The Oath and the Measure

Chapter 22

There were eleven of them now, where at first there had only been three. Crouched by a fire at the banks of the Vingaard they waited, assured by the Solamnics that the lad would soon pass.

There was always safety in numbers. Sturm would be alone.

Tivok, the leader of the band, bundled himself against the brisk spring night. The other eight had joined them without warning, their scales blue and their tails twitching slowly in winter lethargy. He had prepared to undertake the murder with only two henchmen and had devised a clever plan that would see to it that the henchmen did the fighting.

Then the eight surprised him, walking into the campsite after a three-day journey from southern climes, and suddenly the plans had changed.

But that was the way in these times: there were more of his kind-the draconians, born of dragon eggs perverted by a dark and unnamed power-more than Tivok had ever imagined there would be, and he had heard talk that even greater numbers-some of them wielders of magic, some shape-shifters-were traveling north from the hatcheries of the Icewall.

Let that be as it is, the chief assassin thought, turning his lidless eyes to the cloudy sky. None of them need know the amount of gold that the Solamnics placed in my hand. Ten swords will do the work with certainty, where two would have been… more risky. I shall stay on this hill overlooking the ford until the tenth night after the first of spring, like the Solamnic said.

And I shall oversee. Yes, I shall oversee.

And the bounty, if the lad comes? I will keep my half, and divide the rest ten ways instead of two.

He laughed to himself at the shrewd economics, his laughter the sound of wind over dry leaves. If only this infernal cold would pass, if spring would come beyond the signs of the stars and calendars…

The Solamnics had said that the quarry would come, if he came at all, within the ten days following the equinox. He would be equipped with ancient Solamnic armor, more ornamental than functional. His breastplate would be adorned with an ancient family crest: red sword against the yellow sun.

The lad would be tired, they had said. Perhaps defeated, certainly vulnerable.

The assassins had killed three travelers already, unfortunates who had fit the description, or part of it, or were just ill-fated and alone at the edge of the Vingaard Ford. They had rushed from a thick stand of juniper and pulled the first one from his horse. The weather had been warmer then, and the task was easy.

He was nondescript, that first doomed wayfarer, a thin, gap-toothed boy from the southeast who spoke his last words in Lemish when the barbed swords entered him.

The second had been older, though from a distance, his posture and movements were crisp and forceful and altogether young. Tivok had given the signal to the four upriver, waiting at the makeshift dam, on the off chance that the traveler would elude the first ambush.

It took all six of his remaining henchmen to overcome the old rascal, who fought and kicked until the end, wounding two of them in the process. Ever the tactician, Tivok moved the wounded to posts by the dam, replacing them with fresh fighters.

From Tivok's vantage point, he couldn't tell the third traveler was female, especially since she was bundled against the rapidly falling temperature. She, too, had fought bravely, and she had the advantage of the weather. Indeed, one of the assassins fell to a deft thrust of her sword, but the blade had lodged in him when his body turned to stone, as his kind always did, and her tight grip on the weapon had unhorsed her.

The other five milled over her like enormous brazen flies, their dark wings flickering.

"How long will we waste our time in bad weather?" one of them asked Tivok as they buried the girl's body in a shallow grave by the riverbank.

"Yet a while," Tivok hissed, brushing back his hood to reveal his sloped and crested forehead, his copper scales. "Yet a while still." Setting his shoulder to his slain comrade, he pushed over the hulking stone figure so that to those approaching, the dead assassin would look like a boulder, an innocent brown outcropping of rock.

"Count it as… practice, Nashif," Tivok suggested to the questioner, a hint of warning in his voice. "Count it as maneuvers."

Nashif had no answer. Silently the five assassins slipped into the shadows among the evergreens, two of them stopping to lick their blades.

Sturm was scarcely two miles from the ford as they were burying the girl. He rode atop a rested and strangely unsettled Luin, his cloak wrapped tightly about him against the surprising return of winter.

Already he was forgetting his last encounter with Lord Wilderness.

His final time in Dun Ringhill had been brief. He had wandered the overgrown ruins, looking for more signs of Ragnell, of Mara or Jack Derry, or even of Vertumnus, but the place was desolate, the foliage so thick that he could have sworn it had been abandoned seventy years instead of seven days.

The loss of Mara troubled him the most. Somehow it seemed against the Measure to leave without knowing what had happened to her. And yet in the course of his strange and healing dreams, he thought he had seen her face, seen her move among the throng of villagers that he glimpsed in his fevered and wakeful moments.

