The War God's Own

have possessed neither the dagger which had helped keep her alive the night she and Bahzell met nor the skill to use it, nor would she have known how to use Tothas' bow against the dog brothers in the Laughing God Inn. But Kaeritha was right: the mere notion of a woman warrior, much less a belted knight, would strike most Spearmen nobles as an abomination.

'Despite Tomanak's decree, however, relatively few women actually join us,' Kaeritha continued. 'I'd be surprised if more than one or two percent of our members have been women.' She glanced at Terrian, as if for confirmation, and the knight-general flicked one hand.

'I haven't checked the numbers, but I'd imagine you're right. In fact, you're probably overestimating the numbers,' he said, and looked at Bahzell. 'It's not because we discourage women from taking our vows, you understand-though I suspect some of our brethren do so unofficially. Relatively few women ever express a desire to take up the sword, and we have our own share of men who think none of them should. But the main reason the numbers are so low is that most of the women who do seek admission to one of the militant orders turn to either the Sisterhood of Lillinara or to the Axes of Isvaria.'

He cocked an eyebrow at Kaeritha almost challengingly, and she shrugged.

'True enough. In fact, my first thought was for the Sisterhood. I suppose it's only natural for a woman to feel drawn to the service of a goddess, and both the Sisterhood and the Axes are at least as good in the field as our Order is, now aren't they?'

She held Terrian's eyes with a bland challenge of her own, and he laughed.

'If they aren't, I'm certainly not brave enough to say so!'

'That's because the Order chooses its knights-general for wisdom as well as skill, Milord,' Kaeritha said, and grinned as he chuckled. But then she turned back to Bahzell, and her smile faded.

'As I say, I was strongly drawn to the Sisterhood in the beginning. I come from Moretz peasant stock, Bahzell, and my life had been… unpleasant.' Her blue eyes went even darker, but her voice was calm. 'My father was an Esganian, actually, but he had a way with horses, and he was a drover for a Hildarth merchant for many years. I don't remember him well. I think he was a good man, but he was killed by brigands when I was three or four, and my mother-' She paused, then twitched her head. 'My mother had left her own village when she married him. She had no family near the one we lived in when he died, and she… did whatever a 'foreign' woman with three children and no man had to do to survive. I loved her, and I never stopped loving her, but it was hard for a child to understand the decisions she had to make. There are things I thought-things I actually said to her-which I would give all I may ever own to take back. I can't, of course. All I can do is honor her memory and seek to protect others like her.'

She took another long sip of cider, gazing into the fire, and Bahzell heard Yorhus stir restlessly behind him. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw the anger in the knight-commander's face. Not at Kaeritha, but at her mother's fate. He must have realized where Kaeritha's tale was headed as well as Bahzell had, and outrage flickered in his expression. But Kaeritha seemed unaware of it, and her eyes remained fixed on the dancing flames when she spoke once more.

'I was thirteen when my mother died. My younger sister had already died of some wasting disease-I'm not certain which one; I was too young to know at the time-and my brother had been drafted for military service when our local baron decided to raise troops for a fishing expedition in the Ferenmoss civil war. I was alone, but I was tall for my age and prettier than most, and some of the local men decided I was old enough to… take my mother's place. I disagreed, and when one of them tried to force me-' her right hand rose to trace the scar on her cheek, and Bahzell heard the sharp, sibilant hiss of Yorhus' indrawn breath '-I took away his dagger and killed him with it.' She looked up from the fire to meet Bahzell's eyes. 'I'm afraid I didn't let him die very easily, either.'

'And a good thing,' Bahzell rumbled. Among most hradani, rape was the one crime which not even the Rage could excuse. That held true-publicly, at least-even in Navahk, where Prince Churnazh ruled through terror and brutality. The fact that Churnazh and at least three of his four sons were rapists was well known, although few dared say so openly. Yet it had been the public knowledge that Bahzell had beaten Crown Prince Harnak almost to death for raping a servant girl which had truly driven Harnak into pursuing him across the width of a continent. Not even the Navahkans would have followed Harnak while those rumors persisted, and the only way to silence them had been to kill Bahzell and his victim. Unfortunately for his plans, both of them were still alive and he wasn't, and Bahzell doubted that even Harnak's father regretted his death very deeply, considering the embarrassment he'd become.

