Heritage and Exile (21 page)

He knelt beside Danilo's cot and whispered, “Dani, what's the matter? Are you sick? Have you had bad news from home? Is there anything I can do?”

Danilo muttered drearily, his head still turned away. “No, no, there's nothing anyone can do, it's too late for that. And for that, for that—Holy Bearer of Burdens, what will my father say?”

Regis said, in a whisper that could not be heard three feet away, “Don't talk like that. Nothing's so bad it can't be helped somehow. Would you feel better to tell me about it? Please, Dani.”

Danilo turned over, his face only a white blob in the darkness. He said, “I don't know what to do. I think I must be going mad—” Suddenly he drew a long, gasping sob. He said, “I can't see—who—Damon, is that you?”

Regis whispered, “No. Damon's in the infirmary with Julian. And everyone else is asleep. I don't think anyone heard you coming in. I wasn't going to say anything, but you sounded so unhappy . . .” Forgetting their quarrel, forgetting everything except this was his friend in some desperate trouble, he leaned forward and laid his hand on Danilo's bare shoulder, a shy, tentative touch. “Isn't there anything I can—”

He felt the explosion of rage and something else—fear? shame?—running up his arm through his fingers, like an electric shock. He drew his hand away sharply as if it had been burned. With a violent, tigerish movement, Danilo thrust Regis angrily away with both hands. He spoke in a strained whisper.

“Damnable—filthy—
Comyn,
get the hell away from me, get your stinking
hands
off me, you—” He used a word which made Regis, used as he was to Guard Hall coarseness, gasp aloud and draw away, shaking and almost physically sick

“Dani, you're wrong,” he protested, dismayed. “I only thought you were sick or in trouble. Look, whatever's gone wrong with you, I haven't done anything to you, have I? You'll really make yourself ill if you go on like this, Dani. Can't you tell me what's happened?”

“Tell
you
? Sharra's chains, I'd soon whisper it to a wolf with his teeth in my throat!” He gave Regis a furious push and said, half aloud, “You come near me again, you filthy
ombredin,
and I'll break your stinking neck!”

Regis rose from his side and silently went back to his own bed. His heart was still pounding with the physical shock of that burst of violent rage which he had felt when he touched Danilo, and he was trembling with the assault on his mind. He lay listening to Danilo's strained breathing, quite simply aghast and almost physically sick under that burst of hatred and his own failure to get through to him. Somehow he had thought that between two people, both with
laran,
this kind of misunderstanding could not possibly arise! He lay listening to Danilo's gasping, heard it finally subside into soft sobbing and at last into a restless, tossing sleep. But Regis himself hardly closed his eyes that night.

Heavy rain after midnight had turned to wet snow; the day I was to leave for Aldaran dawned gray and grim, the sun hidden behind clouds still pregnant with unfallen snow. I woke early and lay half asleep, hearing angry voices from my father's room. At first I thought Marius was getting a tongue-lashing for some minor naughtiness, but so early? Then I woke a little further and detected a quality in Father's voice never turned on any of us. All my life I have known him for a harsh, hasty and impatient man, but usually his anger was kept on a leash; the fully-aroused anger of an Alton can kill, but he was tower-disciplined, control normally audible in every syllable he spoke. Hastily I put on a few clothes and went into the central hall.

“Dyan, this isn't worthy of you. Is it so much a matter of personal pride?”

Lord of Light, it happened again! Well, at least, if I knew that note in Father's voice, he wouldn't get off unpunished!

Dyan's voice was a heavy bass, muted to a rumble by the thick walls, but no walls could filter out my father's answering shout; “No, damn it, Dyan, I won't be party to any such monstrous—”

Out in the hall I heard Dyan repeat implacably, “Not personal pride, but the honor of the Comyn and the Guards.”

“Honor! You don't know the meaning of—”

“Careful, Kennard, there are some things even you cannot say! As for this—in Zandru's name, Ken, I cannot overlook this. Even if it had been your own son. Or mine, poor lad, had he lived so long. Would you be willing to see a cadet draw steel on an officer and go unpunished? If you cannot accept that I am thinking of the honor of the Guards, what of discipline? Would you have condoned such conduct even in your own bastard?”