Something assured him that Mara was safe, was cared for, though he wondered if he would have felt that assurance had he not been weary and inclined to leave.

By the afternoon, he had given up. Saddling Luin, he rode out of the village and onto the plains of Lemish. By late afternoon, he forded the southeastern branch of the Vingaard River at the very spot where he, Jack, and Mara had been ambushed by the bandits. Emerging from the water onto the opposite bank, he felt unburdened, as though something mysterious and demanding had been lifted from him.

He slept fitfully not far from the sound of the river, and his dreams were of Boniface and snow and knives.

Early the next morning, he was riding again, north and west as his memory took him. Steering by the planets was no use, for while he had been in the Darkwoods, the sky had changed. Chislev, Sirrion, and Reorx had returned to their old provinces of the sky, and you would think it was winter if you reckoned by the planets rather than the calendar.

Indeed, the weather itself had turned brisk, and the springlike prospects of Sturm's first day on the road homeward had bogged down in an icy rain by evening of the next day. He stopped in a copse of oak and alder, this time constructing a lean-to deftly, skillfully, with a breath of thanks to the elf maiden Mara.

It was midmorning on the third day when Sturm Bright-blade reached the northernmost stretch of the Vingaard River. The cold had swept out of the east overnight, and he had awakened to a hint of frost on the oak leaves, to the steam of his breath in the air. Two hours' ride had brought him to the famous ford; beyond it, a chill mist lay on the riverbanks, and to the north, the Vingaard Keep was lost in oppressive, icy fog.

Sturm reined in his horse beside a large brown boulder and stood in the saddle, rubbing his hands to warm them. The waters were unnaturally shallow for early spring, when the river usually swelled and overflowed its banks. It seemed a stroke of good fortune. With an easy crossing and a long brisk ride over the Solamnic Plains, he could camp in relatively safe country-maybe even the Virkhus Hills-and be at the Tower by noon tomorrow.

Then would come the explaining, the answers to Gunthar and Alfred and Stephan.

And the meeting with Boniface. He would have to think on that. Think on it, and watch for poison and for daggers in the dark.

Angrily he brushed back his hood. Why Boniface was after him was a mystery still. Something his father had done, no doubt, but how the son figured in was beyond his green fathoming. But the Order was his family, and the Tower was home, despite the dangers that lay therein. He would return quietly, and when the time was right…

He would uncover vipers in the midst of the gardens. He would avenge his father.

Nonetheless, he wished he had stayed in the Darkwoods. His wish grew even stronger when, out of the mist in front of him, five squat and shaggy figures approached slowly, their swords drawn and their tails thrashing ponderously.

He had never seen draconians before. Indeed, he had never heard them named except in a kender legend he had heard, ridiculed, and dismissed in the leisurely month before this last momentous Yule. But the first look was enough to judge by, and he drew his sword from its newly forged scabbard.

As he did, the snow began to fall. Lightly it scattered across Luin's sturdy red shoulders and across the bare blade of the weapon. For a moment, Sturm thought he heard music, distant and merry and wild, but he pushed it from his thoughts.

The draconians approached even more slowly, lifting their barbed swords even though they were still a good twenty yards away. Sturm offered a brisk Solamnic salute, and three of them stopped approaching altogether. Crouching, hopping like ravens, they turned to one another and began to whisper, waving their weap6ns excitedly.

At once, Sturm spurred Luin forward, sword flashing over his head. With the ancient Solamnic cry on his lips-"Est Sularus oth Mithas!" he rode toward the two nearest draconians.

He was by the first two before they could raise their shields, sword crashing into the head of one. With a lightning turn in the saddle, Sturm brought the blade down on the other, and then, more quickly than thought, reined Luin toward the next three, who shrieked and moved sluggishly toward the shallow river.

They appeared to be already moving in waist-deep water.

Sturm rode between them and wheeled Luin about at the banks of the Vingaard. Sword upraised dramatically, he faced them with another loud, piercing cry. Terrified, the draconians dropped their weapons and plodded in different directions, their rasping shrieks lost in the music and the rising wind.

Leaning forward hard in the saddle, Sturm watched them scatter. It would be simple to follow them, to hunt each of them down. But into his memory came the vision Ragnell had shown him that night in the great lodge of Dun Ringhill-the wintry landscape of Throt, the ransacking of the goblin village, the cruel swordplay over the wretched, spitting creatures.

