Oath and the Measure

by Michael Williams

  “I believe, Lord Alfred,” Boniface announced, his voice quivering with emotion, “that in the sixteenth volume of the encoded Measure, on the twenty-second page in the third article, it is related that the Order of the Sword, which takes its Measure from affairs of courage and heroics, enjoins all members thereof to accept the challenge of combat for the honor of knighthood. I believe, Lord Alfred, that the honor of knighthood has been impugned.”

  Gunthar stood up and walked calmly to Boniface’s abandoned chair. He picked up three of the leather-bound volumes that lay on the floor by the table, thumbing through each of them with a dry, ironic smile.

  “Sturm Brightblade impugns no Order,” Gunthar corrected, his eyes on the High Justice. “Instead, he accuses a single Knight—Lord Boniface of Foghaven.”

  “Then trial by combat is enjoined,” Boniface argued, turning briskly toward Lord Alfred. “The Lord Alfred should recall from his recent … contentions with Lord Adamant Jeoffrey that such is the prescribed ruling of the Measure on questions of honor.”

  “And yet we settled that through reason and goodwill,” Gunthar insisted.

  “Through the blandishments of an old man who walked off into the woods, leaving the Order behind him!” Boniface snarled. All eyes turned uneasily to the legendary swordsman, who looked to the rafters of the hall, where doves nested and gurgled. He closed his eyes and seemed to gather himself.

  “If you will notice the forty-fifth page of the aforesaid sixteenth volume,” he said, his voice hushed, almost rapturous, “in the first article, it states unequivocally that trial by combat is the preferable recourse for matters individual between Knight and Knight.”

  “Have it one way or the other, Boniface!” Gunthar exclaimed angrily. “Is Sturm to be judged as a Knight or an un-Ordered lad?”

  Lord Alfred thumbed idly through the volume in front of him, his eyes on the glowing mahogany walls, his thoughts entangled and bottomless. Finally he spoke, and even the doves ceased their noises to listen.

  “Boniface is correct,” he declared, his voice dry and shaken. “Trial by combat is the recourse, if but one disputant insists upon it. What remains for Sturm is the choice of arms extreme or arms courteous, of swords deadly or blunted.”

  Sturm swallowed hard and shifted on his feet.

  “No matter the outcome,” Lord Alfred announced, “neither charges nor judgment will ever leave this room. Nor will any of us, until those charges are settled, the judgment given according to Oath and Measure and our sacred tradition.”

  “Arms courteous,” Sturm said quietly.

  Lord Boniface smiled. “I have won the first pass,” he declared.

  Lord Gunthar walked to a chest at the far corner of the room and produced the padded wicker swords that would decide the issue. “You have beaten a green boy at the Barriers,” he said to Boniface through clenched teeth.

  The swordsman’s back stiffened.

  “I am schooling the lad to a demanding Measure, Gunthar Uth Wistan,” Boniface retorted. “As his father would have it, were he alive.”

  “His father would have more,” Lord Gunthar muttered. “And he would exact it from your skin.”

  “By the Measure, Lord Gunthar,” Boniface said, his voice jubilant, taunting. “By the Measure now and always, and let the swords fall as swords will fall.”

  Chapter 24

  Arms Courteous and a Judgment

  ———

  In the center of the hall, they squared off, the green lad and the legendary swordsman. Sturm hoisted his shield, then rolled the weapon in his hand. The wicker sword was lighter than he had imagined, and it felt assuring, familiar.

  The Solamnic trial by combat was an ancient, honorable practice, sanctioned from the Age of Might and the days of Vinas Solamnus. When charges were brought against a Knight of the Order, the man could defend his innocence by sword. Victory assured innocence in the eyes of those present and the Order itself, regardless of the evidence against him; if, however, he were defeated, honor bound him to confess his crime and accept the exacting punishment of the Measure.

  Sturm swallowed nervously. It was serious business against a serious swordsman. And yet for a moment, his hopes sprouted. Stranger things had happened in the Order than an upstart catching a champion off balance or nodding.

  Stranger things had happened to Sturm himself.

  He rocked on his heels, awaiting his fabled opponent.

