Dani gave him a quick, spontaneous grin. “Right.” He looked around the barracks room. It was bleak, cold and comfortless. A dozen hard, narrow camp-beds were ranged in two rows along the wall. All but one had been made up. Danilo gestured to the only one still unchosen and said,
“Most of us were down here last night and picked beds. I guess that one will have to be yours. It’s next to mine, anyhow.”
Regis shrugged. “They haven’t left me much choice.” It was, of course, the least desirable location, in a corner under a high window, which would probably be drafty. Well, it couldn’t be worse than the student dormitory at Nevarsin. Or colder.
The third-year cadet said, “Men, you can have the rest of the morning to make up your beds and put away your clothing. No food in barracks at any time; anything left lying on the floor will be confiscated.” He glanced around at the boys waiting quietly for his orders. He said, “Uniforms will be given out tomorrow. MacAnndra—”
Damon said, “Sir?”
“Get a haircut from the barber; you’re not at a dancing class. Hair below the collarbone is officially out of uniform. Your mother may have loved those curls, but the officers won’t.”
Damon turned as red as an apple and ducked his head.
Regis examined the bed, which was made of rough planking, with a straw mattress covered with coarse, clean ticking. Folded at the foot were a couple of thick dark gray blankets. They looked scratchy. The other lads were making up the beds with their own sheets. Regis began making a mental list of the things he should fetch from his grandfather’s rooms. It began with bed linens and a pillow. At the head of each bed was a narrow wooden shelf on which each cadet had already placed his personal possessions. At the foot of the bed was a rough wooden box, each lid scarred with knife-marks, intertwined initials and hacked or lightly burned-in crests, the marks of generations of restless boys. It struck Regis that years ago his father must have been a cadet in this very room, on a hard bed like this, his possessions reduced, whatever his rank or riches, to what he could keep on a narrow shelf a hand-span wide. Danilo was arranging on his shelf a plain wooden comb, a hair-brush, a battered cup and plate and a small box carved with silver, from which he reverently took the small cristoforo statue of the Bearer of Burdens, carrying his weight of the world’s sorrows.
Below the shelf were pegs for his sword and dagger. Danilo’s looked very old. Heirlooms in his family?
All of them were there because their forefathers had been, Regis thought with the old resentment. He swore he would never walk the trail carved out for a Hastur heir, yet here he was.
The cadet officer was walking along the room, making some kind of final check. At the far end of the room was an open space with a couple of heavy benches and a much-scarred wooden table. There was an open fireplace, but no fire was burning at present. The windows were high and narrow, unglazed, covered with slatted wood shutters, which could be closed in the worst weather at the price of shutting out most of the light. The cadet officer said, “Each of you will be sent for some time today and tested by an arms-master.” He saw Regis sitting on the end of his bed and walked down the row of beds to him.
“You came in late. Did anyone give you a copy of the arms-manual?”
“No, sir.”
The officer gave him a battered booklet. “I heard you were educated at Nevarsin; I suppose you can read. Any questions?”
“I didn’t—my grandfather didn’t—no one sent my things down. May I send for them?”
The older lad said, not unkindly, “There’s no one to fetch and carry for you down here, cadet. Tomorrow after dinner you’ll have some off-duty time and you can go and fetch what you need for yourself. Meanwhile, you’ll just have to make out with the clothes on your back.” He looked Regis over, and Regis imagined a veiled sneer at the elaborate garments he had put on to present himself to his grandfather this morning. “You’re the nameless wonder, aren’t you? Remembered your name yet?”
“Cadet Hastur, sir,” Regis said, his face burning again, and the officer nodded, said, “Very good, cadet,” and went away.
And that was obviously why they did it, Regis thought. Probably nobody ever forgot twice.
Danilo, who had been listening, said, “Didn’t anyone tell you to bring down everything you’d need the night before? That’s why Lord Alton sent me down early.”
“No, no one told me.” He wished he had thought to ask Lew, while they could speak together as friends and not as cadet and commander, what he would need in barracks.
