Sturm clenched his fists, his dark eyes smoldering.
"What would you expect, Sturm Brightblade?" Raistlin murmured. "What would you expect from peasants and brigands?" He rested his thin hand on the shoulder of the Solamnic lad. The mage's fingers were pale, almost transparent, and there was something unsettling in his touch.
Sturm shrugged and scooted his chair away from the table.
"Go on," Raistlin breathed. "Tell us your story."
"Father descended into the bailey, where his soldiers had been assembled. The men crowded together for warmth, shivering in threadbare blankets, in secondhand robes. All but a dozen were there, and those who were absent were trusted Knights, deployed by Father to man the walls while he held council.
"The courtyard was a sea of gray shapes and misted breath, and the snow fell mercilessly as the morning approached. Father paced confidently in front of the troops, stopping only to draw a line in the snow, a commander's gesture. I had seen him do it before myself, in the Nerakan Wars, but even to grown men it was still quite a show."
Sturm paused admiringly, a sad smile creasing his face. Outside the inn, the summer night swelled with music, the wild fluting call of the nightingale cascading over the slow, steady creaking of insects. Together the three lads listened to the sounds around them as weary Otik passed by the table, his arms heavy with half-filled tankards and dirty crockery.
Sturm looked up at the twins and resumed the story.
"'Those who are with me,' Father said, 'stay your ground. For it shall come-snow and siege and insurgence.'
Then he pointed to the line at his feet, and they said that the mist dissolved above that troop of men, simply because not a one of them was breathing.
" Those who would go,' he said, 'whether to safety or to the ranks of the insurgents, may cross this line and travel hence with my blessings.' "
"With his blessings?" Caramon asked.
Sturm nodded. " 'Twas blessings he said, no matter who tells the story. And I cannot figure it for the life of me, though I suppose that if neither heart nor oath could hold their allegiance, 'twould have been a crime to send them to battle.
"But the real crime was what followed. When eighty of them crossed the line and walked from Castle Brightblade…" He clenched his fists, then blushed, surprised at his own feelings.
"Tell us the rest," Caramon said, lifting his hand as though to still his friend's torrent of anger.
"Father said not a word against those men," Sturm continued, red-faced and glaring. "Instead, he ordered the Knights down from the walls. Then there were but a score of them in the bailey, all of the Order, and the snow kept falling, falling upon those who stayed as well as those who left."
Raistlin stretched and rose from the table, leaning against the mantel. Sturm shifted in his chair, his young thoughts muddled and bitter.
"As to those who left, who joined the peasant army, the gods know what befell most of them. I have heard that many served their new allegiance bravely and well. But those who remained were still confident. For you see, my father had told them-told the Knights and the Knights only, his close group of followers sworn to the Oath and the Measure-that old Agion Pathwarden, in his seventies then but full of vigor and vinegar, was coming to lift the siege with fifty Knights, almost all the fighting garrison of Castle di Caela, just an afternoon's ride to the south. They could wait it out, of that they were certain.
"Certain until a messenger came from the peasant commander-an old druidess whose name my mother could not remember-that Lord Agion and his company had been betrayed. Someone in Father's garrison had sneaked word to the peasants as to the secret, roundabout road Lord Agion would take from Castle di Caela to Castle Brightblade. They were ambushed in the foothills, grievously outnumbered. Not a Knight survived, though they all died fighting. They say that Agion was among the first to fall."
Sturm closed his eyes.
"Did they ever find the traitor?" Caramon asked, always one for justice and retribution. Sturm nodded slowly.
"So they say. And the best were all on the hunt-Gunthar, Boniface, Alfred MarKenin. Father had told them to let it go, but they hounded until Boniface flushed the turncoat. The man was a new Knight-from Lemish, predictably. Lord Boniface accused him, the man denied and denied, and of course it was trial by combat next. But the coward slithered away that very night. It is said that the peasants hanged him themselves; Gunthar saw a body on the gibbet when he passed through their lines.
"Father sent word to the old druidess on the morrow. Despite the druidess's natural skills as a general and a strategist, the peasants maintained that she was just and fair-just and fair to a fault. Since those whom he had trusted had betrayed him, Father ventured his faith into other grounds. He told her, that druidess, that he wanted no further bloodshed between Solamnics, whether they were of the Order or against it. That if such were impossible, that the spilled blood be his alone. To assure such a warring peace, he handed himself over to the peasantry in exchange for their promise of safe passage for the Lords Alfred and Boniface, for Gunthar and for the remaining garrison of Castle Brightblade.
"Or so they say," Sturm muttered, his gaze angry on the glistening shield. "For that night he walked into the blinding snow, and none who survived that time ever saw him again."
The common room of the inn fell into respectful silence. Otik paused in sweeping the hearth and leaned against his broom, and the young girl he had hired to spread fresh rushes on the floor ceased her midnight labor and crouched by the bar, knowing somehow that this pained, intimate talk demanded her stillness.
"Did I tell you that Lord Angriff went to his fate laughing?" Sturm asked with an odd smile. "That as easily as if he were disrobing for the night, he handed his shield and breastplate to his good friend Lord Boniface?"
Sturm closed his eyes. His voice cracked as he continued the story.
" 'They are no use to me where I go,' he said, 'these instruments of Knighthood. And why are you troubled?' he asked them. 'Why do dark thoughts arise in your hearts?' It was all they could do to keep from weeping, Mother said, for they knew that he went to his death and that they would never see the likes of him again.
"So he embraced his companions that afternoon and passed from their midst, soon lost in the swirling countryside beyond the walls of Castle Brightblade. Two men followed him into the blinding snow. They disobeyed my father's commands because of the love they bore him, and for a moment, the weeping men of the garrison saw my father and the two who followed him as a triad of dark spots in the depth of the blizzard, and then again at the very edge of sight, where the snow-shrouded torches of the peasants looked like low and distant stars, and the three of them seemed to enter the thin, dark ranks of the enemy, never falling, but as though they walked blindly into an impenetrable thicket."
Sturm shivered. "It is out of that thicket that the son of Angriff Brightblade has emerged, my friends. I shall find Lord Angriff Brightblade, or what has become of him, though the Jaws of Hiddukel stand in the way, full intending to undo me."
"Which they well may do, lad," Raistlin said quietly. "Which they well may do."
Sturm swallowed nervously. "Whether they do or no, 'tis time I should test them. Would that I had your wits in my service, Raistlin Majere. Or Caramon's strength. The High Clerist's Tower is a fierce place for a backwoods boy."
"You are no weakling, Sturm!" Caramon encouraged loudly, startling the little girl by the bar, who scurried into the shadows, trailing rushes. "You can ride, too, and use a sword far better than I can. It's just that… just…"