"No," he whispered. There might come a time for hunting them down, but not now. Nor was he the man. He watched until they vanished behind rocks and bushes and brambles, then turned to the ford and the crossing.

The water tumbled slowly around him, licking tamely at the hocks of his mare. Over the steady sound of the river, Sturm thought again that he heard the music. He remembered the sound of Mara's flute, and something deep in his memory and imaginings told him that she was safe.

From his vantage point on the knoll above the west bank of the Vingaard, Tivok watched the lad rein his horse into the shallow water. The draconian wrapped himself against the icy east wind and waved to his comrades camped upriver. It was the second squadron. The four of them-little baaz draconians stationed by the makeshift dam-would be watching. They would scatter rock and felled branches until the waters surged through with an unleashed swiftness and power, racing south and swelling the banks of the river. If they timed it right, the first waves would strike the shallows when the rider came to midstream.

Tivok chuckled. We would see how this stripling handled a horse.

He was sure this was the one. He had heard the Solamnic oath ringing in the brisk air and seen the sword rise and flash overhead like heat lightning in a distant sky.

Nashif would be punished for letting this one pass.

Tivok signaled again to be certain, then licked his sword to poison the blade.

The snow was falling heavily now, and the banks upriver were crazed with a thin film of ice.

Hawode, second-in-command to Captain Tivok, shifted uncomfortably on a clutter of rock and wood. It was downright tiresome watching that little rise for a sign from the commander. Wasn't there an old saying about a watched pot?

His head hurt. He was drowsy. Draconians weren't made for this season and its weather, their cold blood lulling them when the temperature dropped. Already he had wakened one of the wounded ones, pummeling her with the butt of his sword and promising her more dire punishments if she slept again.

She had regarded him balefully from under her black hood. It made him long for the promised summer.

He shook his head, scattering the pain. The hill grew more and more faint as the snow thickened, and twice he had lost sight of it for a panic-stricken moment. He had thought of taking initiative then, of opening the dam and letting the water rush forth, in the desperate hope that Tivok had signaled unseen from the knoll.

It was stupid, he knew. So he hadn't done it. He sat there and sulked until the outline of the hill had formed again out of the blinding white, and his panic had settled back into a dim unease.

If this was spring in Solamnia, pondered Hawode, his thoughts lazy and dwindling, he would hate to see…

The thought froze unfinished in the icy air. The draconian dozed, his slumber deepening with the snow as he joined his three companions in the wintry and dreamless sleep of reptiles.

Tivok was furious when the rider reached the other bank.

He hissed and lumbered down the hillside, sliding through two inches of fresh snow, his cape billowing like the sail of a ramshackle ice-rigger.

They had all failed him-Nashif and the ambush party, Hawode and those on the upriver dam. He had dreaded that it would come to this, but he dreaded worse the loss of Solamnic gold.

He skidded, fell, and righted himself, cursing softly. His sword shot from his hand, leaving a thick green streak on the breast of the snow. It lay on its edge at the bottom of the hill, its barbed blade glinting, washed clean by the melting snow.

After all, thought Tivok, picking up the weapon, he had plans of his own this side of the river. His thoughts on the struggle to come, he sheathed his weapon absently and loped to the western bank of the ford.

Luin shivered as the wind struck her wet flanks. Sturm dismounted quickly and drew a blanket from the saddle, drying off the mare as best he could.

The crossing had been easy, almost suspiciously so. The music had faded in midriver, but the mare had plodded along complacently and steadily from the east bank to the west. Though the change in the weather promised an uncomfortable ride, the longest part of the journey was behind Sturm now, and no more perils awaited him save the last and most deadly-the confrontation at the Tower with Boniface.

Again the lad mulled over the past fortnight, sorting evidence from rumor and fact from hearsay. He would have been an easy target, kneeling absently by the flanks of the mare, his hands and mind preoccupied, had not Tivok approached by the water's edge, his footsteps breaking loudly through a thick sheet of ice.

Sturm lurched to his feet at once, drawing his weapon and wheeling to face the large draconian. With a menacing hiss, Tivok drew his blade and brought it whistling down. Sturm raised his sword to block the blow and felt the clash and grating of blades all the way up his arms and into his shoulders.

The draconian was stronger than he. He couldn't hope to match him blow for blow.

Sturm scrambled away from Tivok, dodging a pivoting slash from the creature's barbed sword. Snorting with surprise, Luin trotted down to the riverbank, leaving the two combatants to their business. Holding his sword level and to the fore, Sturm circled the draconian, crouching and ready for the onslaught.

