"This is all very touching," Wencit interrupted, "but as Terrian says, I did go find you lot, and my backside is pretty nearly frozen to this saddle. Do you suppose we could move this conversation indoors and conduct it in front of a fire like civilized people?"

"Civilized, is it?" Terrian snorted. "And since when have you been 'civilized,' Wencit?"

"Since I started freezing in place," the wizard replied tartly, and Terrian laughed.

"I'm relieved to see something can turn your thoughts in the direction of civility! But if that's what you really want, I suppose we can accommodate you." He nodded to three of the Temple guardsmen who had followed him and Kaeritha down the steps, and the designated men stepped forward. "If you and Lord Brandark—and you, Sir Yorhus—will let these gentlemen have your horses, they'll see to stabling all your animals and getting your baggage unloaded while we continue our conversation under those more civilized conditions you wanted."

"So how may the Order serve you, Milord?" Sir Terrian asked the better part of an hour later, and Bahzell lowered his huge tankard of hot cider with a slight frown. The blizzard's unabated fury was faint through thick walls, and his feet were propped in front of a roaring fire in the large office-cum-sitting room which served as Terrian's study. The room was as well heated as anything in the Belhadan Chapter House, and the Horse Stealer's toes—and nose—had thawed considerably. He was actually beginning to believe he might enjoy having survived the storm, but Terrian's question pulled him back from the raw sensual pleasure of being warm again and required him to think.

"As to that, I'm thinking the Order's done just about all I might have been asking of it already, Sir Terrian," he rumbled after a moment. "Leaving aside the little matter of today's weather, which was none of their doing, Sir Charrow and Sir Yorhus between them have made this the least unpleasant winter march in my memory."

"I'm delighted to hear it," Terrian said, sipping from his own mug of cider. Then he gave Yorhus another of those sharp, stabbing looks. "I'm particularly pleased to hear it given some of the reports Sir Charrow has forwarded to me through the mage relays. I understand there was some, ah, difference of opinion over your status, shall we say?"

Bahzell began to reply, but Yorhus spoke before he could.

"There was, My Lord General," the knight-commander said formally. He bent his head, but that strange note, as if he found some obscure pleasure in admitting his fault, was back in his voice. "To my shame, much of the making of that difference was mine. But Lord Bahzell and Tomanāk have shown me my error, and I trust to so amend my behavior that neither they nor you shall have reason to find fault with me ever again."

Terrian's eyes narrowed, and he pursed his lips, then threw Bahzell a sharp glance and raised his eyebrows. Bahzell flicked his ears to acknowledge the silent question. He was pleased Terrian had recognized the compulsiveness of Yorhus' admission, and he fully intended to discuss sending the knight-commander to Jashân in the hope that Tothas could straighten him out. But he had no desire to begin that discussion before so many others. Common courtesy dictated that he speak with the knight-general about it in private, and so he turned his attention to Kaeritha with a grin.

"Aye, Sir Terrian. 'Differences of opinion' is one way to be putting it. And from what you were saying earlier, I've the impression Dame Kaeritha could tell us about a few 'differences of opinion' of her own."

"Indeed I could... if I were inclined to bring up old misunderstandings. Which, of course, no true knight would ever do," Kaeritha replied in a devilishly demure tone.

Bahzell chuckled, and she smiled back at him. In the better light of the office, Bahzell could see the pale line of a scar, thin but obviously the legacy of a deep wound, which ran down her oval face from the top of her right cheek to the side of her throat. Another ran from her forehead back and up across her hairline, and a streak of startling white traced its course further back into her hair. Despite its scars, hers was a face well suited to the smile it wore, but then her expression grew more sober.

"Unlike some of the other chivalric orders, ours has always been open to women," she said seriously. "That's caused some problems in places like the Empire of the Spear, where the very notion of a woman choosing to train at arms is anathema, but Tomanāk was rather firm about it when he ordained the Order's existence."

She paused, and Bahzell nodded, once again reminded of Zarantha. It was fortunate Duke Jashân had chosen to give his heir, daughter or no, the sort of training which would have horrified his peers. Without it, she would 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 Tomanāk'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 over estimating 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!' "