"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."