“Must you draw Lew into every—”

“I'm trying not to, which is why I came directly to you with this. I do not expect
him
to be sensitive to a point of honor.”

My father cut him off again, but they had both lowered their voices. Finally Dyan spoke again, in a tone of inflexible finality. “No, don't speak to me of circumstances. If you let the respect due to the Comyn be eroded away in times like this, in full sight of every insolent little cadet and bastard in Thendara, how can
you
speak of honor?”

The violent rage was gone from my father's voice now, replaced by a heavy bitterness. He said, “Dyan, you use the truth as other men use a lie, to serve your own ends. I've known you since we were boys, and this is the first time I've come close to hating you. Very well, Dyan. You leave me no choice. Since you bring me this complaint officially, as cadet-master to commander, it shall be done. But I find it hard to believe you couldn't have kept it from coming to this.”

Dyan thrust the door open and came striding out into the hall. He gave me a brief contemptuous glance, said, “Still spying on your betters?” and went out.

I went to the door he had left open. My father looked up at me blankly, as if he could not remember my name, then sighed and said, “Go and tell the men to gather after breakfast in the main Guard hall. All duty-lists suspended for the morning.”

“What . . . ?”

“Disciplinary assembly.” He raised his thick, knotted hands, gnarled and stiff from the joint-disease which has ravaged him since I can remember. “You'll have to stand by. I haven't the strength for a sword-breaking any more and I'm damned if I'll leave it to Dyan.”

“Father, what happened?”

“You'll have to know,” Kennard said. “One of the cadets drew his sword on Dyan.”

I felt my face whiten with dismay. That was indeed something which could not be overlooked. Of course I wondered—who wouldn't?—what provocation Dyan had given. In my own cadet year, he had dislocated my arm, but even then I had known better than that. Even if two cadets in some childish squabble drew their pocketknives, it would have been sufficient to have them both expelled in disgrace.

I was amazed that my father had even tried to interfere. It seemed that for once I had misjudged Dyan.

Even so, I made a quick guess at what had happened. If the MacAran boy had died of his concussion and Damon held Dyan responsible—three different officers had told me of the event and all of them agreed Dyan had been inexcusably rough—then Damon would have held himself honor-bound to avenge his friend. Both boys were mountain-bred and friendship went deep in the Kilghard hills. I did not blame the boy, but I was angry with Dyan. A kinder man would have understood; Dyan, being what he was, might well have shown understanding of the love between them.

Father reminded me that I would need full-dress uniform. I hurried with my tunic-laces, wanting to reach the mess hall while the men were still at breakfast.

The sun had broken through the cloud cover; the melting snow lay in puddles all over the cobblestone court, but it was still gray and threatening to the north. I'd hoped to leave the city shortly after daybreak. If it started snowing again later, I'd have a soggy journey.

Inside the mess room there were sausages for breakfast, their rich spicy smell reminding me that I had not eaten yet. I was tempted to ask the orderly for a plate of them, but remembered I was in full-dress uniform. I came to the center of the crowded tables and called for attention.

As I announced the assembly, I glanced at the table where the cadets were seated. To my surprise, Julian MacAran was there, his head heavily bandaged, but there and looking only a little pale. So much for my theory about what had happened! Regis was there, looking so white and sick that for a moment, in dismay, I wondered if he were the disgraced cadet. But no, he would have been under arrest somewhere.

My way back led me past the first-year barracks room and I heard voices there, so I stopped to see if I should repeat my message to anyone. As I approached I heard the voice of old Domenic. He should have been cadet-master, I thought bitterly.

“No, son, there's no need for that. Your sword is an heirloom in your family. Spare your father that, at least. Take this plain one.”

I had often thought during my own cadet years that old Dominic was the kindest man I had ever known. Any sword would do for breaking. The answer was soft, indistinguishable, blurred by a pain which, even at this distance, clamped around me like an iron band gripping my forehead.

