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that many served their new allegiance bravely and well. But those who remained were still confident. For you see, my father had told them—told the Knights and the Knights only, his close group of followers sworn to the Oath and the Measure—that old Agion Pathwarden, in his seventies then but full of vigor and vinegar, was coming to lift the siege with fifty Knights, almost all the fighting garrison of Castle di Caela, just an afternoon’s ride to the south. They couldwait it out, of that they were certain.
    “Certain until a messenger came from the peasant commander—an old druidess whose name my mother could not remember—that Lord Agion and his company had been betrayed. Someone in Father’s garrison had sneaked word to the peasants as to the secret, roundabout road Lord Agion would take from Castle di Caela to Castle Brightblade. They were ambushed in the foothills, grievously outnumbered. Not a Knight survived, though they all died fighting. They say that Agion was among the first to fall.”
    Sturm closed his eyes.
    “Did they ever find the traitor?” Caramon asked, always one for justice and retribution. Sturm nodded slowly.
    “So they say. And the best were all on the hunt—Gunthar, Boniface, Alfred MarKenin. Father had told them to let it go, but they hounded until Boniface flushed the turncoat. The man was a new Knight—from Lemish, predictably. Lord Boniface accused him, the man denied and denied, and of course it was trial by combat next. But the coward slithered away that very night. It is said that the peasants hanged him themselves; Gunthar saw a body on the gibbet when he passed through their lines.
    “Father sent word to the old druidess on the morrow. Despite the druidess’s natural skills as a general and a strategist, the peasants maintained that she was just and fair—just and fair to a fault. Since those whom he had trusted had betrayed him, Father ventured his faith into other grounds. He told her, that druidess, that he wanted no further bloodshed between Solamnics, whether they were of the Order or against it. That if such were impossible, that the spilled blood be his alone. To assure such a warring peace, he handed himself over to the peasantry in exchange for their promise of safe passage for the Lords Alfred and Boniface, for Gunthar and for the remaining garrison of Castle Brightblade.
    “Or so they say,” Sturm muttered, his gaze angry on theglistening shield. “For that night he walked into the blinding snow, and none who survived that time ever saw him again.”
    The common room of the inn fell into respectful silence. Otik paused in sweeping the hearth and leaned against his broom, and the young girl he had hired to spread fresh rushes on the floor ceased her midnight labor and crouched by the bar, knowing somehow that this pained, intimate talk demanded her stillness.
    “Did I tell you that Lord Angriff went to his fate laughing?” Sturm asked with an odd smile. “That as easily as if he were disrobing for the night, he handed his shield and breastplate to his good friend Lord Boniface?”
    Sturm closed his eyes. His voice cracked as he continued the story.
    “ ‘They are no use to me where I go,’ he said, ‘these instruments of Knighthood. And why are you troubled?’ he asked them. ‘Why do dark thoughts arise in your hearts?’ It was all they could do to keep from weeping, Mother said, for they knew that he went to his death and that they would never see the likes of him again.
    “So he embraced his companions that afternoon and passed from their midst, soon lost in the swirling countryside beyond the walls of Castle Brightblade. Two men followed him into the blinding snow. They disobeyed my father’s commands because of the love they bore him, and for a moment, the weeping men of the garrison saw my father and the two who followed him as a triad of dark spots in the depth of the blizzard, and then again at the very edge of sight, where the snow-shrouded