"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."
Kneeling before Vertumnus, Sturm wrestled down his terror. He murmured the Solamnic funeral song in bleak preparedness for the falling sword…
Which touched his left shoulder, then his right, with a stroke that was light and affectionate and playful.
"Arise, Sir Sturm Brightblade, Knight of the Forest," Lord Wilderness chuckled.
In consternation and anger, Sturm glared up at his opponent…
Who had mocked him and dismissed his honor and taken his weapon…
Who had wrenched the Measure even from chivalrous death…
"The life you owe me, lad," Vertumnus said, "is the one you would spend in swordplay and vengeance."
Sturm stared at him, dumbstruck and questioning.
"My son has told you of… Lord Boniface Crownguard?" Lord Wilderness began. "And you have seen his handiwork before you on the road to the Darkwoods?"
"I–I cannot say that road has been easy, Lord Vertumnus," Sturm replied haltingly. "But I cannot believe it was Lord Boniface's doing."
"Think!" Vertumnus urged angrily. "Bandits and assassins paid in Solamnic coin from here to the Clerist's Tower, a gauntlet of misfortunes and accidents, the one gift you received from Boniface purposefully flawed… Simple mathematics could tell you the answer if your Oath and Measure weren't blinding you to the truth!"