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 Toman?k 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 Toman?k did not choose chapter masters who shrank from their duties—but he was honest enough to admit he dreaded it.
Of course I do, he told himself impatiently. What sane person wouldn't, especially with the support they seem to enjoy? But at least my eyes have been opened to the fact that I must deal with it, and for that I thank Tomanāk... and Bahzell.
His mouth quirked. The Order's histories said champions had a way of bringing things to a head and that they tended to arrive for that very purpose at the times one least expected them, but he rather doubted Bahzell Bahnakson regarded himself in that light. But then his half-smile faded, and he shivered as he remembered the hunger which had echoed in the Horse Stealer's ice-cold promise to show Vaijon "what hradani truly are."
For all the young knight-probationer's flaws, and Toman?k knew they were legion, Charrow loved him. He sometimes wondered if that was why Vaijon had failed to overcome those flaws. Had Charrow, as his mentor, taken the wrong approach? Should he have accepted that it was time someone beat some sense into that handsome, golden-haired head rather than persist in his efforts to show Vaijon the way? Yet there had been something else about the youngster, from the moment Charrow first laid eyes upon him. There truly was a strength and power inside him, hidden by the spoiled demeanor and choked in a thorny thicket of arrogance. Charrow had wanted to save that power, to awaken Vaijon to the potential he represented and train him in its use, and so, perhaps, he had let things go too far, spent too long trying to repair the weak spots in an imperfect vessel rather than hammering that vessel with the flail of discipline to see if it was strong enough to withstand the blows required to mend its flaws. Had—
His thoughts broke off as Bahzell and Brandark strode through the door in the center of the north wall. The Bloody Sword looked anxious, as if he were less concerned by how the trial might end than by the consequences of that end, but Bahzell's face might have been forged of iron. He wore no expression at all as he halted, helmet in the crook of his right arm, kite-shaped shield on his left. The hilt of his sword thrust up over his shoulder, and even Yorhus and Adiskael and their cronies hushed their murmured conversations as the lantern light fell upon him.
Seven and a half feet tall he stood, as broad and hard looking as the mountains in which Belhadan had her roots, and his brown eyes were cold. Danger clung to him like winter fog and, despite himself, Charrow swallowed. He had never faced hradani in battle; now, looking upon Bahzell Bahnakson, he realized how fortunate he had been.
Another door opened, this one in the salle's southern wall, and Vaijon stepped through it. Like Bahzell, he was bareheaded, carrying his helmet, but there the similarities ended. Bahzell was grim and still, a towering cliff of plain, burnished steel and the muted tones of leather harness, but Vaijon glittered like the War God Himself. Silver-washed chain flickered in the lantern light, silk and gems and blinding white leather added their magnificence to his presence, and his golden hair shone like a prince's crown. He was a foot shorter than his foe, but he moved with catlike grace, and if Bahzell's eyes were cold, his blazed with determination.
A fresh mutter went up, and Charrow's stomach tightened as he heard it. It came from Yorhus and Adiskael's followers, and it carried the unmistakable echo of approval for Vaijon's cause.
But he had little time to think about that as Vaijon strode towards Bahzell, and he straightened his own spine as they approached him. Normally, there would have been at least two referees to serve as score keepers; today there were none, for this was no training exercise. The combatants were not armed with the blunted weapons of practice, and their scores would be kept only in the wounds they wreaked upon one another.
Bahzell and Vaijon stopped with a perfectly matched timing which could not have been intentional, each precisely one pace short of Charrow, and he looked back and forth between them. Under any other circumstances, it would have been his duty to attempt to dissuade them from combat even now, but Bahzell had made that impossible. The huge hradani who had been so reluctant to exert his prerogatives had never even hesitated this time, and he was right. A champion's authority did supersede even that of the Order's commandery. He, and he alone, could avert this confrontation, and his cold expression said all too clearly that he had no intention of averting it. And so Charrow made no effort to remind them of their brotherhood within the Order or to beg them to reconcile. He only cleared his throat sadly, then made his voice come out as clear and calm as he could.
"Brothers of the Order, you are here to meet under arms," he told them simply. "May Tomanāk judge rightly in the quarrel between you."
He took one step backwards, turned, and walked to the high-backed chair which awaited him. He seated himself in it and watched as Bahzell and Vaijon nodded coldly to one another and donned their helmets. Then steel whispered as they drew their blades, and he waited one more moment, as if engraving the tableau before him on his memory.