By my Oath and Measure, let it be there as I remember, the swordsman thought. Let it be there; oh, let it be let it be…
'There is," Boniface began, "if I remember… some reference in the Measure of Tournaments…"
He paused, nodding tellingly at the surrounding Knights.
"… the entirety of which is found at the end of the thirty-fifth volume of the Solamnic Measure, extending through the first seventy pages of the thirty-sixth volume… some reference to preserving the integrity of the circle in the Barriers of Swords."
"There is indeed," one of the sages replied, his bald head nodding in agreement. "Volume thirty-five, page two seventy-eight, seventh article, second subarticle."
Lord Alfred bent over the book, thumbing through the pages swiftly. Angriff slid from the fork of the tree and sat in the center of the circle, head cocked like a hawk, listening attentively.
" 'In the midst of the Barriers of Swords,' " he read, " 'whether at midsummer or solstice or at the festival of Yule, any Knight who leaves the circle in the midst of trial or contest shall forfeit his sword.' "
Alfred MarKenin looked up and blinked in bafflement.
" 'Tis talk of the circle, in sooth," he agreed, "but its import here I do not understand."
"Simple," Lord Boniface explained, more confident now, striding to the center of the circle. "When Lord Angriff Brightblade lifted himself from the ground in… in avoidance of my onslaught, he in effect removed himself from the circle and thereby incurred the penalty of the Measure."
The last words fell in the midst of silence. Gunthar Uth Wistan stepped forward angrily, but Angriff restrained him, a look of perplexed amusement in his eyes.
"You can't beat him in a fair tilt," Gunthar muttered, "so you're at him with… with arithmetic!"
Boniface's gaze never wavered from Lord Alfred MarKenin. After all, advised by the deliberation of the sages, he and the council would decide on the issue. Alfred stared one long last time at each of the contestants, then drew the red curtain across the front of the balcony.
They were less than an hour in deciding. When the curtains opened, Boniface saw the troubled countenance of Lord Stephan Peres. Lord Boniface smiled, expecting the good news.
Angriff sat on the ground, calm and abstracted, staring up into the canopy of leaves and beyond those leaves at the dusk and the first evening stars.
"The council is… undecided on the matter at hand," Lord Alfred proclaimed, to an intake of breath among the encircling Knights. "But never fear. For when council is undecided, judgment in the Measure of Tournaments reverts to the Scholars of the Measure, according to volume two, page thirty-seven, article two, subarticle three."
"Subarticle two," corrected the balding sage, closing his eyes reverently.
Alfred sighed and nodded, his voice resigned and thin. "Subarticle two of the aforesaid Solamnic Measures…"
"Thereby and therein," continued the second sage, a small gray-haired man whose beard billowed over his red robes, "the Solamnic Academy rules in favor of Lord Boniface of Foghaven. Let Lord Angriff Brightblade forego the use of his sword in the contest in question."
He knew it was complicated, that it smacked of skulduggery and legalism, but he had won. Lord Boniface hid his exultation, staring solemnly across the ring at his opponent. Tiberio Uth Matar was not so sly. He began to chuckle, to gloat, and even a cold glance from Lord Alfred himself failed to silence him.
Angriff smiled and dropped his sword. Tiberio stepped to the center of the circle where, according to the Measure, he picked up the discarded blade. Serenely, haughtily, Tiberio scrambled onto the limb himself and, breaking off a branch no more than a foot long, no wider than a finger, dropped it rudely into the lap of Angriff Brightblade.
"Here is your sword, Brightblade," he called out mockingly. "The tree that took your weapon should give one back again!"
Boniface snapped at his insolent second, but Angriff only laughed. Slowly, confidently, Lord Brightblade stood in the center of the Barriers and held forth the olive branch.
"So be it, Tiberio," he declared quietly. "As I heard the Measure, it said nothing of ending the contest. My sword is surrendered, but not myself."
He turned calmly to Lord Boniface, a look of infinite mischief deep in his dark eyes.
"Well, well, Bonano," he said, using a childhood nickname discarded when the two of them had become squires. "Shall we finish this? Man to man and sword to branch?"
"Don't be a fool, Angriff," Boniface protested hotly, and turned to walk from the ring and the contest.
"If you step from the ring, you forfeit your sword," Angriff taunted. "Volume something-or-other, some page, some article, and so forth."
Boniface wheeled about, wrestling with his own anger. Angriff made him feel small, foolish, like a boy punished with a switch. Coldly he stepped forward, sword at the point of address.
"Point of order," he said, in his voice an urgency, a plea. "Does the contest continue in accordance with the Measure?"
Completely bewildered by now, Lord Alfred turned to the scholars. Two heads, one bald and the other gray, bent together for the shortest of moments, and they turned to address the council, a unified front of two.
"We find for Lord Angriff," they said in unison.
"Think twice, Angriff," Alfred urged, but Boniface had closed at once, seeking to break the paltry weapon with a single, powerful swipe of the sword. Angriff stepped aside, deflecting the terrible downstroke with the slightest brush of the olive branch. Following the momentum of his sword, Boniface tumbled to his knees. His helmet slipped down over his eyes, and from somewhere deep in one of the loges, a faint, muffled laugh burst forth.
Furious, Boniface righted himself and slashed out at Angriff, blade whistling through the evening air. Angriff ducked under the attack and rose quickly, flicking the branch in the face of his opponent. Boniface lurched forward, enraged, off balance, but his blade slid by the dodging Lord Brightblade. Laughing, Angriff brought the branch down with blinding speed on the bare wrist of his old friend's sword hand. With a crack, the limb broke in two, and crying out, Boniface dropped the sword. Angriff scooped up the blade and, in less time than it took those watching to blink, pressed its blunt point against the hollow of Boniface's throat.
"I believe I win, Bonano," he announced. "Even by the Measure."
That was why Boniface had to kill Angriff. It had taken twelve years for the chance to arise, when Castle Bright-blade had undergone siege and relief of the garrison hinged on the arrival of Agion Pathwarden and the reinforcements from Castle di Caela.
It was Boniface who had sent word to the bandits as to the road Sir Agion would follow, as to the strength of the party and to the place where terrain and surprise and vantage point would leave the Knights most vulnerable to ambush. His words had cut off the hope of Angriff Brightblade, and it was his belief that Angriff would draw in the garrison and fight the peasantry to the last man.
Covering his tracks had been simple. They had departed from Castle Brightblade in the middle of the night and were back before sunrise the next morning. Boniface had taken only one Knight with him, a whey-faced novice from Lemish whose name he could not even remember. In addition, there had been an escort of three, perhaps four foot soldiers. The soldiers were disposable: He handed them over to the bandits, and their bodies were lost amid the carnage when the bandits waylaid Agion. The Knight was a handy scapegoat in the weeks that followed.