Tivok, however, was no green, untutored fighter. He bided his time, moving steadily with the circling lad, and when the moment came, it was sudden and accurate and almost deadly. Sturm toppled away from the unexpectedly quick rush and thrust, blocking one blow and deflecting another, slipping over the icy ground until he was out of sword's reach. Only the quickness of his youth and the winter sluggishness of his enemy's blade saved him from quick death on a ragged edge.

Nevertheless, the draconian had drawn blood. Sturm rose unsteadily, clutching his leg.

Tivok stepped back, leaning scornfully on his sword.

"That, Solamnic, should be sufficient," he announced.

Sturm said nothing but steadied for another onslaught.

"The blade, you see, was poisoned, as is our practice, dishonorable though your Order may find it."

"What has my Order to do with this?" Sturm asked angrily, lifting his sword.

"Its money has paid for the poisoning," Tivok retorted with a dry laugh. Tauntingly he raised his sword as well, turning the blade slowly.

"Wh-What do you mean by that?" Sturm asked. His leg throbbed and he stumbled.

"Solamnic money paid me and my mates," Tivok explained, his voice halting and sweet, as though he were teaching a young and thick-witted child. "The finest swordsman of your Order offered me gold and ordered me here to await your return."

"Boniface?" Sturm asked, though he already knew the answer. The draconian began to circle, his black tongue flickering.

"Don't anger yourself," Tivok teased, sword changing from hand to hand. "Poison moves all the more swiftly through hot blood." He laughed and took one tentative step toward the lad. "But Boniface it was," he whispered melodramatically, his eyes glittering with wicked merriment. "Called himself Grimbane, he did, as if we hadn't heard of the great Solamnic swordsman, couldn't hear him talkin' to his squire as they approached the Vingaard. 'Tis Boniface indeed, and he'll give me more gold for your head, which I'll take when the poison's through with you."

The draconian approached Sturm confidently, his breath misting the toothed blade of his sword.

"If I am poisoned, then what does the rest matter?" Sturm declared coldly. The thought was reckless, strangely liberating.

Tivok shrugged ironically. Then music erupted all around them.

It was a warlike skirl of flutes, an old funeral song of Solamnia, loud and shrill. Tivok flinched and was startled for only a moment, but Sturm was on him before he could recover, singing as wildly as he sang that icy morning in the courtyard of the Tower.

"Let the last surge of his breath Take refuge in the cradling air Above the dreams of ravens where Only the hawk remembers death. Then let his shade to Huma rise Beyond the wild impartial skies…"

Tivok staggered back, his tail thrashing roughly in the ice-encrusted mud. The two swords locked instantly, Solamnic heirloom and saw-toothed draconian saber. Sturm slipped gracefully between the blades, rolled under the draconian's legs, and leapt to his feet on the creature's other side, swatting his tail playfully with the flat of the sword.

"Back here, Your Amphibiousness," Sturm taunted. He wheeled and brought his sword around in a dazzling arc, and it took all of the draconian's quickness to stop the slashing blow.

Back Tivok staggered, the lad before him a prodigy of blade and movement and invention. Wherever Tivok's sword went, Sturm parried it, as though the weapon itself sensed movement and intent. Sturm danced just out of reach of the sword, lunging and darting like a hummingbird, his long blade thrusting and nipping and flickering.

There seemed to be two of him, splashing bravely at the margins of the Vingaard.

Slowly the draconian's fear overtook him. Something had gone awry with the poison, for by now the human should be helpless, paralyzed.

Tivok looked about frantically, searching for high ground, for reinforcements, for avenues of escape. Always his eyes came back to the sword, flashing and turning at his throat, his chest, his face. Sturm danced and sang as he fought, and the air whistled with the sound of wind over metal and the faint descant of a distant flute.

The draconian gathered himself and leapt toward the lad in desperation. Hurtling through the air, he turned clumsily, his sword waving ineffectually as Sturm stepped aside…

And brought his sword down at the base of the creature's skull.

It was all over in a moment. Though the last cry of Tivok the draconian carried upriver to his drowsing cohorts, no one came to his aid to avenge his death upon the lad who vaulted into the saddle and, too wise to wait for further trouble, spurred his little mare to the west across the level, forsaken plains.

Lying on the dam, Hawode stirred at the distant noise, then tumbled into a deeper sleep.