The Oath and the Measure

of discovery.

The streets around Weyland's establishment were silent and empty. It was as though this part of the village had been abandoned, or the villagers had drawn away for an hour because something momentous and private was happening near the forge and the stables. Though the villagers were distant, their things were near: Daggers, torques, awls, and spindles littered the village green, and more than once Sturm stepped on broken crockery, which crunched beneath his boots like the exoskeletons of enormous insects. A bronze mirror leaned crazily against the door of a house, its surface obscured by verdigris. Not far from it, strangely untouched by all this growth and decay and abandonment, lay a golden veil, its edges embroidered with green roses. Sturm knelt and picked up the garment, holding it sadly up to the sunlight.

He tossed it into the air. The garment rocked in the breeze, billowed and settled on the windowsill of an abandoned cottage. At that very moment, the ring of hammer against anvil sounded through the edge of the village.

Sturm broke into a run, his hopes racing wildly. Of any man in the village, Weyland would know the way to Jack Derry. And Jack would know the way to Vertumnus.

The doors to the stable stood wide open, and though the horse neighed and snorted from the warm, pungent dark, in the window of the smithy was movement and light and an even more welcome noise as a man passed back and forth before the forge, singing softly to himself.

Without hesitating, Sturm paced toward the smithy door and opened it.

Vertumnus stood before him, holding tongs and hammer, smiling expectantly.

He set down his tools and wiped his hands with a rough canvas cloth, while Sturm stood in the doorway, bathed by the forge's heat and struggling with his memory.

Sturm dropped his sword in astonishment. Suddenly it became almost clear. The dreams and choices seemed to make a dark sense, though Sturm was still hard put to explain them. He started to speak, to assail Vertumnus with a hundred questions, but Lord Wilderness paused and raised his hand for silence.

'You look wayworn and weariful,' he observed, 'and I'd be a poor host without offering you bread and drink.'

'No, thank you. I mean, yes. Yes, bread would be good. And water.'

Vertumnus stepped toward the back door and the well, ladle in hand. Sturm followed aimlessly, bumping clumsily against the anvil.

'It's a green lad you are, Solamnic,' the Green Man said merrily, brushing by Sturm on his way to the pantry and the bread. 'Green and stubborn, though there is remedy for both, nor is either altogether bad. Your greenness has kept you from corruption and compromise, and your stubbornness brought you this far.'

'It brought me to failure,' Sturm said angrily, 'for the first day of spring has come and gone. You eluded me, Vertumnus, and you win on technicalities!'

' 'Tis the Solamnic in you that whines at technicalities,' Vertumnus replied merrily. 'I recall that I said if you did not meet me at the appointed time, your honor would be forever forfeit.'

Sturm nodded angrily, seating himself clumsily on the smithy bench and accepting the bread and brimming ladle.

' 'Twas the fault of that druidess,' Sturm maintained. 'Ragnell imprisoned me for three days and made me sleep for a week after that, else I'd have met you in plenty of time.'

Vertumnus seated himself on the floor. 'You were safe in that imprisonment. You were followed by a relentless enemy, and when the Lady took you into custody… he gave up pursuit.'

Sturm sniffed angrily. Again this story of conspiracy and Boniface.

'Well?' Vertumnus asked, folding his hands in his lap. He looked like an ancient eastern statue, a symbol of distant serenity. 'Well? Do you feel the wound? The loss? The forfeiture?'

'I… I don't understand,' Sturm protested.

'I would imagine,' Vertumnus persisted, 'that your honor is still there, unless you're bound to lose it over a calendar… Oh,' he declared, as if he had remembered something suddenly. 'I've a gift for you.'

Vertumnus rose to his feet and hopped to the smithy shelves, stood on a chair, and brought down a long object wrapped in canvas cloth. Slowly, proudly, he unwrapped the thing and held it before Sturm.

It was a sheath for a sword, the work on its surface intricate and flawless. A dozen faces stared at Sturm, embossed in gleaming silver. Like reflections in a dozen mirrors they were, or like the statuary in Castle di Caela, miles and years away. Each face shared his eyes and expression, and each was bordered in copper leaves and roses intertwined, red and green, so that it seemed on fire-a dozen suns, or sunflowers, or burgeoning plants.

'It's… it's magnificent, sir,' Sturm said quietly, his manners overcoming his perplexity. He admired the sheath from a distance, almost afraid to touch it. Absently he sat on the anvil, squinting to regard the skill of the craftsman. 'I trust it could only be Weyland's work.'

'The work of his master,' Vertumnus said quietly. 'No man alive could do the likes of it, if I do say so.' Quietly he crouched by the open forge.

'These amenities, Lord Vertumnus, are most welcome to the traveler,' Sturm announced in his most formal and measured manner, turning the scabbard in his hand. 'And doubtless they are testament to your honor and breeding, as is this wonderful gift.'

Muffled laughter came from the corner of the smithy, where Vertumnus crouched in violet shadow and yellow light, laying peat upon the glowing coals of the forge.

Sturm cleared his throat and plunged on. 'But I recall an agreement between the two of us, sealed at a Yuletide banquet. 'Meet me on the first day of spring,' you said, in my stronghold amid the Southern Darkwoods. Come there alone, and we shall settle this-sword to sword, knight to knight, man to man.' You told me I had to defend my father's honor, and you challenged mine.'

Vertumnus nodded, his obscure smile fading into a sharp and rigid solemnity.

'So we turn to the business,' he whispered. Laying the last square of turf on the fire, he stood to his full, imposing height-a head taller than the lad in front of him.

Sturm gasped. He hadn't remembered the Green Man this tall, this imposing.

'Those were not all the words that passed between us,' he insisted. 'You Solamnics, with your passion for rules and contracts, should remember the whole brittle world of what was said and the very words that said it.'

'But I do remember,' Sturm replied. ' 'For now I owe you a stroke,' you said, 'as you owe me a life.' '

'Then our memories agree,' Vertumnus murmured. 'Follow me into the smithy yard. There we shall satisfy the terms of this agreement.'

Sturm set down the scabbard and stepped from the smithy into the afternoon light. Vertumnus waited for him by the well amid a litter of leaves, flawed artifacts, and half-finished ornaments. At once, a low music rose from the earth around them, and Sturm held his naked sword to the fore with a nervous and intent readiness.

'Arm yourself, Lord Vertumnus!' he challenged, his teeth clenched.

Lazily, catlike, Vertumnus leaned against the stones of the well.

And then, in a blurred and blinding instant, he seized Sturm, his green hand closing over the lad's sword hand with irresistible strength.

'Sword to sword,' he muttered, and tightened his grip.

Sturm winced. A sensation-overpowering, almost electrical-coursed through his sword arm. Sturm tried to cry out, to release the blade, but the power was binding, riveting and relentless. In shock, he looked at Vertumnus, who returned his stare with a gaze that was wild and gleeful and yet surprisingly kind. From the lad's heart arose a tremendous sense of sweetness, and around him was music, the flute and the timbrel and the elven cello and somewhere, rising in the midst of these, the faint, crisp call of a trumpet he would hear again and again until that day on the battlements of the Tower, when the Dragonlord approached in the distance and he stood atop the Knight's Spur and heard the song one last time, finally understanding what it meant…

He knelt on the ground amid plowshares and horseshoes and bent swords. Vertumnus stood over him, the sword bright in his hand.

'Knight to knight, and man to man,' Lord Wilderness concluded quietly.

Sturm could not look at his victorious opponent. Slowly, abjectly, he crept toward Lord Wilderness.

'The terms are nearly met,' the lad said, fearful and beaten. 'You may give me the stroke that is my due and take the life owed you.'