With a bellow, Sturm rushed at Boniface, charging wildly like some enormous, enraged animal. The Knight waited calmly, and at the last moment, he whirled away, tripping Sturm and slapping him on the backside with the flat of the wicker sword. Tumbling head over ankles, the young man skidded over a dropped volume of the Measure and crashed into a scribe's table, shattering its spindly legs.
'Finish it, Boniface!' Gunthar shouted, his face flushed and his eyes blazing. 'By the gods, finish it and leave the boy in peace!'
Boniface nodded dramatically, his smile venomous and merry. He wheeled about and stalked toward a dazed Sturm, who raised his sword uncertainly, unsteadily.
Reeling, his senses jostled and his hands heavy, Sturm watched as Boniface's sword danced around him, beside him, nicking against breastplate and helmet and knees. It was a swarm of hornets, a flock of stirges, and no matter where he raised his shield to block, his sword to parry, Boniface's weapon was under him or over him or around him, biting and slashing and gouging.
Twice they locked blades, the fracturing sound of wicker on wicker echoing in the council hall like the sound of tree limbs breaking. Both times Sturm was pushed back, the second time staggering.
Boniface was not only quicker and more skilled, but he was also twice as strong as the lad in front of him.
Cornered, outmaneuvered, battered and checked and scratched and flustered, Sturm pressed against the farthest wall of the room, his back flush against the double oaken doors that had been locked behind him when the audience began.
There was no place to run, no place to dodge the onslaught. His thoughts in a frantic scramble, drowning in a torrent of swords, Sturm searched for something-anything-to turn back his enemy.
The draconian, he thought at last.
Now what did I do…
His sword flew out of his hand. Hurled forty feet through the air by a deft turn of Boniface's blade, it clattered and broke on the stone floor of the council hall. Instantly a wicker point rested in the hollow of his throat, and he looked into the eyes of Boniface-as blue and lifeless as a cloudless winter sky.
'Judgment, Lord Alfred,' Boniface requested. He wasn't even breathing quickly.
'The council finds for Lord Boniface of Foghaven in trial by combat,' Lord Alfred declared, his voice thin and abstracted.
'Pack your belongings, little boy,' Boniface hissed. 'Solace is quaint in the springtime, I am told.'
The four of them emerged from the council hall in silence. In the corridors ahead of them, pages and squires ducked into the alcove, and servants turned too diligently back to their work. Nobody asked the outcome of the trial by combat, nor even why swords had crossed in the first place. The council was sworn to silence in such matters, and neither Alfred nor Gunthar would ever speak of this afternoon.
But everyone would know. If they couldn't tell by Sturm's scarlet face, by the grim satisfaction in the steel- blue eyes of Lord Boniface, they would know from the detailed account of Derek Crownguard, who had peered through the keyhole at everything that had transpired.
And they would hear what Derek and Boniface wanted them to hear. 'A real swordsman took Angriff Brightblade's boy behind the woodshed and taught him respect for his elders.'
So was the version Sturm thought they were hearing as he packed his belongings the next morning. He imagined the cruel news dropped at breakfast into the midst of the whey-faced, conspiratorial Jeoffreys, who would laugh behind their bacon to imagine it.
Slowly he wrapped his shield, breastplate, and sword in thick canvas. They had served him better than he had served them. Perhaps at some later time, he would be worthy of them again. As for now, he would take defeat like the Knight he devoutly hoped to be.
All accusations and suspicions were supposed to die in the council hall. According to the laws of trial by combat, Boniface of Foghaven had set them to rest with his sword. Indeed, as Sturm wrapped the last yard of cloth about his sword, he was beginning to believe that Boniface was innocent.
