by David Weber
It had been an unfortunate choice of argument. Had Sir Yorhus tried, he could not possibly have said anything better calculated to fan Vaijon's rage, and the younger knight had stormed out of the tavern. Nor had the long, frigid hike back to the chapter house cooled his blazing anger. Indeed, it had grown only worse during his walk.
Had he been even a bit less furious, Vaijon might have recognized why the song had crystallized all the resentment and discontent-the disappointment-he'd labored under since Bahzell's arrival. But he wasn't that one bit less furious, and he was disappointed. It wasn't something he'd put into so many words for himself. Indeed, it was something he would not-could not-allow himself to put into words, even in the privacy of his own mind. But deep inside he knew, whatever he could or could not admit to himself, that he'd been betrayed. By choosing someone like Bahzell as His champion, the War God had broken faith with Vaijon of Almerhas. By forcing him to acknowledge the paramount authority of someone not fit to keep the Earl of Truehelm's swine, Tomanāk mocked thirty generations of the House of Almerhas.
But since Vaijon could not permit himself to blame the God, there was only one person he could blame, and he ground his teeth still harder as he stalked down the passage towards his small, spartan chamber. He fought his rage as he might have fought a servant of the Dark, for even in his fury he knew a knight of the Order should never feel such things. But he was only human, and he was very young, and his fight against it only made it stronger as humiliation at his inability to vanquish it coiled within him.
And then he turned a corner without looking and staggered back with an "Oof!" of shock as he ran full-tilt into someone coming the other way and almost fell.
"Your pardon," he began stiffly, catching his balance somehow and managing to keep his feet, "I-"
But then he saw the one he was addressing, and the words died on his tongue.
"No matter, lad," Bahzell said comfortably. "The passage isn't overwide, and I'm one as takes up a goodly bit of any road. So-"
"Don't patronize me!" Vaijon snapped.
Even as the words burst from him, he knew he was in the wrong. Such discourtesy was worse than wrong, for it violated his oath to the Order. He was a knight-probationer, not even a full knight-companion, and this man was a champion. But it didn't matter. Or, rather, it did matter… and there was nothing he could do about it. Betrayal and fury blazed in his blue eyes, and he saw the hradani's normally mild gaze harden, saw the ears fold back and the right hand steal to the hilt of the dagger at his belt, and he didn't care.
"I wasn't after 'patronizing' anyone, Sir Vaijon." The deep, bass rumble was hard, anger grumbling in its depths like boulders coming down a cliff, and the bright, hungry flicker in Bahzell's eyes would have warned another hradani of just how deep was the danger in which he stood. But Vaijon was human, not hradani, and he had never seen a hradani in the grip of the Rage. He had no concept of what he faced in that moment, yet despite his own fury he recognized, however imperfectly, the control Bahzell exerted over himself.
Yet that only made it worse, for Bahzell spoke as a grown man should speak, and all Vaijon heard was an adult rebuking an enraged, spoiled child by example.
"Oh, yes you were!" he spat, unable to contain the hurricane of emotions whirling within him. "Well, I don't need your 'understanding,' hradani! I don't need anything from you, or your stinking clan, or-"
"Vaijon!"
The whipcrack authority of that single word cut through Vaijon's white-hot tirade like a knife, and he froze. For one dreadful instant the entire universe seemed to hold its breath, unmoving, waiting, paralyzed between one moment and the next. But then that illusory eternity ended… and the reality was worse than the illusion. Far worse.
"I find you discourteous, Sir Vaijon," the voice behind him continued, colder than a Vonderland winter and sharper than a Dwarvenhame blade. "You forget yourself and the honor due a champion of our God, and in the doing, you insult Him Whom we serve with blade and blood and soul."
"I'm thinking it was naught but-" Bahzell began.
"Peace, Milord Champion." Charrow's voice was respectful but harder than iron. For once, there was no hint of deference in it as the master of the Belhadan chapter asserted his authority, and Bahzell shut his own mouth, then drew a deep breath and jerked his head in an unhappy nod.
"Well, Sir Vaijon?" Sir Charrow turned back to the knight-probationer. "Have you anything to say for yourself?"
