Oath and the Measure

by Michael Williams

  Boniface seethed quietly, his fingers itching on the hilt of his sword. The man had ridiculed the Oath and Measure long enough, and to judge from Medoc’s laughter, that ridicule was like a disease, spreading and infecting the young and impressionable.

  Eight Knights were left after the first round of the Barriers. Again the lots were dropped into the helmet and shaken, and this time a groan of dismay passed through the loges and balconies where the eager crowd was seated. For Boniface and Angriff were to fight in the next match. It was a meeting all had hoped to prolong; they had wanted to savor the possibility all the long midsummer day, until at evening, under lantern light amid fireflies and crickets, the best swordsman of Solamnia would emerge victorious in the final contest. But the real suspense of the tournament would be over soon, and all the rest of the trials would be superfluous, a soft rain after the thunder and tumult and lightning.

  But a storm was approaching nonetheless, and the air crackled as the two men prepared for the contest—Angriff with his second, Gunthar Uth Wistan, and Boniface with his, the dark young warrior Tiberio Uth Matar, whose family would vanish, crest and all, from the face of Solamnia within ten years. The storm was approaching as the four men stepped within the circle of earth, and the two combatants donned the leather helmets and linen armor of the Barriers.

  The long quiet prelude ended, the men moved to the edge of the circle—Angriff and Gunthar to its easternmost point, Boniface and Tiberio to the west—and all stood still until the trumpet sounded to signal the beginning of the melee.

  Angriff moved like a wind through the light and shade of the circle. Boniface wheeled and reeled and lunged for him twice, but Angriff seemed to be everywhere except at swordpoint. Twice they locked blades, and both times Boniface staggered back on his heels, doing everything he could to fend off the attack that followed.

  Within only seconds, Boniface knew he was beaten. He had been a swordsman too long not to know when he was overmatched, when his opponent was more skillful and quick and strong and daring than he could even imagine. From its beginning, the match was only a question of time. If Boniface surpassed himself, fighting with an intensity and bravado he had never known until this moment, he might prolong defeat three minutes or four.

  Oh, let me not seem a fool! he told himself desperately, frantically. Whatever befalls me, let me not seem foolish! Then he charged his opponent in a last, hopeless assault, sword extended like a lance in the lists.

  It was as if his prayers to himself were answered in the moment that followed. For some reason—whether exuberance or sportsmanship or simple mercy, Boniface never understood—Angriff leapt in the air, grabbed a low-hanging branch of the olive tree, and swung gracefully out of the way, landing after a neat somersault some ten feet away from where he had been standing. A few of the younger Knights applauded and cheered, but the gallery was mostly silent as surprise mingled with bafflement and wonder.

  But Boniface, standing at the edge of the circle, felt he had been delivered by his old friend’s foolishness.

  “Point of order to the council!” he declared, sword lifted in the time-honored gesture of truce.

  “Point addressed, Lord Boniface,” Lord Alfred MarKenin replied in puzzlement, leaning from the red-bannered balcony that marked the vantage point of the tournament judges. Raising a point of order in the midst of tournament was acceptable behavior, but rare. Usually it was done to address a violation of the rules of fair combat.

  This was no exception. Boniface raced through his considerable memory of the Measure, ransacking his years of legal study for one phrase, one ruling in the Measure of Tournaments that would …

  Of course. The thirty-fifth volume, was it?

  “Bring to me, if you would, the … thirty-fifth volume of the Encoded Measure.”

  Frowning, Lord Alfred sent a squire after the volume. Combat was suspended while the observing Knights milled and speculated, awaiting whatever dusty rule Lord Boniface of Foghaven had up his scholarly sleeve. Angriff leapt to the branch again and climbed between two notched limbs of the great tree, where he seated himself to await the return of the squire.

  The volume was brought to the balcony, escorted by two red-robed sages. Lord Stephan took the book, handling it as if it were glass, and passed it to Lord Alfred who, setting it in his lap, looked down at Boniface expectantly.

  By my Oath and Measure, let it be there as I remember, the swordsman thought. Let it be there; oh, let it be let it be …

  “There is,” Boniface began, “if I remember … some reference in the Measure of Tournaments …”

  He paused, nodding tellingly at the surrounding Knights.

  “… the entirety of which is found at the end of the thirty-fifth volume of the Solamnic Measure, extending through the first seventy pages of the thirty-sixth volume … some reference to preserving the integrity of the circle in the Barriers of Swords.”

  “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.

  Chapter 14

  Dun Ringhill

  ———

  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 b
e 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.

  Sturm had grown used to the shape and feel of a storybook rural village, having spent a good part of his life on the outskirts of Solace, a place obscure in that time, though famous scarcely a decade later. When Jack Derry spoke of Dun Ringhill, Sturm had looked forward to a cozy little hamlet, the houses fashioned neatly of wood or wattle and daub, each roof freshly thatched and each fence tidy and in good repair.

  But Lemish was unkempt, and its people completely unabashed by rough living quarters. The houses were large and circular, built of planks and wickerwork, their roofs of heavy, sodden thatch. Smoke trailed through a large hole in the middle of each roof, so Sturm guessed that the houses were warmed by a crude central fire.

  It was to be expected, Sturm thought. He had heard that the Lemish people still lived in the Age of Darkness, the homes of their most powerful rulers scarcely hovels by Solamnic standards.

  But what he had not expected was the square—the blossom and the green of it. In the midst of a drab and forbidding village, the houses on the square were sprouting, leaves and vines burgeoning from their walls as though the planks were still alive, still sending forth shoots and branches.

  There, in the midst of a man-made forest, Sturm and Mara awaited the Druidess Ragnell.

  She stepped from beneath a canopy of leaves, three beautiful girls strewing her pathway with lavender and lilac. The old woman was bent practically double, her face wrinkled and dark like the shell of a walnut and her white hair tangled and thin. Sturm thought of the sea effigies, the spindly, life-sized dolls made of mud and wood that dotted the coasts of Kothas and Mithas, put there to create the illusion from afar that the coastlines were garrisoned and watched.