The Oath and the Measure

Chapter 16

Cyren had come for Mara first. It had taken every bit of his bravery to scale the roof and stand above a large fire, much less to dangle silk into the midst of the village guards. His grotesque, segmented face framed by stars and moonlight, he beckoned frantically, chattering and whirring.

Mara was up the cord like a spider herself. Once, twice, she braced her feet against the concave ceiling, springing and pushing off athletically so that she swung over the lodge like an acrobat. Finally she vanished into the opening in the roof, her brown legs kicking. She peered back into the room and tossed the cord over the other side of the wall to Sturm.

Sturm rocked back on his ankles and took a deep breath.

The escape looked reckless, even foolish, but it was, after all, an escape.

Struggling hand over hand, favoring his shoulder, which had again begun to grieve him, Sturm pulled himself up the webbing until his feet balanced delicately atop the front wall of his cell. Below him, the guardsmen lay sleeping, their backs propped against the outside of his cell. A half-dozen more snored by the banked fire, and at the far entrance, two more slept standing, bowed over their spears.

Sturm smiled, a little more confident, and tied the strand of webbing about his waist. From here, it was only a short leap to the opening in the roof and out to freedom. Bracing himself against the top of the wall, he jumped out, extending his arms…

… and sailed a good three feet short.

He turned in the air, trying a last desperate grasp, and lost what little balance he had left. His feet flew above him and tangled in the webbing. Stifling a cry of panic, Sturm dropped precipitously headfirst toward the glowing, peat-covered center of the fire. The webbing brought him up a few feet short of combustion, and he swung slowly, silently, like a pendulum above the sleeping guardsmen.

The fall had jerked the breath from him. Panting, he reached up for his ankles, and on the third try, he managed to grab them. Wrestling himself to a better position, he grabbed the cord again and pulled straight up into the opening, where Mara helped him slide onto the roof.

It had seemed like an hour in the doing, and yet another to untangle him. When Sturm looked up, Mara was crouched over him, Cyren looming over her like some canopy transformed by a perverse enchanter.

"Here," the elf whispered, handing Sturm his sword. "Re-forged by the very smith Jack Derry told us to find, so I'd venture the work is good."

"The smith!" Sturm hissed. "You found him, then?" Kicking the last spider's strand from his ankle, he crawled toward the edge of the roof.

"He's over by the far stables. We'll be in danger of patrols and discovery there! Why, even a barking dog…"

"Show me the way," Sturm demanded. "I'm bound for the smithy no matter what."

He turned to Mara, grasping her hand urgently. "Jack Derry owes me explaining."

Sturm slipped the reforged sword into his belt and slid down the roof of the roundhouse. He caught himself at its edge, where new ivy formed a green latticework down the walls to the green of the village square. Mara sighed and followed behind him, the spider clinging to her back and chattering nervously. When they both stood on solid ground, the elf maiden pointed toward the stables, and beyond them the smithy, and through the shadowy alleys of Dun Ringhill they crept, avoiding the tangling light of the moon, until they stood at the edge of the village.

Where a lone light flickered in Weyland's window.

Sturm heard the music when the smithy came into sight. Remote and insinuating, it recalled the young knight to Vertumnus, to the journey ahead of him and the awaiting challenge. He raised his cloak against the rain and motioned Mara to hang back in the shelter and shadows. In a low crouch, he crossed the last stretch of open ground to the forge. Quietly he crept to the window and, standing on tiptoe, peered inside.

Two men stood at the banked furnace, with rakes removing the peat so that the blacksmith's day could begin.

They were talking about spiders.

"As big around as my head, I tell ye!" the larger of the men exclaimed, holding forth two blackened hands, measuring the creature in question.

The other man remained silent, his back to the window. Sturm couldn't see him for the glow from the fire and the tricks of shadows, but he was strong and agile enough, and he seemed to know the uses of a rake.

"Starting at spiders," he finally said, his voice muffled by movement and the soft tugging sounds of rake over moss.

"What would that celebrated master of yours have to say about that?"

'The same your celebrated father would say," the big man replied with a curious smile, standing upright and wiping his brow. Sturm drew even closer to the window, feeling the hot air from the forge.

"Reckon what a monster like that would eat?" the big man asked, taking up his rake again and resuming work. "Well, do ye?" he pursued.