Danilo said diffidently, “Those are your best clothes, aren’t they? I could lend you an ordinary shirt to put on; you’re about my size.”
“Thank you, Dani. I’d be grateful. This outfit isn’t very suitable, is it?”
Danilo, who was kneeling in front of his wooden chest, brought out a clean but very shabby linen shirt, much patched around the elbows. Regis pulled off the dyed-leather tunic and the fine frilled shirt under it and slid into the patched one. It was a little large. Danilo apologized.
“It’s big for me too. It used to belong to Lew—Captain Alton, I mean. Lord Kennard gave me some of his outgrown clothes, so that I’d have a decent outfit for the cadets. He gave me a good horse too. He’s been very kind to me.”
Regis laughed. “I used to wear Lew’s outgrown clothes the years I was there. I kept growing out of mine, and with the fire-watch called every few days, no one had time to make me any new ones or send to town.” He laced up the cords at the neck. Danilo said, “It’s hard to imagine you wearing outgrown clothes.”
“I didn’t mind wearing Lew’s. I hated wearing my sister’s outgrown nightgowns, though. Her governess taught her needlework by having her cut them down to size for me. Whenever she was cross about it, she used to pinch or prick me with her pins while she was trying them on. She’s never liked sewing.” He thought of his sister as he had last seen her, heavy-footed, swollen in pregnancy. Poor Javanne. She was caught too, with nothing ahead of her except bearing children for the house of Hastur.
“Regis, is something wrong?”
Regis was startled at Danilo’s look of concern. “Not really. I was thinking of my sister, wondering if her child had been born.”
Danilo said gently, “I’m sure they’d have sent word if anything was wrong. The old saying is that good news crawls on its belly; bad news has wings.”
Damon MacAnndra came toward them. “Have you been tested yet by the arms-master?”
“No,” said Dani, “they didn’t get to me yesterday. What happens?”
Damon shrugged. “The arms-master hands you a standard Guardsmen sword and asks you to demonstrate the basic positions for defense. If you don’t know which end of it to take hold by, he puts you down for beginner’s lessons and you get to practice about three hours a day. In your off-duty time, of course. If you know the basics, he or one of his assistants will test you. When I went up last night, Lord Dyan was there watching. I tell you, I sweat blood! I made a damn fool of myself, my foot slipped and he put me down for lessons every other day. Who could do anything with that one staring at you?”
“Yes,” Julian said from the cot beyond, where he was trying to get a spot of rust off his knife. “My brother told me he likes to sit and watch the cadets training. He seems to enjoy seeing them get rattled and do stupid things. He’s a mean one.”
“I studied swordplay at Nevarsin,” Danilo said. “I’m not worried about the arms-master.”
“Well, you’d better worry about Lord Dyan. You’re just young enough and pretty enough—”
“Shut your mouth,” Danilo said. “You shouldn’t talk that way about a Comyn lord.”
Damon snickered. “I forgot. You’re Lord Alton’s protégé, aren’t you? Strange, I never heard that he had any special liking for pretty boys.”
Danilo flared, his face burning. “You shut your filthy mouth! You’re not fit to wipe Lord Kennard’s boots! If you say anything like that again—”
�
�Well, it seems we have a whole cloister of monks back here.” Julian joined in the laughter. “Do you recite the Creed of Chastity when you ride into battle, Dani?”
“It wouldn’t hurt any of you dirty-mouths to say something decent,” Danilo said and turned his back on them, burying himself in the arms-manual.
Regis had also been shocked by the accusation they had made and by their language. But he realized he could not expect ordinary young men to behave and talk like novice monks, and he knew they would quickly make his life unbearable if he showed any sign of his distaste. He held his peace. That sort of thing must be common enough here to be a joke.
Yet it had touched off a murder and near-riot in the Terran Zone. Could grown men actually take such things seriously enough to kill? Terrans, perhaps. They must have very strange customs, if they were even stricter than the cristoforos.
He suddenly recalled, as something that might have taken place years ago, that only this morning he had stood beside young Lawton in the Terran Zone, watching the starship break free from the planet and make its way to the stars. He wondered if Dan Lawton knew which end of a sword to take hold by, and if he cared. He had a strange sense of shuttling, rapidly and painfully, between worlds.
