“Then, damn it, Father, get someone else to command the Guards! Offer Dyan the command—wouldn’t that satisfy his ambition?”
“But it wouldn’t satisfy me,” he said harshly. ‘I’ve worked for years to put you in this position. If you think I’m going to let you destroy the Domain of Alton by some childish scruples, you’re mistaken. I’m still lord of the Domain and you are oath-bound to take my orders without question! The post of cadet-master is powerful enough to satisfy Dyan, but I’m not going to endanger the rights of the Altons to command. I’m doing it for you, Lew.”
“I wish you’d save your trouble! I don’t want it!”
“You’re in no position to know what you want. Now do as I tell you: go and give Dyan his appointment as cadet-master, or”—he struggled again, ignoring the pain—”I’ll get out of bed and do it myself.”
His anger I could face; his suffering was something else. I struggled between rage and a deadly misgiving. “Father, I have never disobeyed you. But I beg you, I beg you,” I repeated, “to reconsider. You know that no good will come of this.”
He was gentle again. “Lew, you’re still very young. Some day you’ll learn that we all have compromises to make, and we make them with the best grace we can. You have to do the best you can within a situation. You can’t eat nuts without cracking some shells.” He stretched out his hand to me. “You’re my main support, Lew. Don’t force me to fight you too. I need you at my side.”
I clasped his hand between my fingers; it felt swollen and feverish. How could I add to his troubles? He trusted me. What right had I to set up my judgment against his? He was my father, my commander, the lord of my Domain. My only duty was to obey.
Out of his sight, my rage flared again. Who would have believed Father would compromise the honor of the Guards? And how quickly he had maneuvered me again, like a puppet-master pulling strings of love, loyalty, ambition, my own need for his recognition!
I will probably never forget the interview with Dyan Ardais. Oh, he was civil enough. He even commended me on my caution. I kept myself barriered and was scrupulously polite, but I am sure he knew how I felt, like a farmer who had just set a wolf to guard the fowl-house.
There was only one grain of comfort in the situation: I was no longer a cadet!
Chapter FIVE
As the cadets walked toward the barracks, Regis among them, he heard little of their chatter and horseplay. His face was burning. He could cheerfully have murdered Lew Alton.
Then a tardy fairness came back to him. Everybody there obviously knew what was going to happen, so it was evidently something that went on now and then. He was just the one who stumbled into it. It could have been anyone.
Suddenly he felt better. For the first time in his life he was being treated exactly like anybody else. No deference. No special treatment. He brightened and began to listen to what they were saying.
“Where the hell were you brought up, cadet, not to answer to your name?”
“I was educated at Nevarsin,” Regis said, provoking more jeers and laughter.
“Hey, we have a monk among us! Were you too busy at your prayers to hear your name?”
“No, it was the hour of Great Silence and the bell hadn’t rung for speech!”
Regis listened with an amiable and rather witless grin, which was the best thing he could possibly have done. A third-year cadet, superior and highly polished in his green and black uniform, conveyed them into a barracks room at the far end of the courtyard. “First-year men in here.”
“Hey,” someone asked, “what happened to the Commander?”
The junior officer in charge said, “Wash your ears next time. He broke some bones in a fall. We all heard.”
Someone said, carefully not loud enough for the officer to hear, “Are we going to be stuck with the bastard all season?”
“Shut up,” said Julian MacAran, “Lanart-Alton’s not a bad sort. He’s got a temper if you set him off, but nothing like the old man in a rage. Anyway, it could be worse,” he added, with a wary glance at the cadet who was out of range for the moment “Lew’s fair and he keeps his hands to himself, which is more than you can say for some people.”