"Smith," the other man replied curtly. Sturm strained to hear more, but no more came.

"Beggin' your pardon, Jack?" the big man asked, and the other turned, his face clear now in the lantern and forge light.

"Spiders that size'll eat a smith before anything," Jack Derry teased, his expression sober and fathomless.

" 'Less it's a gardener!" the smith laughed, raising his rake in mock menace.

Sturm vaulted through the window, sword in hand. He clattered noisily against a workbench, then reeled into Weyland's anvil, coming to rest in a dazed, weaving crouch, his sword raised unsteadily.

It startled everyone, not the least Sturm himself, and for a breath, the three men looked at one another, their thoughts confused and racing. Then Sturm lunged toward Jack, and the forge erupted with shouts and weaponry.

Around the furnace Sturm chased Jack Derry, the gardener scooping up a pair of tongs in his flight and bursting toward the bedroom, where atop the mattress of Weyland the smith, he stood his ground, tongs waving menacingly like a cook gone suddenly mad. Steel clashed with iron, and the iron gave way, the tongs flying apart in Jack's hand.

"That blade will stand up to the best of tools," Weyland proclaimed, a peculiar note of pride in his voice. He grabbed Sturm by the back of the tunic and, with one hand, lifted him cleanly into the air. Sturm struggled like a pup in the gentle jaws of its mother, and the smith reached around him, plucking the sword from his grasp.

Jack Derry scrambled from the bed, picked up a chamber pot, and prepared to hurl it at Sturm. Weyland pushed the lad behind him and loomed as large as an ogre between the young combatants.

"That will be the end of it," he announced sternly. An amiable smile broke across Jack Derry's face, and he set down the chamber pot gently, casually, as though his intention all along had been merely to change its whereabouts.

Sturm's rage had left him. Indeed, he was glad that Weyland had plucked the blade from his hand, and he was surprised at his own sudden ungovernable anger.

Mara appeared at the window, swinging her leg over the sill and stepping inside.

"There's a door in the smithy through which I prefer my guests to enter," Weyland suggested politely, one hand still resting none too gently on Sturm's shoulder.

"I… I heard shouting," the elf explained, slipping her dagger back into her belt.

"It was a certain… difference 'twixt Master Jack and the Solamnic lad," Weyland explained. "A difference I hope they will settle afore they unsettle my premises."

Sturm broke free of Weyland's grasp and seated himself with great dignity on a footstool by the doorway. Jack squatted on the floor. Around a muscular wall of smith, Sturm glared at his erstwhile friend, who smiled back amiably, maddeningly.

Slowly Jack broke into a bright, mischievous laughter. He rose and somehow seemed much larger than Sturm remembered.

"You surprise me, Sturm Brightblade," Jack chuckled, folding his arms. "And surprises are good for the balance."

"That is 'Master Sturm Brightblade,' gardener!" Sturm replied angrily.

Jack's smile turned brittle.

"You left 'master' and 'gardener' behind at the river," he said quietly. "You have crossed into my country, where the trees have eyes and the dance is to quite another tune."

Sturm frowned. It was a different man who stood before him. Gone was the gardener's bow and grovel, the simple good humor and the affable modesty.

The man before him was confident and firm and generous. He was a prince, an heir of wood and wilderness. Sturm caught a faint odor of rain and leaves, and something else undefinable and faintly familiar.

Sitting on the bench in the forge room, Jack rested his chin in his hands, regarding Sturm with the dark, bright scrutiny of a raptor. "As I was saying before you interrupted," he said, "you have surprised me."

"Where were you?" Sturm asked coldly. "I have been three days locked among druids, and the first day of spring is upon me, with no time to think or prepare…

His words trailed off under Jack Derry's even stare.

"You might recall," the gardener said, "that I cleared your trail of a few bandits back there at the Vingaard."

"But where…" Sturm began to ask again. Jack raised his hand.

"But there were twelve of them," Sturm insisted. "Perhaps more."

"Fourteen, by my count," Jack corrected. "Where were you?"

"But you made me… you told me to…" The words sounded frail to Sturm, and the eyes on him felt heavy, condemning.

"What is it, Sturm Brightblade?" Jack asked softly. "Why this hunt for treachery and betrayal where there's none to find? Nobody's leaving you at a snowy castle, your troops huddled and starved."