Three years. Three years to study swordplay while the Terran ships came and went less than a bowshot away.
Was this the kind of awareness his grandfather carried night and day, a constant reminder of two worlds rubbing shoulders, with violently opposed histories, habits, manners, moralities? How did Hastur live with the contrast?
The day wore on. He was sent for, and an orderly measured him for his uniform. When the sun was high, a junior officer came to show them the way to the mess hall, where the cadets ate at separate tables. The food was coarse and plain, but Regis had eaten worse at Nevarsin and he made a good meal, though some of the cadets grumbled loudly about the fare.
“It’s not so bad,” he said in an undertone to Danilo, and the younger boy’s eyes glinted with mischief. “Maybe they want to make sure we know they’re used to something better! Even if we’re not.”
Regis, aware of Danilo’s patched shirt on his back, remembered how desperately poor the boy’s family must be. Yet they had had him well educated at Nevarsin. “I’d thought you were to be a monk, Dani.”
“I couldn’t be,” Dani said. “I’m my father’s only son now, and it wouldn’t be lawful. My half-brother was killed fifteen years ago, before I was born.” As they left the mess hall, he added, “Father had me taught to read and write and keep accounts so that someday I’d be fit to manage his estate. He’s growing too old to farm Syrtis alone. He didn’t want me to go into the Guards, but when Lord Alton made such a kind offer, he couldn’t refuse. I hate to hear them gossip about him,” he said vehemently. “He’s not like that! He’s good and kind and decent!”
“I’m sure he doesn’t listen,” Regis said. “I lived in his house too, you know. And one of his favorite sayings used to be, if you listen to dogs barking, you’ll go deaf without learning much. Are the Syrtis people under the Alton Domain, Danilo?”
“No, we have always been under Hastur wardship. My father was hawk-master to yours, and my half-brother his paxman.”
And something Regis had always known, an old story which had been part of his childhood but which he had never associated with living people, fell into place in his mind. He said excitedly, “Dani! Your brother—was his name Rafael-Felix Syrtis of Syrtis?”
“Yes, that was his name. He was killed before I was born, in the same year Stefan Fourth died—”
“So was my father,” said Regis, with a surge of unfamiliar emotion. “All my life I have known the story, known your brother’s name. Dani, your brother was my father’s personal guard, they were killed at the same instant—he died trying to shield my father with his body. Did you know they are buried side by side, in one grave, on the field of Kilghairlie?”
He remembered, but did not say, what an old servant had told him, that they were blown to bits, buried together where they fell, since no living man could tell which bits were his father’s, which Dani’s brother’s.
“I didn’t know,” Danilo whispered, his eyes wide. Regis, caught in the grip of a strange emotion, said, “It must be horrible to die like that, but not so horrible if your last thought is to shield someone else. . . .”
Danilo’s voice was not entirely steady. “They were both named Rafael and they had sworn to one another, and they fought together and died and were buried in one grave—” As if he hardly knew what he was doing, he reached out to Regis and clasped his hands. He said, “I’d like to die like that. Wouldn’t you?”
Regis nodded wordlessly. For an instant it seemed to him that something had reached deep down inside him, an almost painful awareness and emotion. It was almost a physical touch, although Danilo’s fingers were only resting lightly in his own. Suddenly, abashed by the intensity of his own feelings, he let go of Danilo’s hand, and the surge of emotion receded. One of the cadet officers came up and said, “Dani, the arms-master has sent for you.” Danilo caught up his shabby leather tunic, pulled it quickly over his shirt and went.
