to gain it. Boniface himself was
ready to be that last man, to fall in the siege of the castle, if that fall meant he would see the death of Lord Angriff Brightblade.

Even at the last, Angriff played by no Measure. Where a true Solamnic commander would have fallen with the castle, Lord Angriff traded his life for the garrison, giving himself to the peasantry and thereby ransoming all of them.

Including Boniface.

Even now, he remembered—six long years after Angriff had walked out into the snow toward the distant lights, the two loyal foot soldiers following him like mad retainers, like hounds.

Eighteen years after that sunlit midsummer day in the Barriers, Boniface remembered both his defeats keenly.

It was why the boy Sturm had to die. For the line of Angriff Brightblade must end without issue, so that whatever wildness lay in that line could be stilled, whatever defiance of Measure and Code laid to rest before such treachery found its way into the Order once more.

Boniface thought on these things. As his black stallion erased the miles from the Vingaard River to the High Clerist’s Tower, he dwelt on them deeply and long, his thoughts enraptured by the intricate laws of his heart.

The village was no more than twoscore huts and a
large central lodge, huddled together at the very edge of the Southern Darkwoods. It seemed to grow out of the forest rather than border it, as though it would be hard to tell where village left off and wilderness began.

Dun Ringhill was brightly lit for the dead of night—candles in every window, townspeople on the steps and in the streets, carrying torches and lanterns. Under other circumstances and in other company, Sturm might have found it inviting, festive—even lovely, in a rural sort of way. But not tonight: The whole village had turned out to see the prisoners, and the welcome was not friendly.

Sturm trudged before the militia, through a gauntlet of wintry stares. The children were too thin. That was the first
thing he noticed. One of them, then another stepped forward, hands outstretched in the time-honored gesture of beggars, but adults drew them away, scolding them with cold, flickering phrases of Lemish.

Sturm frowned, straining to catch words of Solamnic or Common in the midst of the talk. He heard nothing but Lemish, its streams of long vowels and silences, like the distant sound of voices on another floor of a house.

Occasionally someone would hurl things at him. Dried mud, dung, and overripe fruit sailed from the midst of the crowd and skidded along the hard dirt path, but the attacks were halfhearted, and none of the projectiles came all that close to their mark.

Mara walked quietly behind him, in the surprisingly gentle custody of a big rough peasant whom Captain Duir called Oron. Duir himself escorted Sturm, his company cautious and firm but not harsh.

“What are they saying, Captain?” Sturm asked on more than one occasion, but Duir did not reply. His sharp eyes remained fixed on the village hall ahead of them, where a bonfire burned in the midst of the square. As they approached the blaze, two of the guards led Acorn and Luin off through the crowd toward the village stables. Sturm watched them for as far as he could see in the darkness and deceptive light. Wherever the stable lay, the smithy would be nearby.

“Keep your eyes ahead of you,” Captain Duir ordered. “What’re ya gawkin’ after, anyway?”

“The smithy,” Sturm answered, turning to the square ahead of him, where the bonfire danced and roared. “I’ve business with your Weyland.”

“A confident lad, y’are,” the captain observed, “that your business with
us
will be over soon.”

“And confident are your people,” Sturm replied, “whose thin children throw ripe fruit at visitors. Where does your village get apples in March, Captain Duir?”

The guardsman’s hand tightened on his wrist.

“You’ll be taking all things up with herself, I’d reckon,” he replied.

“That would be the druidess?” Sturm asked.

But Captain Duir did not reply. With a gesture that could have been polite or mocking, he led Sturm and Mara across the square to the bonfire, where a wicker throne sat empty, surrounded by a dozen guards.