Hjalmar's deep voice rebuked gently, “None of that now, my lad. I'll not hear a word against Comyn. I warned you once that your temper would get you into trouble.”

I glanced in, then wished I hadn't. Danilo was sitting on his cot, hunched over in misery, and the arms-master and Hjalmar were helping him gather his possessions.
Danilo!
What in all of Zandru's nine hells could have happened? No wonder Father had been willing to plead with Dyan! Could any sane man make a point of honor against such a child? Well, if he was old enough to be a cadet, he was old enough to bear the consequences of a rash act.

I hardened my conscience and went on without speaking. I too had had such provocation—for some time, while my arm was still in a sling, I'd put myself to sleep nights thinking up ways to kill him—but I had kept my hands off my sword. If Danilo was not capable of self-restraint, the cadet corps was no place for him.

By the time I came back to the Guard hall the men were gathering. Disciplinary assemblies were not common since minor offenses and punishments were handled by the officers or the cadet-master in private, so there was a good deal of whispered curiosity and muttered questions. I had never seen a cadet formally expelled. Sometimes a cadet dropped out because of illness or family trouble, or was quietly persuaded to resign because he was unable physically or emotionally, to handle the duties or the discipline. Octavien Vallonde's case had been hushed up that way. Damn him, that was Dyan's doing too!

Dyan was already in place, looking stern and self-righteous. My father came in, limping worse than I had ever seen him. Di Asturien brought in Danilo. He was as white as the plastered wall, his face taut and controlled, but his hands were shaking. There was an audible murmur of surprise and dismay. I tried to barrier myself against it. Any way you looked at it, this was tragedy, and worse.

My father came forward. He looked as bad as Danilo. He took out a long and formal document—I wondered if Dyan had brought it already drawn up—and unfolded it.

“Danilo-Felix Kennard Lindir-Syrtis, stand forth,” he said wearily. Danilo looked so pale I thought he would faint and I was glad di Asturien was standing close to him. So he was my father's namesake, as well?

Father began to read the document. It was written in
casta
. Like most hillsmen, I had been brought up speaking
cahuenga
and I followed the legal language only with difficulty, concentrating on every word. The gist of it I knew already. Danilo Syrtis, cadet, in defiance of all order and discipline and against any and all regulations of the cadet corps, had willfully drawn bared steel against a superior office, his cadet-master, Dyan-Gabriel, Regent of Ardais. He was therefore dismissed, disgraced, stripped of all honor and privilege and so forth and so on, two or three times over in different phraseology, until I suspected that reading the indictment had taken longer than the offense.

I was trembling myself with the accumulated leakage of emotion I could not entirely barracade in this crowd. Danilo's misery was almost physical pain. Regis looked ready to collapse. Get it over, I thought in anguish, listening to the interminable legal phrases, hearing the words now only through their agonized reverberations in Danilo's mind. Get it over before the poor lad breaks down and has hysterics, or do you want to see that humiliation, too?

“. . . and shall therefore be stripped of honorable rank and returned to his home in disgrace . . . in token of which . . . his sword to be broken before his eyes and in the sight of all the Guardsmen together assembled. . . .”

This was my part of the dirty work. Hating it, I went and unfastened his sword. It was a plain Guardsman's sword, and I blessed the kind old man for that much mercy. And besides, I thought sourly, those heirloom swords are of such fine temper you'd need the forge-folk and Sharra's fires to make any impression on one!

I had to touch Danilo's arm. I tried to give him a kindly thought of reassurance, that this wasn't the end of the world, but I knew it wasn't getting through to him. He flinched from my gauntleted hand as if it had been a red-hot branding iron. This would have been a frightful ordeal for any boy who was not a complete clod; for one with
laran,
possibly a catalyst telepath, I knew it was torture. Could he come through it at all without a complete breakdown? He stood motionless, staring straight forward, eyes half closed, but he kept blinking as if to avoid breaking into anguished tears. His hands were clenched into tight fists at his side.