Regis, remembering that he had been up all night, stretched out on the bare straw ticking of his cot. He was too restless to sleep, but he fell at last into an uneasy doze, mingled with the unfamiliar sounds of the Guard hall the metallic clinking from the armory where someone was mending a shield, men’s voices, very different from the muted speech of the monastery. Half asleep, he began to see a nightmarish sequence of faces: Lew Alton looking sad and angry when he told Regis he had no laran, Kennard pleading for Marius, his grandfather struggling not to betray exhaustion or grief. As he drifted deeper into the neutral country on the edge of sleep, he remembered Danilo, handling the wooden practice swords at Nevarsin. Someone whose face Regis could not see was standing close behind him; Danilo moved abruptly away, and he heard through the dream a harsh, shrill laugh, raucous as the scream of a hawk. And then he had a sudden mental picture of Danilo, his face turned away, huddled against the wall, sobbing heartbrokenly. And through the dreamlike sobs Regis felt a shocking overtone of fear, disgust and a consuming shame. . . .
Someone laid a careful hand on his shoulder, shook him lightly. The barracks room was filled with the dimness of sunset. Danilo said, “Regis? I’m sorry to wake you, but the cadet-master wants to see you. Do you know the way?”
Regis sat up, still a little dazed by the sharp edges of nightmare. For a moment he thought that Danilo’s face, bent over him in the dim light, was actually red and flushed, as if he had been crying, like in the dream. No, that was ridiculous. Dani looked hot and sweaty, as if he’d been running hard or exercising. Probably they’d tested his swordplay. Regis tried to throw off the remnants of dream. He went into the stonefloored washroom and latrine, sluiced his face with the paralyzingly cold water from the pump. Back in the barracks, tugging his leather tunic over Dani’s patched shirt, he saw Danilo slumped on his cot, his head in his hands. He must have done badly at his arms-test and he’s upset about it, he decided, and left without disturbing his friend.
Inside the armory there was a second-year cadet with long lists in his hands, another officer writing at a table and Dyan Ardais, seated behind an old worm-eaten desk. Because the afternoon had turned warm, his collar was undone, his coarse dark hair clinging damply around his high forehead. He glanced up, and Regis felt that in one swift feral glance Dyan had learned everything he wanted to know about him.
“Cadet Hastur. Getting along all right so far?”
“Yes, Lord Dyan.”
“Just Captain Ardais in the Guard hall, Regis.” Dyan looked him over again, a slow evaluating stare that made Regis uncomfortable. “At least they taught you to stand straight at Nevarsin. You should see the way some of the lads stand!” He consulted a long sheet on his desk. “Regis-Rafael Felix Alar Hastur-Elhalyn. You prefer Regis-Rafael?”
“Simply Regis, sir.”
“As you wis
h. Although it seems a great pity to let the name of Rafael Hastur be lost. It is an honored name.”
Damn it, Regis thought, I know I’m not my father! He knew he sounded curt and almost impolite as he said, “My sister’s son has been named Rafael, Captain. I prefer not to share my father’s honor before I have earned it.”
“An admirable objective,” Dyan said slowly. “I think every man wants a name for himself, rather than resting on the past. I can understand that, Regis.” After a moment, with an odd impulsive grin he said, “It must be a pleasant thing to have a father’s honor to cherish, a father who did not outlive his moment of glory. You know, I suppose, that my father has been mad these twenty years, without wits enough to know his son’s face?”
Regis had only heard rumors of old Kyril Ardais, who had not been seen by anyone outside Castle Ardais for so long that most people in the Domains had long forgotten his existence, or that Dyan was not Lord Ardais, but only Lord Dyan. Abruptly, Dyan spoke in an entirely different tone.
“How tall are you?”
“Five feet ten.”
The eyebrows went up in amused inquiry. “Already? Yes, I believe you are at that. Do you drink?”
“Only at dinner, sir.”
“Well, don’t start. There are too many young sots around. Turn up drunk on duty and you’ll be booted, no excuses or explanations accepted. You are also forbidden to gamble. I don’t mean wagering pennies on card games or dice, of course, but gambling substantial sums is against the rules. Did they give you a manual of arms? Good, read it tonight. After tomorrow you’re responsible for everything in it. A few more things. Duels are absolutely forbidden, and drawing your sword or knife on a fellow Guardsman will break you. So keep your temper, whatever happens. You’re not married, I suppose. Handfasted?”
“Not that I’ve heard, sir.”
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