Sturm had no answer. He rose wearily from the low stool, teetering a little as he gained his feet. Mara moved swiftly to help him recover his balance.

"Where were you?" Sturm asked again weakly, no longer caring about the answer.

The smile crept back to Jack's face. "Why, clearing your trail, as usual," he replied. "You have broken your prison, Sturm Brightblade, and it took skill and wit and wherewithal to do it. The new season is upon us, and the woods are a bowshot away. If you will again accept my guidance, I shall lead you to Lord Wilderness."

Jack said no more in the presence of the smith. He ignored Sturm's eager questioning and paused in the doorway of the smithy, the moonlight at his back and a curious unreadable look in the shadows of his face.

"Come with me," he said. "Bring the elf if you must. Come by foot or on horse, it makes no difference. You must come with me, though. The first hour of spring approaches."

The rain subsided as they stepped from the smithy. Cyren crouched outside the stable, wet and shivering and thoroughly ill-tempered; Sturm wagged his sword at the spider, and the creature backed away, letting them bring out the horses to be saddled and mounted.

From there, the path into the forest was smooth, almost suspiciously so. No alarm had sounded, there had been no warning bell or crier's proclamation, and the village seemed asleep and unaware.

"You don't suppose Lord Boniface is… waiting in the forest, Jack?"

Jack shrugged, leaning forward in the saddle atop durable little Acorn. "Like as not," he said, "Boniface is on his way back to Solamnia. If he knew you were taken to Dun Ringhill, he'd amuse himself on the road home with dire imaginings as to what a pack of druids might do to a Solamnic prisoner."

"What would they have done, Jack?" Sturm asked.

Jack snorted. "Nothing, perhaps. Unless the Order paid them."

"The Order? Paid them?"

Jack Derry looked over his shoulder, regarding Sturm with a brief, ironic smile.

"I happened to explore the belongings of the bandit dead," he explained. "For clues, you might say, as to where they came from and who sent 'em."

"And?"

"And each of them carried Solamnic coin."

The Darkwoods seemed to open and receive them. In single file, they rode down the narrow forest trail just north of the town. Several yards into the forest, the lights of the village seemed to wink out, abruptly and completely, as the dense foliage engulfed the party.

Sturm drew his sword at once. The newly reforged blade caught the last white hint of moonlight over his shoulder as Solinari vanished behind a thick stand of juniper. On the blade, for the briefest of moments, a face seemed to appear-a face not his own but familiar nevertheless, as though someone had been watching through his eyes and was suddenly, unexpectedly, caught in the reflected light. Sturm shook his head and sheathed the blade again.

Jack led the way atop Acorn, a hooded lantern in his hand. A slow, stately music seemed to rise from the trees before them, and confidently the gardener urged on his little horse, who traveled the trail surefootedly, as though she had walked it numerous times before. It was all Sturm could do to keep up with Jack. Luin still moved gingerly, uncertain of her footing, and the extra burden of Mara on her back made the going even slower. Time and again Jack would stop ahead of them and hold the light aloft; through the green darkness they followed, the air about them sweet-smelling and close.

The forest was quiet and expectant. Now and again, a bird would call and another would answer, but the country around the travelers lay hushed, and even the early insects of spring were still and silent.

"Jack," Sturm whispered. The gardener reined in his mare to allow him to move alongside. "How is it that you know-"

Something in the underbrush rustled and snapped. A brown dove hurtled overhead with a soft, skidding cry of panic. At once both men reached for their swords, and suddenly, as if he had been one of the trees themselves, a green knight stood on the path ahead of them.

"Vertumnus," Sturm breathed.

"Hardly," Jack Derry hissed. "And if you've aught of your wits about you, you'll steer widely of him."

The enormous knight did not move. A visor of bright enameled ivy concealed his face, and his hauberk was woven of thick green vines instead of mail. The shield he carried was as large as the hay door of a barn, and indeed resembled just that, its thick oak boarding hammered and pegged together.

It was the weapon, though, that captured the young men's attention. A club, every bit as large as Sturm's leg, lay at rest over the big man's shoulder. If the shield was rough-hewn, the club was almost fresh from the forest, a limb still bearing the scars of its severing, the smaller branches that once were its outshoots trimmed and honed into vicious-looking spikes.

"I expect there's a better path into these woods," Jack suggested, and with a deft turn of the reins, he took Acorn off in search of it. After a nudge from Mara, Sturm followed, casting a last look back at the knight, who hadn't moved from his station on the pathway.