"I-" Vaijon swallowed and made himself face the older man. The mentor, he realized in that moment, whom he respected most in all the world… and whom he had just failed. But not even that realization could quench the outrage blazing at his core, and he stared at Sir Charrow, trapped between obedience, shame, and the fury which would not release him.
"I asked a question, Sir Knight," Charrow said very, very quietly, and Vaijon's anger burst up afresh.
"Why?" he demanded bitterly. "Whatever I say will be wrong, won't it? He's a champion of the Order, isn't he? Anything he does is right, and whatever I do is wrong!"
Charrow blinked at the raw anguish Vaijon's rage could no longer disguise, and a part of him went out to the younger man. Yet only a part, for what he heard from Vaijon was the hurt and anger of a child, and no knight-probationer of Tomanāk was a child. He looked at Vaijon pityingly for a moment, but then his face hardened.
"You-" he began, but Vaijon had whirled away from him to Bahzell.
"You!" he snapped. "You're the one who insults the God! Your very presence is an insult to him!" He glared up at the hradani, taloned hands half outstretched, panting like a man at the limit of his endurance. "What can you know of what the God demands of His warriors, hradani? None of your accursed kind have ever served the Light-it was you who brought the Dark to power in Kontovar! Did Phrobus send you to ape the part of a champion? Are you here to give Norfressa to the Dark, as well?"
Sir Charrow froze, a deathly hush seemed to spread to fill the chapter house, and Vaijon went parchment white as he realized what he'd said. He stood there, feeling his entire life crashing down about him, and he couldn't move even when Charrow reached out and, without a word, unbuckled the belt which supported his sword and dagger.
"You have disgraced yourself and the Order," the older man grated in a voice like crumbling granite, "and we take back the weapons you bore in the God's name."
Vaijon's hands moved in small, hopeless arcs, as if they longed-needed-to snatch back the blades Sir Charrow had taken. But they couldn't, and horror filled his eyes.
"The commandery shall be summoned to determine your fate," Charrow went on. "You will be judged before the brethren you have dishonored, and-"
"Just one moment, Sir Charrow." The knight-captain looked up quickly as a voice colder than a dagger's kiss interrupted him. Sir Vaijon turned more slowly, like a poorly managed puppet, and Bahzell bared his teeth in an icy smile that belonged on something from the depths of a Ghoul Moor winter.
"Yes, Milord Champion?" Charrow spoke with the same formality, but there was a worried crease between his brows as he tried to interpret Bahzell's expression, for no more than Vaijon had he ever seen the Rage in a hradani's eyes. There was anger in those eyes, that much the chapter master knew, but there was something else, as well. A deep, terrible something-a fusion of cruelty colder than Vonderland's ice and a dark passion crackling like heat from an opened furnace door-that reached out for all about Bahzell with talons of freezing flame.
"I'm thinking as how the insult was after being to me, not to your brethren," he rumbled.
"To you, and through you to the God Himself," Sir Charrow agreed, "but it was offered by a member of the Order, and so the dishonor is to us."
"As to that, himself can be taking care of his own insults, and I'm not so very interested in the dishonor," the hradani said in a voice of chill iron, and hardened warrior though he was, Sir Charrow felt himself shudder as the hungry smile that reached out almost lovingly to Vaijon drove a sliver of terror deep into him. "
You've the right of it in that much, my lad," the Horse Stealer told the paralyzed young knight, "for I'm naught but what you see before you. Old Tomanāk 'd split his guts with laughter, like enough, if I was to go about calling myself 'Sir This' or 'Champion That,' and my family tree's not nearly so pretty as some, I'll wager. But it's me you've made your tongue so free of-not Sir Charrow, not the Order, just me, Bahzell Bahnakson. And so I'm thinking it's me you should be after answering to, not your brethren."
"Milord, you can't-" Charrow began in a quick, urgent voice, but a raised hand cut him off, and Bahzell's deadly eyes froze him into silence.
"You've been after calling me a champion of Tomanāk for days now," he said flatly. "Am I such?" Charrow nodded helplessly, and Bahzell bared his teeth again. "And would it happen a champion has the right to administer his own understanding of Scale-Balancer's justice?" Charrow nodded once more. "And would that justice be like to supersede your commandery's?" Charrow had no choice but to nod yet again, and Bahzell nodded back, then jerked his chin at Vaijon.
