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Angriff saw to me and the Lady Ilys. Smuggled us off on the western road, before the peasants’ torches closed a full circle about the castle. Soren Vardis was our guide, and the snow swirled over the high road, or the peasants might well have found us. In their anger, they didn’t remember what the Order had done for them.”
    The twins exchanged a curious glance, and Raistlin cleared his throat. Sturm continued, his gaze fixed on the dwindling fire.
    “As to my father,” he continued dreamily, abstractly, “when we were safely away, he turned his thoughts to thecastle and its garrison. Alfred was there, and Gunthar and Boniface and a hundred men, of whom Father thought he could trust only the twenty Knights. For you see, the countryside went over to the peasants suddenly and swiftly, and the heart of many a foot soldier turned from the Order in the last weeks before the castle fell.”
    Sturm clenched his fists, his dark eyes smoldering.
    “What would you expect, Sturm Brightblade?” Raistlin murmured. “What would you expect from peasants and brigands?” He rested his thin hand on the shoulder of the Solamnic lad. The mage’s fingers were pale, almost transparent, and there was something unsettling in his touch.
    Sturm shrugged and scooted his chair away from the table.
    “Go on,” Raistlin breathed. “Tell us your story.”
    “Father descended into the bailey, where his soldiers had been assembled. The men crowded together for warmth, shivering in threadbare blankets, in secondhand robes. All but a dozen were there, and those who were absent were trusted Knights, deployed by Father to man the walls while he held council.
    “The courtyard was a sea of gray shapes and misted breath, and the snow fell mercilessly as the morning approached. Father paced confidently in front of the troops, stopping only to draw a line in the snow, a commander’s gesture. I had seen him do it before myself, in the Nerakan Wars, but even to grown men it was still quite a show.”
    Sturm paused admiringly, a sad smile creasing his face. Outside the inn, the summer night swelled with music, the wild fluting call of the nightingale cascading over the slow, steady creaking of insects. Together the three lads listened to the sounds around them as weary Otik passed by the table, his arms heavy with half-filled tankards and dirty crockery.
    Sturm looked up at the twins and resumed the story.
    “ ‘Those who are with me,’ Father said, ‘stay your ground. For it shall come—snow and siege and insurgence.’Then he pointed to the line at his feet, and they said that the mist dissolved above that troop of men, simply because not a one of them was breathing.
    “ ‘Those who would go,’ he said, ‘whether to safety or to the ranks of the insurgents, may cross this line and travel hence with my blessings.’ ”
    “With his
blessings?
” Caramon asked.
    Sturm nodded. “ ’Twas blessings he said, no matter who tells the story. And I cannot figure it for the life of me, though I suppose that if neither heart nor oath could hold their allegiance, ’twould have been a crime to send them to battle.
    “But the real crime was what followed. When eighty of them crossed the line and walked from Castle Brightblade …” He clenched his fists, then blushed, surprised at his own feelings.
    “Tell us the rest,” Caramon said, lifting his hand as though to still his friend’s torrent of anger.
    “Father said not a word against those men,” Sturm continued, red-faced and glaring. “Instead, he ordered the Knights down from the walls. Then there were but a score of them in the bailey, all of the Order, and the snow kept falling, falling upon those who stayed as well as those who left.”
    Raistlin stretched and rose from the table, leaning against the mantel. Sturm shifted in his chair, his young thoughts muddled and bitter.
    “As to those who left, who joined the peasant army, the gods know what befell most of them. I have heard