The Apogian War

Chapter 35

Lno said good-naturedly, "And now, if we were in the Grand hall, prised in the dark. Well, Darkovan, you do know you're supposed to be alert even when you're off duty, don't you?" Darkovan was still too shaken and surprised to speak. Lno let go his arm and said in sudden dismay, "Darkovan, did I really hurt your No-it's just-" He found himself almost unable to speak because damp you on the floor, just to teach you what to do when you're sor of his agitation. He had not seen Lno. He had not heard his voice. He had simply touched him, in the dark, and it was clearer than seeing and hearing. For some reason it filled him with an almost intolerable anxi ety he did not understand. Lno evidently sensed the distress he was feeling. He let him go and tumed to Dan, saying amiably, "Well, Dani, are you learning to walk with an eye to being surprised and thrown from behind?" "Am I ever," Dan said, laughing. "Gabriel-Captain Lanart-Darkov caught up with me yesterday. This time, though, I managed to block him, so he didn't throw me. He just showed me the hold he'd used." Lno chuckled. "Gabriel is the best wrestler in the Guards," he said. "I had to learn the hard way. I had bruises everywhere. Every one of the officers had me marked down as the easiest to throw. After my arm had been dislocated by-by accident," he said, but Darkovan felt he had started to say something else, "Gabriel finally took pity on me and taught me a few of his secrets. Mostly, though, I relied on keeping out of the officers' reach. At fourteen I was smaller than you, Dani." Darkovan's distress was subsiding a little. He said, "It's not so easy to keep out of the way, though." Lno said quietly, "I know. I suppose they have their reasons. It is good training, to keep your wits about you and be on the alert all the time; I was grateful for it later when I was on patrol and had to handle hefty drunks and brawlers twice my size. But I didn't enjoy the learn ing, believe me. I remember Father saying to me once that it was better to be hurt a little by a friend than seriously hurt, some day, by an enemy." "I don't mind being hurt," said Dan, and with that new and unen durable awareness, Darkovan realized his voice was trembling as if he was about to cry. "I was bruised all over when I was learning to ride. I can stand the bruises. What I do mind is when-when someone thinks it's funny to see me take a fall. I didn't mind it when Lerrys Ridenow caught me and threw me halfway down the stairs yesterday, because he said that was always the most dangerous place to be attacked and I should always be on guard in such spot. I don't mind when they're trying to track me something That's what I'm here for at now and then somsoe seems toto joy hurting me, or frightening me They had come away from the stairs now and were walking along open colomade, Darkovan could see Lno's face, and it was grim. He said, "I know that happens. I don't understand it either. And I've never under stood why some people seem to feel that making boy into man esto en making him into a brute. If we'd all been in the Good hall, I have felt compelled to throw Darkovan ten feet, and I don't sup pose Td have been any gentler than any other officer. But I don't like hurting people when there's no need either. I suppose your cadet-master would think me shamefully remiss in my duty. Don't tell him, will you He grinned soddenly and his hand fell briefly on Dan's shoul der, giving him a little shake. "Now you two had better hurry along you'll be late." He turned a corridor at right angles to their own and strode away. The two cadets hurried down their own way. Darkovan was thinking that he had never known Lno felt like that. They must have been hard on him, especially Cyan. But how did he know that? Dan said, "I wish all the officers were like Lno. I wish he were the cadet-master, don't you?" Darkovan nodded. "I don't think Lno would want to be cadet-master, though. And from what I've heard, Cyan is very serious about honor and responsibility. You heard him speak at Council." Dan's mouth twisted. "Anyhow, you don't have to worry. Lord Cyan likes you. Everybody knows that!" Jealous Darkovan retorted good-naturedly. "You're Dover, Dan said, "you get special treatment." The words were a sudden painful reminder of the distance between them, a distance Darkovan had almost ceased to feel. It hurt. He said, "Dani, don't be a fool! You mean the fact that he uses me for a partner at sword practice? That's an honor I'd gladly change with you! If you think it's love pats I'm getting from him, take a look at me n***d some day-you're welcome and more than welcome to Cyan's love-pats!" He was completely unprepared for the dark crimson flush that Blooded Dan's face, the sudden fierce anger as he swung around to face Darkovan. "What the hell do you mean by that remark?" Darkovan stared at him in dismay. "Why, only that sword-practice with Lord Cyan is an honor I'd gladly do without. He's much stricter than the arms-master and he hits harder! Look at my ribs, you'll see that I'm black and blue from shoulder to kneel What did you think I meant?"