"In that case, you'd best be giving yonder lordling back his weapons, Sir Charrow, for he'll need them come morning."
He turned that blood-freezing smile directly upon Vaijon, and his hungry voice was soft as serpent scales on stone.
"You've plenty to say about barbarians and hradani and servants of the Dark, Vaijon of Almerhas. Well, come morning, here's one barbarian will show you what hradani truly are."
Chapter Five
Sir Vaijon did not spend a restful night.
In fairness, his insomnia owed little to fear. Never having lost in the last eight strenuous, often brutal, years of training, he simply could not conceive of losing now, to anyone, yet there was more to it than simple self-confidence could explain. Despite the unforgivable actions he knew his fury had betrayed him into committing, he was a knight of Tomanāk who had sworn obedience to the Order and to those set to command him. Now he was foresworn, disbarred in his own eyes, as well as his fellows', from their ranks, and he knew that, as well. Yet whatever failings Bahzell Bahnakson might have as a champion of Tomanāk , and whether he realized it or not, he had given Sir Vaijon an opportunity to reverse that judgment by making their confrontation what was, for all intents and purposes, a trial at arms to be judged by Tomanāk Himself.
It was a trial Sir Vaijon did not intend to lose, yet he found he could not approach it as he had any other contest under arms. Not because he doubted his own prowess, but because deep inside, some little piece of him whispered that he ought to lose. Hard as he might try, he could find no excuse for his conduct. Sir Charrow was right; he had disgraced himself and the Order. A defiant part of his heart might still cry out in bitter disillusionment that Tomanāk had no right to waste such honor on a barbarian, but even granting that, a true knight had no excuse for such behavior. And so, even as the thought of besting the hradani and proving Bahzell had no right to the position he claimed filled him with a fiery determination, he could not escape the unhappy suspicion-small and faint, but damnably persistent-that perhaps this time he did not deserve to win.
At first, as he watched that night beside his weapons, he pushed away any thought of defeat whenever it surfaced. Instead, he filled his mind with memories of how Bahzell had transgressed, of how the hradani's mere presence filled him with fury, and promised himself that the morrow would see all his anger and betrayal assuaged. But as the night crept slowly, slowly past, he made himself look the possibility that he might lose in the eye, and he was almost surprised by what he saw there, for Bahzell had made it a trial at arms. If Vaijon lost, he would probably die. He was too young to truly believe that, though he recognized the possibility in an intellectual sort of way, but the thought that if he did lose he would at least have been punished for his actions was obscurely comforting. He fully intended to emerge victorious and thus expunge the stain of those acts, yet defeat would erase them in another fashion, and the deep and abiding devotion to Tomanāk which had first brought him to the Order was glad that it would be so.
"Ah, you're not actually planning to, well-?" Brandark paused delicately and cocked his truncated ear at Bahzell as his friend buckled the straps joining his breast and back plates and adjusted them carefully.
"To what?" the huge Horse Stealer demanded, not looking up from his task.
"I realize Vaijon is a pain in the arse," Brandark replied somewhat indirectly, "and there've been times enough when I wanted to put him out of my misery. But I was only wondering exactly what you intended to do to him this morning."
" 'Do to him,' is it now?" Bahzell finished fiddling with the last strap and looked up at last, and his deep voice rumbled derisively. "Surely you've been after hearing the same as me, Brandark, my lad. Yon Vaijon is Tomanāk's own gift to mortals with sword or lance! Why, he's after being downright invincible, and my heart's all aflutter with terror of him." The Horse Stealer's smile was cold enough to confirm the suspicions Sir Charrow's oblique questions had awakened in Brandark, and he began to feel true alarm.
"Now let's not do anything hasty, Bahzell. No one could deny you've got every right to be angry, but he's only a youngster, and one who's been spoiled rotten, to boot. It's plain as the nose on your face-or my face, for that matter-no one ever told him-"
"It's too late to tell me such as that, Brandark," Bahzell said, lifting his sword down from the wall rack and slinging the baldric over his shoulder, and his voice was so grim Brandark frowned. "And Vaijon's no 'youngster,' " the Horse Stealer added even more grimly. "He's as old for his folk as either of us is after being for ours, and a belted knight, to boot. Well, he's always after yammering about knightly this and knightly that and chivalric the other, and the whole time he's sulking like a spoiled brat, and I'm thinking it's past time he was after finding out just what all that means. Aye, him and all the other nose-lifters minded to think like him."
