Gunthar stood up and walked calmly to Boniface's abandoned chair. He picked up three of the leatherbound volumes that lay on the floor by the table, thumbing through each of them with a dry, ironic smile.
"Sturm Brightblade impugns no Order," Gunthar corrected, his eyes on the High Justice. "Instead, he accuses a single Knight-Lord Boniface of Foghaven."
"Then trial by combat is enjoined," Boniface argued, turning briskly toward Lord Alfred. "The Lord Alfred should recall from his recent… contentions with Lord Adamant Jeoffrey that such is the prescribed ruling of the Measure on questions of honor."
"And yet we settled that through reason and goodwill," Gunthar insisted.
"Through the blandishments of an old man who walked off into the woods, leaving the Order behind him!" Boniface snarled. All eyes turned uneasily to the legendary swordsman, who looked to the rafters of the hall, where doves nested and gurgled. He closed his eyes and seemed to gather himself.
"If you will notice the forty-fifth page of the aforesaid sixteenth volume," he said, his voice hushed, almost rapturous, "in the first article, it states unequivocally that trial by combat is the preferable recourse for matters individual between Knight and Knight."
"Have it one way or the other, Boniface!" Gunthar exclaimed angrily. "Is Sturm to be judged as a Knight or an un-Ordered lad?"
Lord Alfred thumbed idly through the volume in front of him, his eyes on the glowing mahogany walls, his thoughts entangled and bottomless. Finally he spoke, and even the doves ceased their noises to listen.
"Boniface is correct," he declared, his voice dry and shaken. 'Trial by combat is the recourse, if but one disputant insists upon it. What remains for Sturm is the choice of arms extreme or arms courteous, of swords deadly or blunted."
Sturm swallowed hard and shifted on his feet.
"No matter the outcome," Lord Alfred announced, "neither charges nor judgment will ever leave this room. Nor will any of us, until those charges are settled, the judgment given according to Oath and Measure and our sacred tradition."
"Arms courteous" Sturm said quietly.
Lord Boniface smiled. "I have won the first pass," he declared.
Lord Gunthar walked to a chest at the far corner of the room and produced the padded wicker swords that would decide the issue. "You have beaten a green boy at the Barriers," he said to Boniface through clenched teeth.
The swordsman's back stiffened.
"I am schooling the lad to a demanding Measure, Gunthar Uth Wistan," Boniface retorted. "As his father would have it, were he alive."
"His father would have more," Lord Gunthar muttered. "And he would exact it from your skin."
"By the Measure, Lord Gunthar," Boniface said, his voice jubilant, taunting. "By the Measure now and always, and let the swords fall as swords will fall."
Chapter 24
In the center of the hall, they squared off, the green lad and the legendary swordsman. Sturm hoisted his shield, then rolled the weapon in his hand. The wicker sword was lighter than he had imagined, and it felt assuring, familiar.
The Solamnic trial by combat was an ancient, honorable practice, sanctioned from the Age of Might and the days of Vinas Solamnus. When charges were brought against a Knight of the Order, the man could defend his innocence by sword. Victory assured innocence in the eyes of those present and the Order itself, regardless of the evidence against him; if, however, he were defeated, honor bound him to confess his crime and accept the exacting punishment of the Measure.
Sturm swallowed nervously. It was serious business against a serious swordsman. And yet for a moment, his hopes sprouted. Stranger things had happened in the Order than an upstart catching a champion off balance or nodding.
Stranger things had happened to Sturm himself.
He rocked on his heels, awaiting his fabled opponent.
Slowly, confidently, Boniface put on his white gloves. He lifted the champion's targe he had won twenty years ago at the Barriers. The crossed blades on the shield's face were faded and chipped with the strokes and thrusts of a thousand unsuccessful weapons. Casually the Knight took up the sword he would use, examined it for flaws, and, testing it for balance, spun it in his hand like a strange and magical toy. Scornfully he turned to Sturm, returning the lad's ceremonial salute brusquely, coldly.
"We await your pleasure, Lord Alfred MarKenin," Boniface announced, and crouched in the ancient Solamnic Address, the stance of swordsmen since the days of Vinas Solamnus. Reluctantly Lord Alfred raised his hand, then lowered it, and in the center of the council hall, the contestants circled one another in ever-decreasing spirals.
Sturm moved first, as everyone knew he would, for patience is slippery in a green hand. He stepped forward and lunged at Boniface, his movements skilled and blindingly quick.
The older Knight snorted, stepped aside, and batted the sword from Sturm's hand, all in a graceful turn as effortless as brushing away a fly. Sturm scrambled after the sword, which came to rest against a dark wall, its hilt extended mockingly toward his hand.
He grabbed the sword and turned about. Boniface laughed and leaned against the long council table, the sword twirling in his hand.
"Angriff Brightblade would be pleased indeed," he taunted, "to see his son spread-eagled and groping in the Barriers."
With a bellow, Sturm rushed at Boniface, charging wildly like some enormous, enraged animal. The Knight waited calmly, and at the last moment, he whirled away, tripping Sturm and slapping him on the backside with the flat of the wicker sword. Tumbling head over ankles, the young man skidded over a dropped volume of the Measure and crashed into a scribe's table, shattering its spindly legs.
"Finish it, Boniface!" Gunthar shouted, his face flushed and his eyes blazing. "By the gods, finish it and leave the boy in peace!"
Boniface nodded dramatically, his smile venomous and merry. He wheeled about and stalked toward a dazed Sturm, who raised his sword uncertainly, unsteadily.
Reeling, his senses jostled and his hands heavy, Sturm watched as Boniface's sword danced around him, beside him, nicking against breastplate and helmet and knees. It was a swarm of hornets, a flock of stirges, and no matter where he raised his shield to block, his sword to parry, Boniface's weapon was under him or over him or around him, biting and slashing and gouging.
Twice they locked blades, the fracturing sound of wicker on wicker echoing in the council hall like the sound of tree limbs breaking. Both times Sturm was pushed back, the second time staggering.
Boniface was not only quicker and more skilled, but he was also twice as strong as the lad in front of him.
Cornered, outmaneuvered, battered and checked and scratched and flustered, Sturm pressed against the farthest wall of the room, his back flush against the double oaken doors that had been locked behind him when the audience began.
There was no place to run, no place to dodge the onslaught. His thoughts in a frantic scramble, drowning in a torrent of swords, Sturm searched for something-anything-to turn back his enemy.
The draconian, he thought at last.