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 beginners’ 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 protege, 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 Ter-ran 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 cristo-foros.
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 Ter-ran 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 Danflo’s patched shut 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.”