"I don't like it," Sturm muttered. "That man before us… and to refuse the challenge… why, according to the Measure, a Knight is supposed to accept the challenge of combat-"

"To defend the honor of the Order," the elf interrupted, wrapping her arms firmly about Sturm's waist, gripping him so hard that for a moment he lost his breath. "We all know by now, Sturm. We know what the Measure has to say regarding everything from grammar to table manners to the etiquette of swordplay. You've defended the Order against phantasms and innocent spiders and bandits so far, and I've yet to hear any of them slander things Solamnic."

"What was he?" Sturm asked. Jack turned to him, his face lost in leafy shadow.

" 'Tis a treant, Sturm-an old race of giants, older than the oldest vallenwood in the forest, older than the age itself. They were here when Huma was a pup, they say, and they ward the forest, protecting its greenery and secrets. Some things there are in this forest that are beyond your fathoming, or mine either."

"How do you know these things, Jack Derry?" Sturm asked.

Jack said nothing, but motioned them around a low-spreading vallenwood. Sturm ducked his head dutifully to pass beneath an overhanging branch, halfway hoping that Mara was too busy lecturing to avoid being knocked from the saddle. But she bobbed alertly and kept on babbling about insults and chivalry and Oath and Measure.

"Nor did I hear the man behind us speak ill of your precious Order," she said. "You're taking offense where there's none to take and reading challenges in the wind and the rain."

Her grip loosened, and she sank back into silence. But she couldn't resist a last word. Reaching up and tweaking Sturm's ear, she pulled his head back and whispered.

"Your greatest danger is always with you."

Skirting thick bramble until he found passage, Jack Derry guided the party onto another trail. By this time, dawn was breaking in the woods, and shafts of sunlight streaked into the shadows, dappling the forest floor with pale and various green. They found a small woodland pool, dismounted, and watered the horses.

Mara offered sleepy attendance to Cyren, who had begun to spin a web in an alder some distance away. Since they had left Dun Ringhill, the spider had seemed confident, almost brave: no longer trailing behind the party, half-hidden in leaf and branch and bramble, he had walked resolutely beside Luin, rumbling happily and mysteriously to himself.

The faint baying of dogs arose from somewhere to the west.

Sturm knelt beside Jack Derry, and the two of them bent over the water and drank deeply, each using his hand as a ladle. As the water settled back to its customary stillness, Sturm looked at their reflections, side by side, framed in a canopy of leaves.

Again he saw a sharp resemblance, then quickly cast a stone into the pool.

Jack looked up at him, water still dripping from his chin. He regarded Sturm with a bright, unwavering stare, and again the mysterious smile crept over his face.

"The sound of the dogs is the sound of a hunt, fanning out from Dun Ringhill way, as near as I can tell it. I expect that by now old Ragnell has wind of your going, and if I know her, she's sending forth the search to bring you back."

"What can we do, Jack?" Sturm asked imploringly, the Solamnic swagger gone from his voice entirely.

Jack looked at him thoughtfully, then nodded.

"I expect I can… see to something at the western borders, Sturm Brightblade," he said cryptically. "I can brush away our tracks with branches, scatter the scent with rose-water and gin. I can purchase an hour with craft. Perhaps two hours, or even to midday before the dogs take up your scent again."

He squinted into the woods behind them.

"Use the time wisely," he whispered.

Sturm nodded thankfully and bent to the water for another drink. When he looked up, Jack Derry was gone. The woods had swallowed the wild lad readily. Branch and leaf and blade of grass were still in the windless morning, and there was no sign of his passing.

Sturm rose to his feet and signaled to Mara.

"We'd best be off," he urged, lifting the elf maiden into the saddle and climbing up after her. "The heart of the woods is no doubt a good ride from here, and to hear Jack tell it, half of Dun Ringhill is at our heels…"

His voice trailed into silence as every other sound fled the clearing. The chattering of the birds ceased, and the pond into which the two of them looked grew suddenly tranquil and clear. Sturm didn't dare to look up. He searched the reflections on the surface of the pond, the wide netting of leaves, the filtering light.

There, on the opposite shore of the pool, stood the treant, the monstrous warrior, heavy astride his enormous stallion. Slowly and resolutely he lifted his club.