Only he couldn't. He'd done that too often in the last two weeks, and each time, they'd looked at him with that same reproach. Neither had berated him, yet it was obvious both felt the problem was his. That some failing within him created the terrible pressure boiling in his heart and mind whenever he faced the intolerable thought of a hradani champion .

Vaijon had tried. He'd truly tried, spending endless hours watching beside his armor and sword when he should have been asleep, begging the God to help him deal with this insult to the Order. To help him accept the inclusion of a hradani among His brightest blades. He knew other members of the Order were humbly born. Sir Charrow's father had been a brick mason, for Tomanāk's sake! But a hradani? An uncouth barbarian who spoke like a barbarian? Who refused even to allow the Order to knight him in order to regain at least some of the respect it was bound to lose when it became known he was one of its champions? A barbarian who didn't even appear to realize the tremendous honor Sir Charrow had offered to bestow upon him and spoke of the God Himself with such casual disrespect?

And now this! Vaijon's face flushed afresh, and his teeth grated audibly as the song replayed itself in his mind. He hadn't meant to visit the tavern. Such places were for the low born—for seamen and tradesmen and the like—but he and Sir Yorhus had been returning from an errand to Captain Hardian, who commanded the cruisers the Order maintained here in Belhadan, when he'd heard the name "Bahzell Bloody-Hand" in the snatch of song floating out the briefly opened doors and known he had no choice. He and Sir Yorhus had stepped into the establishment, wrapping themselves in their cloaks and hoping no one would note the Order's arms on their surcoats, and stood in the back to listen—first with astonishment, then with incredulity, and finally with horror and outrage.

It mocked the Order! It mocked everything the Order stood for, and all in the name of that uncivilized dolt . Saving serving girls from the "foul attentions" of "ill-favored overlords," indeed! And that business about rescuing noblewomen disguised as peasants—as if things like that truly happened! And fighting demons and evil princes with cursed swords, for Tomanāk's sake! Why, the Empire hadn't seen a proved demon sighting in over forty years! It would have been bad enough, Phrobus take it, if the song had treated it all with proper dignity, but this—! One of the bards at his father's high table might have sung such mythic deeds properly, to teach and inspire, even though all who heard his song would know it was myth. But this... this... this ditty had the sheer effrontery to suggest such things had really happened, to give Bahzell credit for them by name , and to do it all as if it were some sort of game! As if someone who claimed to be a champion of Tomanāk were no more than a topic for sport!

The insult had been too much for him, and Sir Yorhus' efforts to calm him had been worse than useless. Vaijon knew the knight-commander was displeased by Bahzell's presence, but the older knight had tried valiantly to point out that it scarcely mattered what ignorant, lowborn laborers and seamen thought about the Order or its members. Certainly their brethren had cause to be disappointed, even angry, over the insult, but it was their duty to rise above it and ignore it lest in reacting to it they bring still more ridicule upon the Order.

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.