  Slowly, confidently, Boniface put on his white gloves. He lifted the champion’s targe he had won twenty years ago at the Barriers. The crossed blades on the shield’s face were faded and chipped with the strokes and thrusts of a thousand unsuccessful weapons. Casually the Knight took up the sword he would use, examined it for flaws, and, testing it for balance, spun it in his hand like a strange and magical toy. Scornfully he turned to Sturm, returning the lad’s ceremonial salute brusquely, coldly.

  “We await your pleasure, Lord Alfred MarKenin,” Boniface announced, and crouched in the ancient Solamnic Address, the stance of swordsmen since the days of Vinas Solamnus. Reluctantly Lord Alfred raised his hand, then lowered it, and in the center of the council hall, the contestants circled one another in ever-decreasing spirals.

  Sturm moved first, as everyone knew he would, for patience is slippery in a green hand. He stepped forward and lunged at Boniface, his movements skilled and blindingly quick.

  The older Knight snorted, stepped aside, and batted the sword from Sturm’s hand, all in a graceful turn as effortless as brushing away a fly. Sturm scrambled after the sword, which came to rest against a dark wall, its hilt extended mockingly toward his hand.

  He grabbed the sword and turned about. Boniface laughed and leaned against the long council table, the sword twirling in his hand.

  “Angriff Brightblade would be pleased indeed,” he taunted, “to see his son spread-eagled and groping in the Barriers.”

  With a bellow, Sturm rushed at Boniface, charging wildly like some enormous, enraged animal. The Knight waited calmly, and at the last moment, he whirled away, tripping Sturm and slapping him on the backside with the flat of the wicker sword. Tumbling head over ankles, the young man skidded over a dropped volume of the Measure and crashed into a scribe’s table, shattering its spindly legs.

  “Finish it, Boniface!” Gunthar shouted, his face flushed and his eyes blazing. “By the gods, finish it and leave the boy in peace!”

  Boniface nodded dramatically, his smile venomous and merry. He wheeled about and stalked toward a dazed Sturm, who raised his sword uncertainly, unsteadily.

  Reeling, his senses jostled and his hands heavy, Sturm watched as Boniface’s sword danced around him, beside him, nicking against breastplate and helmet and knees. It was a swarm of hornets, a flock of stirges, and no matter where he raised his shield to block, his sword to parry, Boniface’s weapon was under him or over him or around him, biting and slashing and gouging.

  Twice they locked blades, the fracturing sound of wicker on wicker echoing in the council hall like the sound of tree limbs breaking. Both times Sturm was pushed back, the second time staggering.

  Boniface was not only quicker and more skilled, but he was also twice as strong as the lad in front of him.

  Cornered, outmaneuvered, battered and checked and scratched and flustered, Sturm pressed against the farthest wall of the room, his back flush against the double oaken doors that had been locked behind him when the audience began.

  There was no place to run, no place to dodge the onslaught. His thoughts in a frantic scramble, drowning in a torrent of swords, Sturm searched for something—anything—to turn back his enemy.

  The draconian, he thought at last.

  Now what did I do.…

  His sword flew out of his hand. Hurled forty feet through the air by a deft turn of Boniface’s blade, it clattered and broke on the stone floor of the council hall. Instantly a wicker point rested in the hollow of his throat, and he looked into the eyes of Boniface—as blue and lifeless as a clou
dless winter sky.

  “Judgment, Lord Alfred,” Boniface requested. He wasn’t even breathing quickly.

  “The council finds for Lord Boniface of Foghaven in trial by combat,” Lord Alfred declared, his voice thin and abstracted.

  “Pack your belongings, little boy,” Boniface hissed. “Solace is quaint in the springtime, I am told.”

  The four of them emerged from the council hall in silence. In the corridors ahead of them, pages and squires ducked into the alcove, and servants turned too diligently back to their work. Nobody asked the outcome of the trial by combat, nor even why swords had crossed in the first place. The council was sworn to silence in such matters, and neither Alfred nor Gunthar would ever speak of this afternoon.

  But everyone would know. If they couldn’t tell by Sturm’s scarlet face, by the grim satisfaction in the steel-blue eyes of Lord Boniface, they would know from the detailed account of Derek Crownguard, who had peered through the keyhole at everything that had transpired.

  And they would hear what Derek and Boniface wanted them to hear. “A real swordsman took Angriff Brightblade’s boy behind the woodshed and taught him respect for his elders.”

