The Oath and the Measure

Chapter 13

He could return to the Tower now.

Boniface watched Sturm's arrest from the topmost branches of a distant vallenwood. The spyglass he carried with him was cloudy but good. He saw the boy offer his hand, saw the captain take it, saw the gestures of friendship stiffen and sour, and saw the militia take them all-the horses, the elven mistress, and Brightblade-off toward the town of Dun Ringhill, where the old druidess sat at the head of an angry tribunal.

The finest swordsman in Solamnia wrapped his dark cloak about him tightly and shivered with pleasure. From a distance, framed in the menacing red moonlight, he looked like a huge raven or some unspeakable bat-winged creature, huddled in the height of the enormous tree. The spring wind died at the foot of the vallenwood, and in the upper branches, it was ultimate winter, dead and still, the steam of Boniface's breath rising like a specter into the midnight air.

Let the old witch have the boy, he thought. He shinnied down the tree like a spider.

Let them hang him, or boil him, or do whatever they do in the barbaric villages of Lemish. In its own way, it would be perfectly legal.

Why, it might even jog the council from their notorious sleep back in the Tower, where the Oath and Measure rust in the closets. The death of his ward might be enough to stir Gunthar Uth Wistan southward to invasions long overdue. Then the people of Dun Ringhill, of the Darkwoods, of all of Lemish and later Throt and Neraka, would know what it meant to transgress the Order and Measure.

But even if Lord Gunthar did not budge from the Tower, if the boy went unavenged and Lemish untouched, if this night marked the end of the matter, Boniface was still satisfied. For the long wars of a decade would be over at last.

Lord Boniface of Foghaven leapt into the saddle of his black stallion. Swiftly, with the grace born of fighting from horseback at close quarters, he wheeled the beast about and rode toward the Vingaard River at full gallop, his mind rehearsing the oldest of his pains.

They had grown up together, Angriff and Boniface. In sword and book, in horsemanship and cunning, in their first raids against the ogres of Blode through the border wars with the men of Neraka, there was scarcely a hairs-breadth of difference between one and the other. Only in their allegiance to the Oath and Measure did the two show differences.

For Boniface, the Order was life, and its rules and rituals the breath of that living. Book after book of the Measure, with its elaborate chapters and lists and qualifications and exceptions, he had memorized with reverence, so that his fellows had smiled at him, called him "the next High Justice."

They smiled because they had admired him. Of that, young Boniface had been sure, and through squirehood and the first lists of knighthood, his assurance had come from the letter, from the laws and restrictions the Order had established since the days that Vinas Solamnus first set pen to paper.

He didn't understand his friend Angriff, for whom both Code and Measure were more of a game. Sometimes Boniface ached and worried that the time would come when he would have to leave Angriff behind, when his own study and seriousness would blossom in the Rose of true knighthood, and Angriff would be a laughingstock, a cautionary tale for young aspirants that gifts and good looks and a generous spirit did not make you a Knight. He expected it to happen, but Angriff became a squire as well, and then a Knight of the Crown, serving with brilliance in the Fourth Nerakan Campaign.

It would have angered a lesser friend to see that brilliance, those talents, wasted on games and music and poetry, on anything but duty and honor. It would have angered that lesser friend, but Boniface bore with Angriff, hoping against the rising evidence that the heir to the noble Bright-blade line, the son of Emelin and grandson of Bayard Brightblade, would turn to discipline and find his joy in fulfilling every action in accordance to the unbending law of the Measure.

Against all evidence, Boniface hoped. That is, until his friend had come back from the east.

Newly wed, Angriff was missing for a month in the wastes of Estwilde, and all but his young bride Ilys gave him up for lost. Boniface himself had stood on the Knight's Spur with the lovely girl, her eyes red and swollen with a week's crying, and told her to hold back her tears and assume the green mantle of Solamnic widowhood.

He hadn't urged her hatefully, of course. It was, after all, a hard time for the Order, and hostile forces assembled far and near. He had simply figured the chances, which were not at all good.

She had nodded dutifully, had ordered the weaving of the mantle. The season had turned from winter to spring as the seamstress rendered the final embroidery, the ancestral sign of the phoenix. Two nights before Ilys donned the ceremonial mantle and became a widow by Code and by Measure, Angriff Brightblade came out of the Plains of Solamnia, riding slowly up the Wings of Habbakuk toward the gates of the High Clerist's Tower, so muddy and wet that horse and rider were indistinguishable and the first sentries almost drew bow against him, fancying him a centaur.

Ilys hid the mantle at the bottom of her bridal chest-shrouded in cedar, to be drawn forth and worn fifteen years later-and they all rushed to the foregates to greet her husband. The heart of Boniface had been as light as any, his joy as pure and surprising and unlimited…

Until he took the reins from his weary friend and saw the change in his eyes.

