there's someone as won't like it overmuch, and experience has a nasty way of suggesting the someone's me, like enough.'
'Good!' Brandark said, and grinned as his friend looked up quickly. 'I'm working on another verse for The Lay of Bahzell Bloody-Hand,' the Bloody Sword explained, 'and the interesting things that happen to you always provide plenty of inspiration.'
'Now just you be holding up there! I thought you'd given over on that curst song!'
'Oh, I meant to, Bahzell. I truly meant to. But then we got here and I saw how your own brethren in the Order have failed to appreciate your towering nobility. Surely you see that it's my duty to repair that dreadful injustice.' Brandark struck a rousing chord on his balalaika, grinning devilishly, and Bahzell glowered at him.
'What I'm seeing,' the Horse Stealer said grimly, 'is that I've waited overlong in wringing your scrawny neck! Not,' he added, 'but what that can't be seen to easy enough still some dark night.'
'Why, Bahzell! What would Sir Charrow think if he could hear you now?' Brandark demanded with a gurgle of laughter.
'He'll cheer me on, like as not, if you've been after spreading that song of yours about,' Bahzell shot back, then stabbed the Bloody Sword with suddenly suspicious eyes. 'You have been spreading it about, haven't you?' he demanded.
'Well, it has proved quite popular down at the Seaman's Rest,' Brandark admitted. 'And at the Anchor and Trident. And, now that I think of it, I do believe they asked for an encore at the Flying Lady night before last, and Estervald-he's the resident harpist at the Jeweled Horse-wants to know when the new verse will be finished.'
'I have waited overlong.' Bahzell groaned, and Brandark laughed again. However dreadful his singing voice or the doggerel his efforts at verse normally produced, even his worst enemies-perhaps especially his enemies-would admit he had a gift for satire, and The Lay of Bahzell Bloody-Hand was his personal gift to his towering friend. Unfortunately, from Bahzell's viewpoint, he'd chosen to set it to the melody of a much beloved and depressingly easy to remember drinking song.
'I don't really see your problem, Bahzell,' he said now, his tone insufferably prim. 'It's not as if the song insults you in any way!'
'No, and if one tenth of what it claims was after being true, I'd be the biggest ninny on the face of Norfressa!'
'Why, Bahzell! How can you say that? I'll have you know that no one could possibly doubt that you're a very perfect paladin after hearing my song! Your nobility of character, your selfless determination to rescue maidens, your fearless resolve when facing demons or devils, your-'
'One more word-one more!-and I'll crack your skull this minute!' Bahzell told him, and Brandark shut his mouth with a grin.
Sir Vaijon of Almerhas stalked into the chapter house in a black, bleak fury so deep that the door warden physically flinched away from him. In his defense, Vaijon had no idea his rage showed, which was, of course, yet another sign of its seething power. But he knew it was there, and the reasonable part of his mind told him he should take it to Sir Charrow, or perhaps to Sir Ferrik, the chapter's senior priest.
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 Tomanak'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 Tomanak'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 Tomanak 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, Tomanak 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.