  So was the version Sturm thought they were hearing as he packed his belongings the next morning. He imagined the cruel news dropped at breakfast into the midst of the whey-faced, conspiratorial Jeoffreys, who would laugh behind their bacon to imagine it.

  Slowly he wrapped his shield, breastplate, and sword in thick canvas. They had served him better than he had served them. Perhaps at some later time, he would be worthy of them again. As for now, he would take defeat like the Knight he devoutly hoped to be.

  All accusations and suspicions were supposed to die in the council hall. According to the laws of trial by combat, Boniface of Foghaven had set them to rest with his sword. Indeed, as Sturm wrapped the last yard of cloth about his sword, he was beginning to believe that Boniface was innocent.

  For the draconian’s word could well have been slander, simply conjured out of an overheard name and a spiteful heart …

  … and as for Jack Derry …

  Well, in the past fortnight, dream and imagining had blended so thoroughly with fact and reason that …

  He shook his head. Boniface was guilty, regardless of Oath and Measure. He knew it in far deeper places than ritual touched. And yet Sturm’s own weakness with the sword had assured the freedom of his assailant. The trial was over. Regardless of what he or Alfred or Gunthar thought about the matter, Boniface had been found innocent, acquitted by his sword hand and the ancient Solamnic machinery of statute and tradition.

  Hoisting armor to his shoulder, Sturm followed the elaborate maze of corridors from his quarters to the courtyard. It was like the day he had departed for the Southern Darkwoods, shorn of farewells and encouragements and even kindly glances. Everyone hastened to avoid him, to find himself elsewhere when Sturm crossed to the Tower stables.

  Gunthar had spoken to him the night before and urged him halfheartedly to stay on at the Clerist’s Tower. He was relieved when Sturm insisted on going and said his good-byes awkwardly, with fumbling words and a brusque handshake.

  Nor would he tell the lad anything about Lord Stephan Peres.

  Lord Stephan would have seen me off in better style, Sturm thought as he inspected old Reza’s feeble and distracted efforts at saddling Luin. There would have been jests and windy words from the battlements, and even perhaps some wisdom, though the gods know what wisdom one can find amid all this misdirection and folly.…

  But Lord Stephan was … away. Reza had come to the matter at last, as he fretted with the saddle, and the bizarre story of the old Knight’s departure came to slow and scarcely coherent light.

  It seems that the very night after Sturm left the Tower for the Darkwoods, Lord Alfred MarKenin had dredged up a band of unlikely hunters for a jaunt after deer in the Wings of Habbakuk. Lord Adamant Jeoffrey’s younger twin brothers had volunteered at once, eager to curry favor with the High Justice, and Derek Crownguard, too, when Lord Boniface’s sudden duties at Thelgaard Keep had left him unattended. Given such a triad of young lions, Alfred had invited Lord Gunthar as “a steadying influence.” Gunthar begged off, seeing no prospects in the group for either hunting or good fellowship, but Lord Stephan overheard the offer and imposed himself on the party at once.

  “Where did they hunt, Reza?” Sturm asked. “And what does this have to do with Stephan’s leave-taking?”

  “In due time,” Reza said, leaning in the doorway as Sturm gathered his clothes and stuffed them in a saddlebag, his thoughts intent on the Knight’s story. “Meanwhile, here’s the rest of it: They were a mixed lot, were Lord Alfred’s hunting party, and when they decided to take me along as a lyamer of sorts … well, they weren’t the best at what they were fixin’ to do. Lord Alfred decided we would go to the Hart’s Forest, on account of that’s forest enough for the likes of the Jeoffreys.”

  Sturm smiled. The Hart’s Forest was a forty-acre deer park not far from where the Wings tapered into the Virkhus Hills. Once he had admired the place and loved to hunt there, but after his journey to the Southern Darkwoods, it seemed rather tame and arranged—a well-planned garden of trees and wildlife.

  “Well, we get there about sunup,” Reza continued, “and we thrashed around for near three hours, flushing squirrels and gnats and starlings, with nary a trace of deer. It bothered Lord Alfred, I’d wager—them clumsy Jeoffreys, Derek Crownguard’s loud voice, Lord Stephan blowing on a beaten-up hunting bugle and tangling his armor in vines. So finally Lord Alfred called off the hunt, and it wasn’t even noon yet. We turned about and started out of the park.”

