THE HERITAGE OF HASTUR by Marion Zimmer Bradley

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 had 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 evety 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 officer, 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.