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.
Chapter 17
Sturm gripped the reins, turning Luin slowly and clicking his tongue reassuringly at the unnerved little mare. He paced her along the bank of the pond for a better look at the wooden warrior, but constantly his eyes were drawn to the fastness beyond the giant, seeking out a pathway, a trail that would lead around this towering menace.
But Cyren chose the worst of times to find new courage. Suddenly, in one of those awful moments when events move past control and recall, the spider leapt from his web with a shrill, skittering cry and loped across the clearing, his ten eyes fixed on the stolid giant. Through the water he plunged, brash and disruptive, arching his back, his forelegs poised and daunting.
Cyren scrambled up the bank, sidling crabwise toward the giant warrior. Mara cried out and urged the pony forward, but Acorn stood serenely and safely on the banks of the pond. Meanwhile, the towering knight stopped for no courtesy but raised the enormous club in pure and furious menace. With a quick, sweeping motion as indifferent as wind or the sudden movement of seasons, the weapon descended on the spider's back with the sound of wet branches breaking.
Cyren's legs buckled beneath him. Dazed, he staggered away from his terrible combat, his legs waving absently, thin strands of web scattering from his pulsing spinnerets. He spun about with a shriek, rolled on the ground in agony, and then hobbled frantically from the clearing.
Mara was out of the saddle in an instant. Racing across the branch-littered forest floor, she dodged between trees and shadows in desperate pursuit of her transformed lover. In a moment, both spider and girl had vanished, the clearing reverted to silence, and once, maybe twice, her clear voice called for him in the leafy distance.
Sturm sat back in the saddle. He drew his weapon.
'Who you are,' he shouted, lifting his sword, 'is no longer a concern of mine. Nor is your lineage, your country, or intent.'
The knight across the water stood still in the saddle.
'For now,' Sturm continued, his assurance rising, 'past all word and thought, you have laid harmful hand upon a companion of mine. And though I have been uncertain, by Paladine and by Huma and by Vinas Solamnus, I am uncertain no longer!
'For I know not of woodcraft or travel, but I know the Code and Measure. And the Order of the Rose takes its Measure from deeds of wisdom and justice. And a Knight of the Rose shall see, through word and deed and sword, if it comes to sword, that no life is wasted or sacrificed in vain.'
The giant said nothing but dismounted slowly, heavily. The stallion, free from its monumental rider, snorted and thrashed into the woods as again the warrior settled into a stillness, his enormous club raised on high. At the very head of the club, three long black thorns glinted menacingly in the veiled sunlight.
Sturm dismounted as well, his movements swift and businesslike. He reached over Luin's back and grappled the heavy bundle of shield and breastplate to the forest ground. Under the masked gaze of the giant, he donned the armor of his forefathers and, bowed a little by the unaccustomed weight, through the water he waded, his sword drawn. The reforged blade shone in the forest light, and surging out of the pond, Sturm extended the blade in the time-honored Solamnic salute to the looming figure before him.
It was all Sturm could do to raise his shield.
The impact of the club sent the lad to his knees, and for a moment, his senses wobbled as well. He fancied himself in the Inn of the Last Home, and the eyes of Caramon and Raistlin and his mother sparkled in the green recesses of the leaves around him. Dazed, Sturm shook his head. The eyes winked out, and the lad lifted his shield again as the second blow plummeted home.
Sliding in mud, his armor creaking and rattling, Sturm backed unsteadily toward the water, his enemy anchored firmly before him, speaking in a strange and gibbering language that was not words so much as the sighing of wind through the branches, the crackle and whisper of dried leaves.
'Failed,' the giant seemed to be saying. 'These miles and these years and these ventures into the hollow and poisonous dark, and you have failed, yes, beyond your worst fears and because of those fears.'
The visor of its helmet fell back in its sudden movement, and beneath that visor was no face but instead a deep, featureless plane of wood and oak bark. Then, out of the gorget, the elbows and greaves snaked a dozen, then two dozen branches, twining and tangling and lashing Sturm with their switching movements in the sudden rush of growth. The crown of the tree burst forth from the crest of the helmet, which shattered with the shrill, rending sound of torn metal. Sturm leapt backward, gasping, catching his balance in ankle-deep water. The tree began to move.
'You will never defeat me,' its voice said, clearly now as the warrior rose and stretched, his feet rooted fast in the soil but his forty limbs stretching and moving. 'You will never defeat me because I am what the sword comes to in the last battle.'
Cruelly, almost gleefully, the thing poked its club into the center of Sturm's shield, forcing him back on his heels. Its limbs creaked as it pushed and pushed again, and staggering backward, Sturm felt the water lap at his knees. The thing continued to speak, to gibber at him, but the words and finally the sounds were lost in the rush of water and his own thunderous fear.
Nervously Sturm lunged with his sword, his movements tentative and short. The first thrust struck the armor of the monster and turned aside, and with a casual flick of its club, the thing parried the next blow, and the next.
'Is it always the sword and the lance that settles things for you?' the oak creature taunted, waving the club above its head. Sturm watched, groggy with fear, as the enormous weapon blurred in the forest light, whipping through the air with the whirring of a thousand cicadas, of a hundred thousand bees.
Desperately Sturm scrambled from the water and lunged again, his movements more reckless, more unschooled. Under the flickering movement of the club his blade passed, beneath the breastplate and into the heart of the wood. Quickly, as though it had been stung, the creature cried out, its shriek like the tearing of branches, and the club flashed blindingly into the armhole of the breastplate, sharp upon flesh and muscle and bone, sending Sturm's sword end over end into the undergrowth.
White pain danced through Sturm's left hand as the black thorn lodged in his shoulder, directly in the spot where Vertumnus had wounded him at Yuletide. Stifling a cry, he dropped his shield, spun and scrambled after the blade, the oak creature's club crashing on the ground behind him, sending loud tremors through the earth. Jarred into fearful waking, the forest around them erupted with the deafening quarrels of squirrels, the loud insistent shrieks of hawk and jay.
With his right hand, Sturm clutched the handle of the weapon and turned to face his adversary. In the shadowy clearing the creature looked distant, veiled, as though it had summoned the forest to surround it. Weaving on his feet, his left hand throbbing and useless, his shoulder impaled by a broken black thorn, Sturm leveled his