  Reza leaned forward, hushed and amused.

  “And it was then that the woods began to change. Trees sprouted leaves and blossomed, roots burst from the ground, and fruit fell out of the treetops.”

  “Fruit?” Sturm asked incredulously.

  “Oh, the seasons have been in a fix for quite some time, Master Sturm,” Reza explained. “No doubt you seen some of it yourself. Anyways, it was like the woods decided to become a forest, a Silvanost or … or a Darkwoods, Master Sturm. And it turned against the lot of us—scared the daylights out of the young ones, it did. Young Master Dauntless Jeoffrey got thrown from his horse when this little yellow lizard fell out of the branches of a vallenwood onto the poor creature’s nose. The other Jeoffrey twin—Master Balthazar, is it?”

  “Beaumont, Reza,” Sturm corrected, setting his foot to the stirrup. The saddle shifted somewhat, and he stepped back with a frown.

  “Master Beaumont … rides through a spiderweb and startles himself, and it gets worse when the spider that built the thing is the size of a thumb and bites him.”

  Sturm grinned in appreciation.

  “So this Master Beaumont turns his filly about and gallops away, and nobody sees him until three days later, and we all think the forest has swallowed him, too. He came back nigh impossible to recognize, what with his face all swollen from the spider bites.”

  Reza tightened the cinch of the saddle and stepped back to admire his handiwork.

  “But what about Lord Stephan, Reza?” Sturm asked.

  “There’s what happened to Master Derek,” Reza urged slyly, winking at Sturm.

  “Very well. You know I can’t resist. What happened to Derek?”

  “Ran into a tree.”

  “A tree?”

  “Thorn tree. Master Derek says it sprung up before he could stop his horse. A low branch caught him in the chin, and the next thing he knows, he’s in the Tower infirmary and it’s two days later.”

  Sturm stifled a laugh. It almost lifted the sadness of defeat and leaving.

  “But, Reza,” he insisted, sobering, loading his belongings onto Luin’s back. “What of Lord Stephan? It grieves me that I cannot say good-bye.”

  “The oddest thing, it was,” the servant said, staggering under the weight of the breastplate until Sturm lifted it from him and hoisted it onto
the mare. “For in the midst of all of this, there was music playing.”

  “Music!” Sturm exclaimed in alarm.

  “We all heard it, but none of us knew where it came from.”

  Sturm frowned, started to speak, then remained silent as old Reza prattled on.

  “It was all around us. Sound of the flute, it was, and the branches all swaying with the melody, and the birds all chiming in. It weren’t but a moment until Lord Stephan answers the notes with that battered old bugle of his, and for the first time, it sounds like a musical instrument, and the birds answer the bugle notes in turn.

  “Then a green path opens in the woods. I saw it. It started up not a yard from my feet. Winds between the trees, it does, like a carpet leading up to the dais at a coronation. Lord Stephan starts laughing like the red moon has struck ’im. Then ‘At last!’ says he. ‘At long last, something!’ and off down the path he rides, laughing like a madman.”

  “Did nobody try—” Sturm began, but the old servant was bent on finishing the story.

  “He rides off at a gallop, his armor sprouting greenery as he’s riding, and he’s laughing, his old laugh booming amongst the birdsong and the flutes. Lord Alfred galloped after him, would have cut him off and reined in the horse, too, but Lord Stephan brushes him aside and says ‘No,’ he says. ‘No, I have been about this for years,’ and he laughs and goads the horse toward this thick stand of oak, and it was like a stand of trees in front of him opens up to let him in and then closes behind him real nice and quiet, so the forest looks like it always did before we come there. We searched for Lord Stephan until late afternoon, halooing and sending out the dogs, but those of us the woods hadn’t swallowed nor run off were a mite skittish about the business, as you might imagine.…”

  Sturm nodded absently, his thoughts on Lord Stephan. It was a strange tale, but like so many strange tales he had heard, it had a whiff of the familiar to it. He would not mourn the vanishing of Lord Stephan Peres, nor was he even inclined to go look for the old man. There was something sudden and wise in his disappearance, as though Lord Stephan had looked around and discovered he had outlived the Order.