The Oath and the Measure

'Look about you, Master Sturm,' Jack observed quietly. 'Where is Vertumnus, and where is the hook and line with which he draws you east?'

'You don't understand,' Sturm protested. 'First there's the wound. I know they laugh about that at the Tower. They say I imagined my wounding, but it is there, by Paladine! But more importantly, it's the honor of the challenge. I cannot do otherwise. You don't know, Jack. There is no Measure for gardeners.'

Jack smiled curiously and rubbed his chin.

'No Measure but the sun and the moons and the seasons,' he replied. 'I'm grateful for those.'

'And I for the Measure,' Sturm said, much too quickly. 'And… and of course for this lovely day.' He looked around, trying to wear a mask of cheeriness. 'A mild tag end of winter it is, Jack. No frost, and the birds returning. Mild as the spring of 'thirty-five, I'll wager.'

When the farmers talked of mild springs, they talked of the year 335. Sturm remembered it well, though he was but ten: the thaws of winter and the flowers starting to bloom in the gardens of Castle Brightblade.

'Mild it is, sir, though I don't know about no three thirty-five,' Jack said and pointed to the east. 'Best that we stop in these parts for the night,' he suggested. 'We're safer this close to the stronghold, what with the bandits and raiders about.'

Jack looked at Sturm solemnly.

'I'd rather Master Brightblade wasn't surprised,' he warned, 'when he finds out how the folk in the countryside take to his Oath and his Measure.'

The evening was quiet, an enormous relief to Mara, but especially to Sturm. For the first night in almost a week, the lad slept the healthy sleep of a young man, secure in the knowledge that Jack Derry watched over the encampment.

There was something about the gardener that called for a sort of wild reliance. Sturm had felt it in the long day's journey as Jack read the shifts in the wind as a swordsman reads the feints and thrusts of his opponent. Jack was a reliable, even an inspired woodsman, but so, no doubt, was the dangerous man Sturm rode forth to challenge.

Sturm watched Jack tend the low fire, watched the muffled red light cast shadows on his hands and face. In that light, the gardener looked unsettlingly familiar, as if they had known one another through a lifetime.

'Look close enough, Master Sturm and Lady Mara, and you'll see the southernmost fork of the Vingaard,' Jack said.

Sturm stood on tiptoe, bracing himself against Luin and squinting east to where the air seemed to waver at the farthest reach of sight. Mara, seated atop Acorn and looking eastward with the sharp eyes of an elf, nodded at once when Jack pointed out the landmark.

'A child's river it is at this juncture,' the gardener continued, with a mischievous grin. 'Your spider could send across a hundred letters in his green boats.'

Mara was coldly silent behind them. Sturm hid a smile. Surely she regretted the telling and retelling of her story, especially to ears as sharp and satiric as the gardener's.

'As I told you both when we decided on this path, swimming's as good as fording in these parts. The river is slow here, and the ground is level both sides of it. An hour or so will have us into Lemish, and it's only another day to Dun Ringhill, if the weather fancies us and the bandits don't.'

He looked disapprovingly at Sturm.

'I expect, Master Sturm Brightblade,' Jack said, brushing his brown hair from his forehead, 'it would be wiser if you took off some of that armor. Swimming a river, even a slow one, works better without forty pounds of mail.'

Blushing at his own fogheadedness, Sturm removed the breastplate, setting it, along with his shield, on Luin's lightly burdened back. Jack looked at him with wry amusement.

'Hard to tell Solamnics from servants now, isn't it, Master Sturm?'

'Follow me,' Sturm muttered, and stalked toward the riverbank. Jack, however, moved deftly in front of him.

'If I might be so bold, sir,' he suggested, 'let's not stand on pomp and protocol. Let someone who knows the river lead the crossing.'

Eye to eye the two young men stood, not a hair's difference in height and weight. It was as though Sturm looked into a cloudy mirror, in which the face staring back at him resembled his in age and countenance, but was certainly not his own.

'I'm with the gardener,' Mara offered. 'A river's treacherous enough with even the best guidance.'

'I don't recall asking your opinion,' Sturm said icily, giving scarcely a sidelong glance to the elf.

Sturm looked out over the waters. Indeed, they did not look that hard to cross. The river was no more than thirty yards wide at this point, and enormous trees overhung its banks-evergreens, of course, and bare sycamore and vallenwood. The branches of one linked with those of another, forming a thin latticework over the river, almost like a trellis or…

… or a web.

'Cyren!' Sturm declared jubilantly. Mara looked at him perplexedly, but Jack caught on at once, herding the reluctant spider to the wide bole of one of the more promising vallenwoods.

'Now, Lady Mara,' Jack said, his dark eyes dancing intently. 'If you'd be so kind, coax your spider across the river there, and see to it that he webs a path for the rest of us. I suppose you can lead this party, Master Sturm, if there's stout cording to hold onto and a clear path through the Vingaard Drift.'

'The Vingaard Drift?' Sturm asked. 'I–I thought that was east of here.' He had heard many stories of the deceptive, switching current in the easternmost fork of the river. Indeed, his own great-grandfather had almost been swept away by the Drift himself, thereby erasing the whole Brightblade line that would follow him. Brightblades and midstreams didn't mix altogether well, and Jack's talk of the Drift made him terribly uneasy.

'It's not as bad in these parts,' Jack explained, 'but a river is always deceptive. Perhaps, since I am more familiar with the Drift and its tendencies, we should proceed as we first considered, with me at the head of the party.'

'Very well,' Sturm agreed, jumping at the chivalrous offer. 'Since, after all, you are Lemish born, Jack…'

'Done, then!' Jack exclaimed, his mischievous smile spreading broadly as Cyren, prodded by Mara's urgings and a slight nudge from her boot, clambered from vallenwood to sycamore to vallenwood and down safely on the other side of the river. 'You'll be a good Knight, Sturm Brightblade.'

A strong, viscous cord extended from bank to bank, and hand over hand, the party began its crossing in the slow-moving waters.

The waters were indeed tamer than elsewhere where Jack had chosen to cross. Sturm clung to the cord with one hand and to Luin's reins with the other; Mara followed behind him, leading little Acorn gently and skillfully through the sliding waters. Ahead of them, Jack clambered and bobbed in the river, surfacing and sputtering in delight, as graceful as a seal.

'Not far now!' he whispered as his head emerged from a swirl of waters, dark locks dripping on his forehead. 'You can tell all the other Knights and all the little Brightblades to come about this journey-you crossed a river on a spider's dare!'

Jack's eyes widened in mock surprise. It was the first time Sturm had smiled at him.

'My, my, Master Brightblade!' he declared aloud. 'I do believe there's someone of substance beneath those Orders and Measures.'

Grinning, Sturm brushed his wet hair from his eyes. At that moment, the crossing seemed adventurous and bright, the waters of the Vingaard loud about him.

So loud was the rush of the current that none of them-not even the horses-heard the bandits approach. The first arrow fell when Jack had passed midcurrent.