At Jack's advice, Sturm traveled no longer toward the famous ford near the Vingaard Keep. If there were, as he was coming to suspect, good truth in Jack's warning about the snares of Lord Boniface, then all major fords would be perilous.
Instead, the party turned due east, straight toward a narrow passage of the river where Jack claimed that the swimming was as safe as the fording. High above them, the kingfishers darted and dove, and had he been looking for omens, Sturm could have taken great courage from the ancient Solamnic symbols on the wing.
He trudged gloomily beside the young gardener. It wasn't enough, it seemed, that he was doomed to certain failure against one as resourceful and skilled as Vertumnus, for now the best swordsman in Solamnia was also laying for him if, by some miracle, he survived his brush with the Green Man.
That is, if he could believe Jack Derry. It seemed preposterous-like something out of an ancient story of blood and dark oath and revenge. Boniface was his father's friend. Angriff had saved him from Lord Grim, had grown up beside him. They had fought together, had studied and suffered and blossomed in wisdom… and…
Finally there was the Oath and Measure.
It could not be true. Boniface could not be a traitor.
Sturm brushed his gloved hand softly over Luin's neck. Slowly, gradually, sensation returned to his fingers, and he turned his mind to other things-to the dwindling days and the long road ahead of him.
The new path took the party through rich pastureland north of the ancient stronghold of Solanthus. In some spots, the ground was greening, expectant, and the first migratory birds had returned from their winter stay in the sunny north. Amid the signs of spring, Sturm could look to the south across the level miles and see the fabled fortress, gray and hazed at the farthest reaches of sight. It was fertile in history and lore, the very kind of place he dreamed of visiting. Yet he dared draw no nearer after what Jack Derry had told him. Boniface could be anywhere on the plains, and assuredly his allies could be found in all places.
Sturm sighed and tugged at Luin's rein.
"Why so gloomy, Master Sturm?" Jack inquired, steering Acorn gracefully around pooling waters that might well mark dangerous ground. "Rejoice that we have left the rains behind!"
"It rushes toward spring, Jack Derry," Sturm replied. "Too swiftly, I fear, for my liking. A week only remains until I have to show myself in the Darkwoods, ready for a reckoning with Lord Wilderness himself."
"Look about you, Master Sturm," Jack observed quietly. "Where is Vertumnus, and where is the hook and line with which he draws you east?"
"You don't understand," Sturm protested. "First there's the wound. I know they laugh about that at the Tower. They say I imagined my wounding, but it is there, by Paladine! But more importantly, it's the honor of the challenge. I cannot do otherwise. You don't know, Jack. There is no Measure for gardeners."
Jack smiled curiously and rubbed his chin.
"No Measure but the sun and the moons and the seasons," he replied. "I'm grateful for those."
"And I for the Measure," Sturm said, much too quickly. "And… and of course for this lovely day." He looked around, trying to wear a mask of cheeriness. "A mild tag end of winter it is, Jack. No frost, and the birds returning. Mild as the spring of 'thirty-five, I'll wager."
When the farmers talked of mild springs, they talked of the year 335. Sturm remembered it well, though he was but ten: the thaws of winter and the flowers starting to bloom in the gardens of Castle Brightblade.
"Mild it is, sir, though I don't know about no three thirty-five," Jack said and pointed to the east. "Best that we stop in these parts for the night," he suggested. "We're safer this close to the stronghold, what with the bandits and raiders about."
Jack looked at Sturm solemnly.
"I'd rather Master Brightblade wasn't surprised," he warned, "when he finds out how the folk in the countryside take to his Oath and his Measure."
The evening was quiet, an enormous relief to Mara, but especially to Sturm. For the first night in almost a week, the lad slept the healthy sleep of a young man, secure in the knowledge that Jack Derry watched over the encampment.
There was something about the gardener that called for a sort of wild reliance. Sturm had felt it in the long day's journey as Jack read the shifts in the wind as a swordsman reads the feints and thrusts of his opponent. Jack was a reliable, even an inspired woodsman, but so, no doubt, was the dangerous man Sturm rode forth to challenge.
Sturm watched Jack tend the low fire, watched the muffled red light cast shadows on his hands and face. In that light, the gardener looked unsettlingly familiar, as if they had known one another through a lifetime.
"Look close enough, Master Sturm and Lady Mara, and you'll see the southernmost fork of the Vingaard," Jack said.
Sturm stood on tiptoe, bracing himself against Luin and squinting east to where the air seemed to waver at the farthest reach of sight. Mara, seated atop Acorn and looking eastward with the sharp eyes of an elf, nodded at once when Jack pointed out the landmark.
"A child's river it is at this juncture," the gardener continued, with a mischievous grin. "Your spider could send across a hundred letters in his green boats."
Mara was coldly silent behind them. Sturm hid a smile. Surely she regretted the telling and retelling of her story, especially to ears as sharp and satiric as the gardener's.
"As I told you both when we decided on this path, swimming's as good as fording in these parts. The river is slow here, and the ground is level both sides of it. An hour or so will have us into Lemish, and it's only another day to Dun Ringhill, if the weather fancies us and the bandits don't."
He looked disapprovingly at Sturm.
"I expect, Master Sturm Brightblade," Jack said, brushing his brown hair from his forehead, "it would be wiser if you took off some of that armor. Swimming a river, even a slow one, works better without forty pounds of mail."
Blushing at his own fogheadedness, Sturm removed the breastplate, setting it, along with his shield, on Luin's lightly burdened back. Jack looked at him with wry amusement.
"Hard to tell Solamnics from servants now, isn't it, Master Sturm?"
"Follow me," Sturm muttered, and stalked toward the riverbank. Jack, however, moved deftly in front of him.
"If I might be so bold, sir," he suggested, "let's not stand on pomp and protocol. Let someone who knows the river lead the crossing."
Eye to eye the two young men stood, not a hair's difference in height and weight. It was as though Sturm looked into a cloudy mirror, in which the face staring back at him resembled his in age and countenance, but was certainly not his own.
"I'm with the gardener," Mara offered. "A river's treacherous enough with even the best guidance."
"I don't recall asking your opinion," Sturm said icily, giving scarcely a sidelong glance to the elf.
Sturm looked out over the waters. Indeed, they did not look that hard to cross. The river was no more than thirty yards wide at this point, and enormous trees overhung its banks-evergreens, of course, and bare sycamore and vallenwood. The branches of one linked with those of another, forming a thin latticework over the river, almost like a trellis or…