Sir Hring called the names of his allies, or tried to, but the storm stole the words away. More than that, his own life was a matter of worry from the suddenness of the chill and because his warmth melted the snow as it touched him so that his mail and shirt seemed the shore of a thawing sea. His hands went before him as he walked, searching for some sheltering tree, his broad back his only bulwark against the branch-battering breath of the sky. He stepped in a fountain and withdrew his foot before he lost it. After that, the shrubs about made him to stumble. From those two markers he learned the whereabouts of a tree, he judged, and he was right in that.

There under the branches of that laurel, an unwilling host, he had relief from the storm, not altogether but some. To see the tree and the snow around him was all he was able to do. However his eyes searched, he saw less than a knife's point of the world beyond, not his squire or those other young knights he had raised to die doing brave deeds or else a long time later, after they had taught many in knightliness for the good of Krystila, not unmoving under drifts of cruel snow. Yet all his misgivings made his sight no better, nor his men closer. The best plan he could think to do was that he kept close to the tree and climbed it, for in that way alone he might rise above the wind-urged tides of the swelling white sea and not be covered by it, losing his life thereby.

He survived the storm, which ended soon and left the Garden Iniquitous the worse, its charms buried. And neither was the sprawling field of snow as pleasing as it might be, for already the sun, more aware of the year and the season than were the shameful clouds, had begun changing the snow to water that trickled and made the ground muddy. Sir Hring set out across that dampening ground, no longer despairing after so short a storm that he never should find his knights. He hoped further to learn the cause the strangeness there had, though he deemed that unlikely without some skill in sorcery he liked not to learn and never had. What he did discover suited him better.

For a man came toward him who was cloaked in snow but seemed under that to be larger and better formed than any man born in this age, and that was for this reason, that he was a statue of the sort Sir Hring had seen near the fountain. But he walked in the manner of knights, and had a sword and doom-warding shield, and though his mouth said nothing and his eyes were blank and unpainted, there was no doubt as to his readiness for the fight.

Sir Hring raised his own shield in his left hand and his blood-seeking sword in his right, and he did not think on what weapon were better to wound a statue's stone body when the result would be nothing better for him. Instead he had care for this, that he not stand in mud that grabbed at boots when the fight had its start. He backed away for that reason till his feet were clear of any such and awaited the great and heavy foe.

Nor did he refuse him the battle. The fleshless man went against the knight without either fear or clumsiness, but rather kept his shield where it might block and his sword ready for the strike or the parry, and the work of his feet was deft. His blow when it fell was passing great in the might that made it, and the limbs of Sir Hring shook then when his shield caught that blade. For his part, he swung at the moment his own life-robbing sword that was turned aside by the foe's skillful shield. So began the struggle, and so it ended, too.

Sir Hring lowered his sword and sheathed it, and the words that he said were these. “Was it some statue I taught to row, to ride, and to do right well when the sounds around him are yells and the clashing of spears? No. I recall that his name was Mikkel.”

The foe had acted in a like manner. Empty as to his right hand, he spoke. “It yet is, since I think my father's will ought to be obeyed in that. Moreover, his name is Mikkel as well, and therefore I ween he meant it not to chasten me when he gave it.”

Then was the sorcery ended so that the knights saw each other as they were and embraced, and the only thought that lessened the gladness that they had was not knowing where were Sir Taskay and Sir Hroar, and they dreaded their fates. Yet neither did that trouble their minds for long, for those two knights and they met in the middle of the Garden Iniquitous as they sought each other. The younger knights told them a tale like to what they had done themselves, save that Sir Hroar and Sir Taskay each claimed to know the other by his lack of skill alone.

“And you are matched in that, but you are unwise as well, if you deem this adventure to be done,” Sir Mikkel said, and the three Krystilans other agreed.

Neither were they wrong, as they learned before they left the fountain there in the Garden's middle to search anew. A knight unknown to them came, who carried no shield nor any banner that bore some device but was apart from other knights in this, that his mail was all of gold in color and shine, as were his greaves and his helm, which was closed. He had a mace in his strong right hand that he swung as he walked and dug furrows with it, and he smashed the trees on his way and made them to shake, and showed thereby how mighty he was he in his hands and how long the shaft of his weapon.

