Michael Williams - The Oath and the Measure

"Your trespass is a deep one, child," she observed. "A deep one and dire."

"Trespass? To be brought into your presence under armed guard?"

The druidess ignored him, her eyes on the swirl of dust in the circle she had drawn. Soon, in spite of himself, Sturm found his eyes following the rapid, switching movements of the stick in her hand.

"It is trespass," she explained, "because the people of Lemish fear the Solamnic legions, their bright swords and their horses and their righteous eyes."

"Perhaps their fear is their own doing, Lady Ragnell!" Sturm shot back. "Perhaps some crime of Lemish cries out for justice! Perhaps there are abandoned castles north of here that can attest-"

"Attest to what?" the druidess interrupted, her voice calm and unwavering. Deep in her eyes, Sturm saw a flicker. Rage? Amusement? He could not tell.

"Perhaps there is one reason, Sturm Brightblade," soothed the Lady Ragnell. "Young people say so, which is why we ask them to take up the sword."

Sturm barely heard her, his eyes affixed once more to the circle of dust that was widening now, widening like the ripples on the surface of a placid pond when something is dropped in the water.

"But I am not here for policy, young man," Ragnell said.

She was chanting now, the dust rising around her. "Nor for solemnities of country or court, neither to praise nor punish, but to show only…"

Her voice was rising steadily into singing. Sturm heard the notes of one of the ancient modes and struggled to place it. Then, deep in the pause of the notes and the breathing, deep in the space between words, he thought he heard another melody, a song below words and thought.

"I shall show you a handful of dust," Ragnell chanted, the stick moving more and more swiftly, "A handful of dust I shall show you…"

A snowy country, level and treeless, stretched before him, so real that he shivered to look upon it.

Throt. Something told him that these were the steppes of Throt before him. He was looking back into winter, back over months to thick ice and the turn of the year.

Once upon a time, a voice began ironically, the words insinuating into the cold wind he heard and felt. Startled, Sturm shook his head. He couldn't tell if this voice was Mara's doing or rose from the chant of the druidess.

About the time of Yule, in the goblin country, the voice went on. Now there was a village in the vision, a dozen squat huts half-buried in the snow. Smoke curled from a large central fire, and short, stocky shapes, bent and fur-clad, moved in and out of the shadows.

A squalid place, isolated in the winter desert of Throt. Sturm bristled at the mere sight of it, remembering stories of goblin raids, the hordes as swift and merciless as wolves.

When the Solamnic host rode out of the snow, as swift as a storm over the winter desert, Sturm was exhilarated, breathless. There were twenty Knights, perhaps twenty-five, cloaked and armored, their swords already drawn and thick, dark hides draped across the faces of their shields.

It was the sign of no quarter, the dark shields-when the evil against them was too great, too unrepentant.

"Why are you showing me this, Ragnell?" he asked. "Are my people going to lose the struggle?"

Wait, the wind said in his ears. Wait and attend.

At the head of the column, a tall horseman raised his hand. Behind him, the Knights spurred their horses to a gallop, and the war cry burst from them in unison.

"Est Mithas oth Sularis!"

Like unstoppable wildfire, they rushed through the goblin encampment. The tall commander brought his sword crashing through the nearest of the snow-covered yurts, and the air exploded with the sound of fracturing wood, of tearing hides, of the shrieks of the surprised inhabitants.

At once the encampment was a shambles. Blades flickered like the wings of swarming bees, and the air was loud with the crash of metal against metal, metal against stone and bone. The goblin spears rattled harmlessly against the shields of the Knights, whose swords struck home with wild efficiency. Horses reared and plunged, and the goblins fell in waves before the onslaught.

Sturm shook his head. His hands were sweaty and clenched, and he knelt on all fours above the vision's swirling dust, his breath short and his long hair matted and dripping. For a moment, he saw only dirt and planking. He heard only the chanting of Ragnell in the vast silences of the Dun Ringhill lodge.

Then the scene returned, in sharp and brutal detail. A large, rough-looking man-Sturm recognized him as Lord Joseph Uth Matar, head of the vanished family-emerged from a yurt, two goblin younglings in tow. Filthy little creatures, they were, biting and scratching and fouling themselves in their anger and fear.

Without word or expression, Lord Joseph shoved the yammering little creatures to their knees. He spoke with them shortly, softly, laughing at their threats and curses. The audience over, a young Knight-Sturm guessed it was one of the numerous Jeoffreys-wrestled manfully with the squirming, spitting little monsters. Though his face emerged from the struggle a bit worse for wear after the scoring of their sharp nails, he managed to loop a tight new rope around their wrists and waists.

The huts burned like kindling, like dried grass. Soon the site was ablaze, the black smoke billowing in the subsiding snow. Lord Joseph stood over the goblin younglings, while his lieutenants drew what shabby salvage they could from the tents before setting them to torch.

In the middle of a dozen bonfires, three Knights gathered together over the shrieking little monsters. Lord Joseph squinted, as if he were trying to see beyond the rising smoke. In all directions he turned, now shielding his eyes, as if he were looking for something remote or irretrievably lost.

He nodded, satisfied. Quickly he mounted and muttered something at the two younger Knights, then galloped off at the head of the column. The two waited until the hoofbeats were muffled by snow and distance, until the only sound was the crackle of flame, the screaming and cursing of the young goblins.

Then they drew their swords, and with an elegance born of years in the Barriers, of fencing school and tournament and careful, expensive instruction in the ways of the Measure, they raised the blades on high and brought them down on the little monsters in a graceful, almost beautiful arc.

Sturm lifted his eyes, startled by the imagined screams. Ragnell was staring at him, her face expressionless.

"Well, then," she said. "I've enough of… showing for this day, Sturm Brightblade."

She rose to her feet, and the dust slowed and settled. Heavily, as though the morning had wearied her, she trudged to the door and knocked. Oron lifted the latch and stood aside as the druidess passed by, never looking back at Sturm.

The young knight sat on the mattress, lost in thought, troubled and unsettled by what he had just seen. Mara began to sing again somewhere nearby, and her voice was clear and consoling. But Sturm's thoughts strayed at once from her singing, lost in the Oath and the Measure and the things he had just seen.

Weyland the smith slept in the room off the forge, the fire safely turfed and banked. At this time of year, he was grateful for the warmth, for the cold nights at the edge of spring were uncomfortable for most of the villagers.

By the early hours of the morning, his sleep became restless. He was accustomed to rising at dawn, and over the years, his body had come to anticipate sunrise, stirring and slipping in and out of wakefulness during the last watch of the night.

He thought he heard something astir in the forge-a faint scuttling sound, as though something in the furnace had shifted. He closed his eyes. Not unusual, such sounds, and especially when an uncommon draft of wind found its way down his baffled chimney, stirring the peat with which the fire was covered. Nothing out there worth stealing anyway, he told himself, and drifted back to sleep, in his drowsiness forgetting the Solamnic sword he had reforged two nights ago.