Something had happened in the wastes of Estwilde. Angriff never spoke of it, nor of his journey home, but the flippant way in which he treated Oath and Measure horrified Boniface. Law and life, it seemed, were toys to the frivolous Angriff, who from that day forward abided by only the most basic allegiances. He disobeyed superiors when he found their commands foolhardy or merciless, he forgave disobedience readily in his foot soldiers, discouraged trial by combat, and avoided all ceremony because it "no longer interested him."

Even more, it horrified Boniface that Angriff Brightblade answered neither to authority nor fate. The council turned their head to his misbehavior because his swordsmanship had blossomed. It was the only word for it. Angriff Bright-blade did things with a sword that no man had dreamt before him, or since, for that matter. Both he and Boniface had learned from the same master. The movements of their swords were essentially the same, but something happened to a weapon in the hands of Angriff Brightblade. It was as though the sword dictated its own path and Angriff followed it. Something reckless and free had entered his swordplay, and none of Boniface's time-honored rules and classical movements could answer for it.

Boniface watched, and envied, and looked for a time and place to match his skills with that of his old friend.

He found it in the Midsummer Tournament, in the three hundred and twenty-third year since the Cataclysm. Two hundred Knights had assembled at Thelgaard Keep, and for the first time, Angriff and Boniface found themselves in the Barriers of the Sword, the contest in swordsmanship that traditionally occurs on the tournament's second day.

Always before, only one of the three great Solamnic swordsmen would enter the Barriers of the Sword-Angriff one year, Boniface the next, and Gunthar Uth Wistan the third. It was an unspoken agreement, giving a sporting chance to the other Knights and avoiding the rancorous rivalry that can be found at the top level of many endeavors.

Three twenty-three was Angriff's year. Though many a Knight was surprised, and some outraged, to see Boniface's name placed in the Barriers, he was entitled by the Measure and as welcome as any man. So protest was silent, and though Gunthar Uth Wistan refused to speak to Boniface at the banquet the night before, Angriff was generous and friendly and joked about the possibility of their meeting in the Barriers on the morrow.

Boniface remained silent. Through the night he slept fitfully, his dreams a flashing of blade and sunlight, and he woke the next morning with his arms already weary, having fought through the night in those dreams.

Angriff, it seemed, slept soundly and strongly, as a great tree slumbers in the depth of winter. He awoke cheerfully, singing an old song about broadswords and beasts, and promptly invited Boniface to his tent to share breakfast. All through the meal, Boniface couldn't look at Angriff. The movement of his old friend's hand for a piece of fruit or bread startled him like the sudden rustle of an adder in dried leaves, and that morning, his meditations were shallow and fruitless.

The arena was exactly as tradition described it. The circle in the garden was twenty feet in diameter and free of obstacle and impediment, though the setting itself was overgrown, and a huge olive tree extended its branches over the grounds. It was a peaceful spot, quiet before the afternoon's clashing of swords, and yet, to Boniface's ears, the place hummed like a hive, filled with anticipation and an undefined menace.

The first rounds of the Barriers were routine and amiable. Expert swordsmen were mismatched with beginners, who left thankful that the tournament rules called for arms courteous, the blunted, light swords of the summer games.

Boniface's first opponent almost caught the great Knight napping, scoring a point and then another while his famous adversary scanned the crowd anxiously.

Could it be for Angriff Brightblade? So was the rumor. The Tower was abuzz in the belief that the two would cross swords in the afternoon, and speculation and wagers flew. Would Angriff's gifts or Boniface's study prevail? Would the wild inspiration of the mystic win out over the beautiful precision and schooled control of the master?

Boniface returned his attention to the matter at hand, the first of his opponents. With a swift, almost mathematical efficiency, he brought the young man to the ground, the rounded tip of his sword at his helpless opponent's throat. Swiftly Boniface turned away, dismissing again his thoughts of Angriff Brightblade as he stalked toward a rest he did not need and a wait for his second opponent in the contest.

Ten minutes late for the next match, Gunthar Uth Wistan, Lord Brightblade's second, waded through the murmuring crowd followed by Angriff himself, who took longer to reach the circle than he did to dispatch his opponent, young Medoc Inverno of Zeriak. It was a maneuver so swift and unexpected it bordered on the foolish. Instead of parrying Sir Medoc's first, inexpert thrust, Angriff simply stepped to his right out of the path of the blundering lad, shifted his blade to the left hand, and disarmed, tripped, and pinned Medoc in one effortless move.

Angriff stood back and saluted his opponent, who lay on his back, scowling fiercely. Suddenly, overwhelmed by the sheer ease and quickness of it all, Medoc laughed despite himself.

" 'Tis not the usual Knight," he said, "so roundly beaten by a master swordsman, who lives to enjoy and tell of it! I have been an uncommon match for you, Lord Angriff!"

Angriff laughed along with him, and with a gesture both gracious and respectful, leaned forward and helped the young Knight to his feet. All around the Circle of the Sword there was murmuring and polite, baffled applause.

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 Bright-blade 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.