Now Sturm closed his eyes, and the sudden knock on the door startled him. He must have been sleeping, he thought with dismay, and he struggled with the laces to his greaves as the door opened and Lord Boniface Crownguard of Foghaven stepped into the room, broadsword in hand, on his shoulder a large canvas bag, filled with something that rang and clattered as he closed the door behind him.
For a brief and nightmarish moment, the lad thought that instruction was about to resume with another sound thrashing at the hands of Lord Boniface. For a moment, he even thought something darker, even worse, was about to waylay him in the shadowy guests' chambers. But Boniface was quiet, even mild, setting down his burden and seating himself at the corner of Sturm's cot, the sword across his knees.
His boots were muddy, and vallenwood leaves clung to the soles.
"I saw you with Gunthar. You tire too easily," Lord Boniface said gruffly.
"And Gunthar tires not easily enough," Sturm answered with a weary smile, dismissing his bewilderment and fear. The older man chuckled.
"Angriff Brightblade's boy you are, though," Lord Boniface concluded, and Sturm looked at him hopefully. "Somewhere down in the cellars of yourself. Yes. It's just a matter of letting the Brightblade out to air. You see, Angriff would have stayed at Gunthar in the courtyard until he won-'tis as simple as that. Till death or Cataclysm come, Angriff used to match me sword on sword, and though I was the better swordsman…"
Boniface paused and cleared his throat.
"Though I was the better swordsman," he continued, "your father would have won on sheer mettle and daring and backbone."
Boniface paused again and looked curiously at the lad beside him. "There was also," he said thoughtfully, "an affinity with the sword itself, as though something in him could sense the thoughts and movements of metal. A good smith or armorer he might have made, had not the Order called him. But such things were subtle, almost unconscious, as though he received them as an inheritance of blood."
"None of which I am heir to," Sturm declared weakly. "Neither affinities nor mettle nor daring nor backbone."
"And yet you are off to face Lord Wilderness," Boniface replied softly, "after considerable training and study. By what road will you travel?"
"They say the best way is always the most direct," Sturm replied. "I intend to ride straight toward the Vingaard Keep, then south down the river to the great ford. I shall cross the Vingaard there, then pick up its southern branch and follow along the banks straight into the Darkwoods themselves. Nothing more simple, no smoother road."
Lord Boniface's firm hand rested heavily on his shoulder.
"A brave plan, Sturm Brightblade, and worthy of your name," he pronounced. "I myself could have fashioned no better route."
"Thank you, Lord Boniface," Sturm replied with a puzzled frown. "Indeed your confidence assures me."
The older Knight smiled and moved closer to Sturm. "Did Angriff ever tell you," he asked, "the story of his feud with his own father?"
Sturm shook his head and smiled slowly. Since he had arrived at the High Clerist's Tower, it seemed that each Knight he met had a tale to tell of Lord Angriff Brightblade. Happily, eagerly, the lad learned forward, prepared for yet another story.
A slow smile creased the face of Lord Boniface, and he began the telling.
"Your grandfather, Lord Emelin Brightblade, was a good Knight and a good man, but he was known for neither patience or gentleness. Son of Bayard Brightblade and the Lady Enid di Caela, Lord Emelin was Brightblade tough and di Caela… haughty? Stubborn?"
Sturm glowered. He remembered absolutely nothing of his grandfather Emelin, but he wasn't sure that he liked the critical words. Still, Boniface was accustomed to speaking his mind to Brightblades, it seemed.
The older Knight continued, his eyes on the sword in his lap. "Well, it has never been the easiest of bloodlines. Angriff feared his father as much as he respected him, and in the difficult years of his teens, he steered away from old Emelin at formalities, preferring to meet him only at the hunt. For it was there that their spirits usually blended, as the poems and histories tell us it should be with fathers and sons."
Boniface stretched back on the cot, linking his hands behind his head.
"Usually," said Sturm.
"I remember those hunts," Boniface continued. "The smell of woodsmoke on cold mornings like this, when we would ride after the boar. I remember best the winter of Lord Grim."
"Lord Grim, sir?" Sturm asked. Despite his love for Solamnic history and lore, he remembered no Knight named Grim.
Boniface snorted. "A boar. Grim was a great-tusked boar who eluded the best of us in that winter of three seventeen, when your father and I were seventeen ourselves and ready for anything except that pig. Lord Grim lost us in the mountains, in the foothills, in the level, snow-covered plains where you could track for days.
"The Yuletide passed, and still we could not catch him. It was not until midwinter when we brought him to ground, not far from here, in the Wings of Habbakuk. I remember the day well. The hunt. The kill. But mostly what happened afterward."
Sturm set down the greaves carefully, his gaze locked on his father's old friend. Boniface closed his eyes and was silent so long that Sturm was afraid the Knight had fallen asleep. But then Lord Boniface spoke, and Sturm followed him into the story. It became twenty-five years ago and far south of the Tower.
"Lord Agion Pathwarden led us into the foothills. Your cousin. As burly a Pathwarden as ever arose from that now-vanished line. Named for a centaur friend of his eccentric father, Agion was. Your grandfather's best friend, and a great brawler, and many was the time that the two of them came to blows, scuffled cleanly, and parted friends. Like his namesake, Agion seemed half horse, a big man in the saddle, charging like the south wind over the slopes and inclines of the Wings.
"We had caught the trail right after dawn, the thick-necked alan dogs, our best hunting beasts, caterwauling at the mere smell of Grim and racing through the rocks like water rushing uphill, fanning wide and converging, pouring through a narrow pass into a stand of scrubby aeterna where the boar was waiting. It was all the huntsmen could do to restrain the pack. They bayed and bellowed and swirled around that narrow copse of evergreen. Grim was in there, everybody knew, but each of us was… reluctant to go in and greet him first."
Sturm nodded and shuddered, having survived his first boar hunt back in the fall.
"Finally four of us dismounted and entered the copse on foot: Agion and Emelin and your father and I. Angriff and I were along as squires, more or less. We were supposed to hold the spears, stand our ground and be silent. But Angriff wasn't the sort. When Agion crashed through the brush and chased the boar from cover, your father was on it like a panther, quick and menacing, striking the beast once, twice, a third time with spears. Grim was old and thick of hide, and your father's casts were those of a youth-swift and accurate, but lacking the muscle to pierce through gristle and bone."
"So it simply enraged the boar," Sturm observed, and Boniface nodded.
"Grim charged at Agion, who turned, ran, and scrambled out of the way through a thick aeterna, the boar skidding and stirring gravel just a step behind him. Meanwhile, your grandfather circled about the creature and waited for the chance at the delivering cast.