Oath and the Measure Read Free Page B

locked on Sturm’s.
    “Set it aside, boy,” Vertumnus whispered, the dark eyes flickering. “For you know not the forest you’re bordering … where the blade fails against darkness and thorn.…”
    “Enough poetry!” Sturm muttered. “My sword for Brightblade and the Order!” He would at least make a good show of it.
    But his thrust was tentative and slow. Vertumnus brushed it lightly away.
    “For
Brightblade
and the Order?” the wild man hissed, suddenly behind the lad, who stumbled as he wheeled to face him. “For the Order gone bad in the teeth and botched? For a father … your father … who had no business with Solamnic honor?”
    “No business?” Sturm’s hand wavered with his voice. Vertumnus backed away from him, eyes on the main entrance to the council hall, to the stairway and the winter night. He thought he heard Derek snicker. “No business? Wh-what do you …”
    Lord Wilderness’s dark stare returned, fierce and almost predatory. With a swift turn of the wrist, as bright and elusive as summer lightning, Vertumnus’s sword flashed by Sturm’s uncertain guard and plunged deep into his left shoulder.
    Dazed, breathless, Sturm fell to his knees. His shoulder, his chest, his heart blazed with green fire and lancing pain. The air hummed about his ears like a choir of insistent gnats, their song mournful and menacing.
    So this is dying I am dying dying, his thoughts tumbled, and suddenly the pain subsided, no longer unbearable but dull and insistent as, to Sturm’s consternation, the wound in his shoulder closed swiftly and cleanly, the fresh blood fading from his white ceremonial tunic. Yet the pain burrowed and seared, as insistent as the humming in the air.
    “Look about you, boy,” Vertumnus said scornfully. “Where is a place for a man like your father among the likes of these?”
    Sturm forgot his wound at once. He shouted and surged to his feet, his young voice cracking with emotion. He rushed toward Vertumnus blindly, both hands bracing theshortsword. Calmly his opponent stepped aside, and the blade lodged deeply in an oaken limb, recently sprung from the heart of Huma’s chair.
    The lad tugged at the sword and tugged again, glancing frantically over his throbbing shoulder as Vertumnus stepped menacingly forward. Then slowly Vertumnus lowered his sword. He measured Sturm as the boy labored his blade from the hard wood and smiled when the young man whirled awkwardly to face him.
    Vertumnus’s grin was baffling, as unreadable as the edge of the wilderness. It angered Sturm even more than his words. With another cry, he lunged at his adversary, and Vertumnus’s knees buckled as the lad’s blade drove cleanly into his chest.

Chapter 2
The Call of the Measure
———
    The flute clattered to the floor and lay still. Instantly the chill of winter returned and settled painfully about the Knights’ feet. The hall lay silent, as if the air were frozen.
    “Sturm …” Lord Stephan began in astonishment. The young man staggered, wrenched free the sword, and Vertumnus fell forward solidly and quite lifelessly. Gunthar rushed toward the Green Man, and Sturm winced as the strong hand of Lord Alfred clutched his shoulder.
    The smear on Sturm’s blade was clear and wet, and the resinous smell of evergreen rose from its blood gutter. He turned wildly, marking the puzzlement of Alfred, of Gunthar, Lord Stephan’s strange wounded stare, and, by the sundered table, the anger of Lord Boniface, who glared incredulously and jealously at the lad, then stooped towrench up his leggings.
    “What have you done, lad?” Alfred bellowed. “
What have you
 …” The question rang in the hall, again and again, the only sound in the abject, cavernous silence.
    Then Vertumnus sprang up and pushed the astonished Lord Gunthar aside. Throughout the hall rushed an enormous intake of breath, as though the room itself had gasped. As Lord Wilderness touched the wound in his chest, it puckered and closed