David Weber - The War God's Own

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.