"And yet you are off to face Lord Wilderness," Boniface replied softly, "after considerable training and study. By what road will you travel?"

"They say the best way is always the most direct," Sturm replied. "I intend to ride straight toward the Vingaard Keep, then south down the river to the great ford. I shall cross the Vingaard there, then pick up its southern branch and follow along the banks straight into the Darkwoods themselves. Nothing more simple, no smoother road."

Lord Boniface's firm hand rested heavily on his shoulder.

"A brave plan, Sturm Brightblade, and worthy of your name," he pronounced. "I myself could have fashioned no better route."

"Thank you, Lord Boniface," Sturm replied with a puzzled frown. "Indeed your confidence assures me."

The older Knight smiled and moved closer to Sturm. "Did Angriff ever tell you," he asked, "the story of his feud with his own father?"

Sturm shook his head and smiled slowly. Since he had arrived at the High Clerist's Tower, it seemed that each Knight he met had a tale to tell of Lord Angriff Brightblade. Happily, eagerly, the lad learned forward, prepared for yet another story.

A slow smile creased the face of Lord Boniface, and he began the telling.

"Your grandfather, Lord Emelin Brightblade, was a good Knight and a good man, but he was known for neither patience or gentleness. Son of Bayard Brightblade and the Lady Enid di Caela, Lord Emelin was Brightblade tough and di Caela… haughty? Stubborn?"

Sturm glowered. He remembered absolutely nothing of his grandfather Emelin, but he wasn't sure that he liked the critical words. Still, Boniface was accustomed to speaking his mind to Brightblades, it seemed.

The older Knight continued, his eyes on the sword in his lap. "Well, it has never been the easiest of bloodlines. Angriff feared his father as much as he respected him, and in the difficult years of his teens, he steered away from old Emelin at formalities, preferring to meet him only at the hunt. For it was there that their spirits usually blended, as the poems and histories tell us it should be with fathers and sons."

Boniface stretched back on the cot, linking his hands behind his head.

"Usually," said Sturm.

"I remember those hunts," Boniface continued. "The smell of woodsmoke on cold mornings like this, when we would ride after the boar. I remember best the winter of Lord Grim."

"Lord Grim, sir?" Sturm asked. Despite his love for Solamnic history and lore, he remembered no Knight named Grim.

Boniface snorted. "A boar. Grim was a great-tusked boar who eluded the best of us in that winter of three seventeen, when your father and I were seventeen ourselves and ready for anything except that pig. Lord Grim lost us in the mountains, in the foothills, in the level, snow-covered plains where you could track for days.

"The Yuletide passed, and still we could not catch him. It was not until midwinter when we brought him to ground, not far from here, in the Wings of Habbakuk. I remember the day well. The hunt. The kill. But mostly what happened afterward."

Sturm set down the greaves carefully, his gaze locked on his father's old friend. Boniface closed his eyes and was silent so long that Sturm was afraid the Knight had fallen asleep. But then Lord Boniface spoke, and Sturm followed him into the story. It became twenty-five years ago and far south of the Tower.

"Lord Agion Pathwarden led us into the foothills. Your cousin. As burly a Pathwarden as ever arose from that now-vanished line. Named for a centaur friend of his eccentric father, Agion was. Your grandfather's best friend, and a great brawler, and many was the time that the two of them came to blows, scuffled cleanly, and parted friends. Like his namesake, Agion seemed half horse, a big man in the saddle, charging like the south wind over the slopes and inclines of the Wings.

"We had caught the trail right after dawn, the thick-necked alan dogs, our best hunting beasts, caterwauling at the mere smell of Grim and racing through the rocks like water rushing uphill, fanning wide and converging, pouring through a narrow pass into a stand of scrubby aeterna where the boar was waiting. It was all the huntsmen could do to restrain the pack. They bayed and bellowed and swirled around that narrow copse of evergreen. Grim was in there, everybody knew, but each of us was… reluctant to go in and greet him first."

Sturm nodded and shuddered, having survived his first boar hunt back in the fall.

"Finally four of us dismounted and entered the copse on foot: Agion and Emelin and your father and I. Angriff and I were along as squires, more or less. We were supposed to hold the spears, stand our ground and be silent. But Angriff wasn't the sort. When Agion crashed through the brush and chased the boar from cover, your father was on it like a panther, quick and menacing, striking the beast once, twice, a third time with spears. Grim was old and thick of hide, and your father's casts were those of a youth-swift and accurate, but lacking the muscle to pierce through gristle and bone."

"So it simply enraged the boar," Sturm observed, and Boniface nodded.

"Grim charged at Agion, who turned, ran, and scrambled out of the way through a thick aeterna, the boar skidding and stirring gravel just a step behind him. Meanwhile, your grandfather circled about the creature and waited for the chance at the delivering cast.

"That chance did not come, because Angriff was impatient. Through the brush he rousted old Grim, and time and again I lost him in the mist and the thicket. Finally I heard a shuffling, a cough, and I stumbled around a thick latticework of branches… and found myself face-to-face with old Grim himself."

Boniface paused. He stood and began to pace the room as Sturm held his breath, listening.

"He was as shaggy as the bison of Kiri-Jolith, dripping with dew and mud and half-hidden in mist and evergreen. He looked like something from the legends, out of the Age of Dreams and the bardic tales. I remember thinking, right before he charged, that if Nature were to take on flesh and form, it would be this beast before me, in its unruliness and terror and its strange hideous indifference."

Again the Knight paused, his hands clenching, grasping the air as though he were trying to clutch something or push something away.

"He… charged you, Lord Boniface?" Sturm asked finally. "The great boar charged you?"

Boniface nodded. "Had my sword out in a flash. But I never used it."

A strange shadow passed over the Knight's face. Sturm waited expectantly, sure that the man was remembering that moment, the horrible charge of the boar.

"I never used it," Boniface repeated. "Angriff's spear passed neatly between Grim's shoulder blades, and the boar staggered and rose and staggered again. Believe me, I was well out of the way by the second stagger, but I saw it all unfold-your grandfather and Agion burst into the clearing, and Lord Emelin's sword flashed silver in the winter sunlight as the blade rose and came slashing home.

"For a while, we all stood there above the boar. The alans were baying somewhere outside the circle of trees, so distant in our thoughts that it sounded like we were only remembering them.

"Then Lord Agion spoke. A fitting end to our adversary,' he said. 'To Lord Grim, whose trophy shall grace the hall of Lord Emelin Brightblade, his slayer.'

"Your grandfather smiled and nodded, but your father stood pale and too quiet, and at that moment, I knew that something between them was about to unravel, perhaps beyond repair. 'But, Lord Agion,' Angriff protested, stepping into the matter as brashly and foolishly as he stepped into each hunt, each tournament. 'I expect that the history will show that I cast the first and telling spear.'