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“What grief there is for me this day,” that golden knight said as he came near. “What sorrow there is when a man hopes for more but is given less. Once I had no heed for what foe I fought, dozens died then, but now to slay any but the strongest of knighthood seems to me shameful and a waste of my skill. Thinking that, I had this place made that cowardly men call the Garden Iniquitous, but that the brave know as a trial worth passing. You would know, were you brave yourselves, the joy I had when four knights from some land far away entered, not such chaff as the robber knights who fear to leave this country where Viljami keeps them in his hand, but the result was what? Now I must slay all four of you instead of one the strongest against my desire, and all four of them feeble. For in any band, as in cities as well or any kingdom, one man, the best, will put himself above the others, either in open or in secret, and do away with the lesser when it is to his good. There must be no best among you that you all live yet, alike in your lowliness.”

Sir Hring did not bear that, but had this to say. “Do you tire so fast as that, and are not able to fight more men than one, and that one weakened by the fierce clash of arms? It is a man who is watched by his friends that fights best of all, from the fear of shame should he do less than he ought and from a wish to do good for them. There is this also that you learned for yourself but scorned its meaning. The knights here, you say, are weak. I believe it. They robbed and did murder to despoil the people, and took no care so far as I know to train knights in needful drills. It is otherwise in Krystila, where we know it is best to teach others and think hard on what you know because of it, and master your skills all the more. But words are words, and I have here what will prove the truth of it.”

So saying, he raised again his sword used to gore, bent on combat against a strife-loving foe. That knight of gold raised as well his weapon, the dreadful mace he gripped with both his sure hands, and rushed to the attack. He swung hard, and Sir Hring judged his shield would fare ill in the withstanding of it. Spurred by that thought, Krystila's canniest knight and far from the weakest avoided a fight-ending blow and made cuts at the foe's hip, and his shoulder, then his thigh, wherever he saw a hope of doing hurt. Or so he tried, but the golden knight was practiced in more than boasting and pride. That warlike man dodged as well and planned his blows to deny Sir Hring the chance he might have for smiting hard with no worry for defense.

So went the fight, and during that each of the fighters asked much of his feet which stomped the snow-wet ground and took them far across it as the two strove to strike and not be struck themselves. But even against so hard-pressing a foe as the knight of gold, Sir Hring aimed at more than one target. For he drew the peace-shunning man into the mud as he planned and stole blood from his flank as the gold-weighted foe struggled against the grasping ground.

The proud Garden knight lacked not the deftness he needed to stay standing and keep his life that were surely lost otherwise, but the wound was sore. His vigor drained from it little by little like a clerk who betrays the trust of the merchant that hired him, robbing his master's great wealth over years and taking each time bites of it too small, he hopes, for any notice of it to be had. Even so did that knight's days and hours wane. There was no sign of that though when Sir Hring was unable to dodge the gale-swift mace and had no choice but to put his shield against it, which splintered and cost Sir Hring its aid thereafter.

Each knight then wielded his weapon in both of his speedy and practiced hands, the golden knight greater in might at first, then alike, then less. More and more did Sir Hring strike his foe with no answer and do harm to his legs and his shoulders. The battle went ill for that golden knight who knew it, and was of this mind, that a gamble lost is better than a sure thing never won. He raised his mace therefore that suffered not iron or bone to resist its blows and struck with no care for what chance he gave to his enemy but only for the might he could gather for it, all that he had. Sir Hring saw that and buried his blade in the belly of the foe. He left it there and freed his hands from the hilt that he might avoid the mace, which he did. The knight who ruled that wicked Garden swung, dealt a stone-bursting blow to the dirt-soft ground, and fell, never to rise.

The three other knights praised Sir Hring for his victory and pondered who that dead man might be who wielded arms and sorcery both well skillfully, and with cruelty enough to match, but his name they never learned. Neither did they take with them anything of that Garden Iniquitous, for as the snow melted beneath them, the laurels melted also, and the rock roses and amaranths, and all else that there was. Nothing any longer marked that place as removed from the country around, and the iron that surrounded it crumbled.

The four knights joined their fellows, the Upani, and the despairing brigands where they had left them. All was done afterward as that noble family wished, the castle repaired and the brigands overcome. And it is said to this day that the people of Aequinium esteem Krystila as the very font of knighthood, more even than Luros, Chrysasty, or Estash of long renown, so that they send young men there to train in it.