"But-" Brandark began once more, then closed his mouth with a click at Bahzell's glower.
Sir Charrow Malakhai wrapped his cloak about himself and tried to hide his gnawing worry as he stood waiting in the center of the huge, echoing salle. The training room's floor had been covered with fresh sawdust, and the scent of it filled his nose with a resinous richness, spiced with the tang of coal smoke from the fires seething in the huge hearths at either end of the room.
Most northern chapters of the chivalric orders had salles like this one, and the weather raging outside the thick walls reminded Charrow of why that was. Blasts of wind rattled the skylights which admitted the gray, cold light of a snow-laced morning, and despite the fires, his breath was a thin mist before him. Outdoor weapons training in such weather was out of the question, although he supposed one could always teach courses in how to survive under blizzard conditions. But this morning the training salle would serve another, grimmer purpose, and he sighed as he checked the lighting once more.
Huge lanterns burned before brightly polished reflectors, filling the cavernous room with light that would be fair to both parties, and with the sole exception of those assigned to duty as door wardens, every member of the chapter currently in Belhadan had gathered as witnesses. Knights, squires, and lay-brothers alike, they packed the trestle benches set up down the long sides of the salle with a sea of green tunics and surcoats, and that sea stirred restlessly as whispered conversations rustled across its surface. Sir Charrow glanced at them, and his brown eyes hardened as they rested on the knot filling the center of the front two benches along the west wall. Sir Yorhus and Sir Adiskael were the focus of that knot and, if truth be told, Charrow was far more furious with them than he was with Vaijon.
Vaijon was an arrogant, willful child whose father should have spent more time tanning his posterior than spoiling him with gifts… or filling his head with nonsense about his family's incomparable lineage. He shouldn't be-not at this stage of his life-but he was, and today he would pay for it. Yorhus and Adiskael were senior members of the Order, both in their late thirties, who had served Tomanāk
well in the field. That gave them a responsibility to lead by example, yet they were as disgusted as Vaijon himself by the notion of a hradani champion… and neither was as straightforward as he about it.
In every way that counted, the pair of them were far more dangerous to Bahzell than Vaijon could ever be, but Sir Charrow had been slow to recognize that, and he wondered if the hradani realized it even now.
The Order of Tomanāk had fewer factional struggles than most chivalric orders, yet the sort of people who'd chosen to sit with Yorhus and Adiskael had alerted Charrow to a problem he hadn't realized he had. One which might cut deep into the bone and muscle of the Belhadan chapter. The knights-commander weren't arrogant. They didn't see Bahzell's elevation to the status of champion as an insult to their personal honor. But they felt just as betrayed as Vaijon, for they were zealots who hated and despised hradani, and Sir Charrow hadn't even guessed they felt that way.
Yet now that his eyes had been opened, the knight-captain wondered how he could possibly have missed it before. Perhaps it had grown so gradually that no one would have noticed it, or perhaps he'd been unwilling to see it. That didn't really matter now. What mattered was that it had happened… and that the Order of Tomanāk simply could not tolerate the bigotry some ecclesiastic orders put up with. The Order's impartial devotion to truth and its even-handed administration of justice must be forever above question. That was what made Yorhus and Adiskael so dangerous. They hadn't shouted their disgust openly, as Vaijon had. Instead, they had used soft words-words Charrow could not believe they had chosen accidentally-to hammer home suspicion of Bahzell with a smooth rationality that was almost seductive.
Vaijon's firebrand fury only made those softer words sound even more reasonable. Indeed, Charrow felt grimly confident that the older knights had deliberately encouraged his rage, and that willingness to twist and manipulate in the name of their own prejudices made them and the half-dozen others who sat with them a cancer at the Order's heart. It attacked the very essence of their calling to open-minded, honest examination of the facts in any dispute, even among themselves, and Charrow felt a fresh stab of worry as he wondered how he was going to deal with the problem they represented. That he would deal with it was a given-the Order of Tomanāk did not choose chapter masters who shrank from their duties-but he was honest enough to admit he dreaded it.