But Bahzell had come to realize that rape was much more common among the other Races of Man. It disturbed him deeply, for it was a crime he simply could not understand and for which he had the utmost contempt, but he knew it happened… and he had no sympathy at all for anyone who committed it.

Kaeritha looked a bit startled by the firmness of his approval. She gazed at him for a moment, and then the corner of her mouth quirked.

'If the local magistrates had shared your view, I'd probably still be living in Moretz,' she said wryly. 'As it happened, I doubted they'd see things my way, so I fled. I won't bore you with the details, but eventually I wound up in Morfintan down in South March. I was two-thirds starved and filthy, my cheek was badly infected, and the City Guard snapped me up for vagrancy. I'd had no experience of Axeman justice, and I was scared to death when they marched me into the courtroom. The only magistrates I'd ever met had been my natural enemies-I certainly wasn't prepared for one who took one look at me, then sent the bailiff out to fetch his wife so he could hand me over to her to 'wash her and feed her up so I can't count her ribs anymore, for Orr's sake!' '

The grim darkness in her eyes faded, replaced by happier memories.

'That was how I met Seldan Justinson and his wife, Marja,' she said, the warmth of her eyes leaking over into her voice, as well. 'They took me in as casually as if I were a stray puppy, and I'm not the only stray they saved. I may not have any idea where to find any of my blood relatives-assuming I have any-but I've got six brothers and eight sisters, most of 'em still living in Morfintan, and four of them still living with Seldan and Marja. He's Mayor now, and he and Marja are the parents who saved my life… and my soul.' She met Bahzell's eyes fully, and her smile was gentle. 'They taught me love again, you see,' she said simply, and the Horse Stealer nodded.

Silence hovered for a long moment, and then Kaeritha inhaled deeply.

'Well, Seldan and Marja washed me, fed me, called in a healing mage for my face, sent me off to school each day-kicking and fighting every inch of the way-and generally set about civilizing me. They even got me to stop complaining about the silliness of a peasant girl learning to read by enlisting the aid of Mistress Sherath, the mage who served as the school's headmistress. She recognized something in me and decided I needed some specialized training. She was a mishuk herself, but I was clearly unsuited to a weaponless technique, so she enlisted Dame Chaerwyn from the Morfintan chapter of the Order of Tomanak . I'd never dreamed that anyone would offer me that sort of training-it's illegal to teach a peasant the use of edged weapons in Moretz-and it was as if someone had offered me all the gold in Norfressa. I didn't think a great deal about why I was learning weapons craft. All I thought about then was that if I learned to fight, I'd never have to whore as my mother had… and that anyone, man or woman, who ever tried to force me to do something against my will would find a foot of steel in his or her belly.'

She paused, her eyes momentarily dark and grim once more, then wrinkled her nose and raised one hand, palm uppermost, as if tossing something away from her.

'Whatever my motive for learning might have been, I soon realized I had a natural aptitude. My progress pleased Dame Chaerwyn, though she was always ready to cut me down to size when I got too impressed with myself, but she and Mistress Sherath were firm. If I wanted to continue my weapons lessons, then I had to spend at least an equal amount of time with my other studies, which is how I came to lose the wretched Moretz accent I'd brought to Morfintan with me.

'I don't think Mistress Sherath picked Dame Chaerwyn because she felt I was destined for the Order. It was just that she was the best weapons master in Morfintan who also happened to be a woman, and Mistress Sherath wasn't about to put me into a training salle with a man with a weapon in my hand. I don't blame her, either. There was still a lot of hate in me, and I think-no, I know-that bothered Dame Chaerwyn. But she taught me self-discipline along with weapons' skill, and by the time I was nineteen, she was prepared to sponsor me to the Order.

'I almost refused. She was the only woman in the Morfintan chapter, and she'd already told me how few