For the draconian's word could well have been slander, simply conjured out of an overheard name and a spiteful heart…
… and as for Jack Derry…
Well, in the past fortnight, dream and imagining had blended so thoroughly with fact and reason that…
He shook his head. Boniface was guilty, regardless of Oath and Measure. He knew it in far deeper places than ritual touched. And yet Sturm's own weakness with the sword had assured the freedom of his assailant. The trial was over. Regardless of what he or Alfred or Gunthar thought about the matter, Boniface had been found innocent, acquitted by his sword hand and the ancient Solamnic machinery of statute and tradition.
Hoisting armor to his shoulder, Sturm followed the elaborate maze of corridors from his quarters to the courtyard. It was like the day he had departed for the Southern Darkwoods, shorn of farewells and encouragements and even kindly glances. Everyone hastened to avoid him, to find himself elsewhere when Sturm crossed to the Tower stables.
Gunthar had spoken to him the night before and urged him halfheartedly to stay on at the Clerist's Tower. He was relieved when Sturm insisted on going and said his goodbyes awkwardly, with fumbling words and a brusque handshake.
Nor would he tell the lad anything about Lord Stephan Peres.
Lord Stephan would have seen me off in better style, Sturm thought as he inspected old Reza's feeble and distracted efforts at saddling Luin. There would have been jests and windy words from the battlements, and even perhaps some wisdom, though the gods know what wisdom one can find amid all this misdirection and folly…
But Lord Stephan was… away. Reza had come to the matter at last, as he fretted with the saddle, and the bizarre story of the old Knight's departure came to slow and scarcely coherent light.
It seems that the very night after Sturm left the Tower for the Darkwoods, Lord Alfred MarKenin had dredged up a band of unlikely hunters for a jaunt after deer in the Wings of Habbakuk. Lord Adamant Jeoffrey's younger twin brothers had volunteered at once, eager to curry favor with the High Justice, and Derek Crownguard, too, when Lord Boniface's sudden duties at Thelgaard Keep had left him unattended. Given such a triad of young lions, Alfred had invited Lord Gunthar as 'a steadying influence.' Gunthar begged off, seeing no prospects in the group for either hunting or good fellowship, but Lord Stephan overheard the offer and imposed himself on the party at once.
'Where did they hunt, Reza?' Sturm asked. 'And what does this have to do with Stephan's leave- taking?'
'In due time,' Reza said, leaning in the doorway as Sturm gathered his clothes and stuffed them in a saddlebag, his thoughts intent on the Knight's story. 'Meanwhile, here's the rest of it: They were a mixed lot, were Lord Alfred's hunting party, and when they decided to take me along as a lyamer of sorts… well, they weren't the best at what they were fixin' to do. Lord Alfred decided we would go to the Hart's Forest, on account of that's forest enough for the likes of the Jeoffreys.'
Sturm smiled. The Hart's Forest was a forty-acre deer park not far from where the Wings tapered into the Virkhus Hills. Once he had admired the place and loved to hunt there, but after his journey to the Southern Darkwoods, it seemed rather tame and arranged-a well-planned garden of trees and wildlife.
'Well, we get there about sunup,' Reza continued, 'and we thrashed around for near three hours, flushing squirrels and gnats and starlings, with nary a trace of deer. It bothered Lord Alfred, I'd wager-them clumsy Jeoffreys, Derek Crownguard's loud voice, Lord Stephan blowing on a beaten-up hunting bugle and tangling his armor in vines. So finally Lord Alfred called off the hunt, and it wasn't even noon yet. We turned about and started out of the park.'
Reza leaned forward, hushed and amused.
'And it was then that the woods began to change. Trees sprouted leaves and blossomed, roots burst from the ground, and fruit fell out of the treetops.'
'Fruit?' Sturm asked incredulously.
'Oh, the seasons have been in a fix for quite some time, Master Sturm,' Reza explained. 'No doubt you seen some of it yourself. Anyways, it was like the woods decided to become a forest, a Silvanost or… or a Darkwoods, Master Sturm. And it turned against the lot of us-scared the daylights out of the young ones, it did. Young Master