Dan turned away and didn't anneer dimctly. He only said, "We'r going to be late. We'd better run Darkovan spent the early evening homs on street patrol in the city with Hjalmat, the giant young Coandeman who had fint tested him for wordplay. They broke up two bodding brawls, hauled an obstreperous drunk to the brig, directed half a dozen lost country bompkins to the inn where they had left their homes and gently reminded a few wander ing women that harlots were restricted by law to certain districts in the A quiet evening in Thendara. When they returned to the Guard city. A hall to go off duty, they fell in with Gabriel Lanart and half a dozen officers who were planning to visit a small tavern near the gates. Darkovan was about to withdraw when Gabriel stopped him. "Come along with us, brother. You should see more of the city than you can from the barracks window!" Thus urged, Darkovan went with the older men. The tavern was small and smoky, filled with off-duty Guardsmen. Darkovan sat next to Gabriel, who took the trouble to teach him the card game they were playing. It was the first time he had been in the company of older officers. Most of the time he was quiet, listening much more than he talked, but it was good to be one of the company and accepted. It reminded him, just a little, of the summers he'd spent at Armiday. It would never have occurred to Poseidon or Lno or old Andres to treat the solemn and precocious boy as a child. That early acceptance among men had put him out of step, probably forever, he realized with a remote sadness, with lads his own age. Now though, and the knowledge felt as if a weight had fallen from him, he knew that he did feel at home among men. He felt as if he was drawing the first really free breaths he had drawn since his grandfather pushed him, with only a few minutes to prepare for it, into the cadets. "You're quiet, kinsman," Gabriel said as they walked back together. "Have you had too much to drink? You'd better go and get some sleep. You'll be all right tomorrow." He said a good-natured good night and went off to his own quarters. The night officer patrolling the court said, "You're a few minutes late, cadet. It's your first offense, so I won't put you on report this time. Just don't do it again. Lights are out in the first-year barracks; you'll have to undress in the dark." Darkovan made his way, a little unsteadily, into the barracks. Gabriel was right, he thought, surprised and not altogether displeased, he had had too much to drink. He was not used to drinking at all, and tonight he had drunk several cups of wine. He realized, as he hauled off his clothes by the moonlight, that he felt confused and unfocused. It had, he thought with a strange fuzziness, been a meaningful day, but he didn' know yet what it all meant. The Council. The somehow shocking real bution that he had reached his grandfather's mind, recognized Lno by touch without seeing or hearing him. The odd half-quarrel with Dan It added to the confusion he felt, which was more than just drunken nem. He wondered if they had put kirian in his wine, heard himself gig. gle aloud at the thought, then fell rapidly into an edgy, nightmare-rid den half sleep, He was back in Evertin, in the cold student dormitory where, in winter, snow drifted through the wooden shutters and lay in heaps on the novices' beds. In his dream, as had actually happened once or twice, two or three of the students had climbed into bed together, shar ing blankets and body warmth against the bitter cold, to be discovered in the morning and severely scolded for breaking this inflexible rule. This dream kept recurring; each time, he would discover some strange n***d body in his arms and, deeply disturbed, he would wake up with an admixture of fear and guilt. Each time he woke from this repeated dream he was more deeply upset and troubled by it, until he finally es caped into a deeper, darker realm of sleep. Now it seemed that he was his own father, crouched on a bare hillside in darkness, with strange fires exploding around him. He was shuddering with fright as men dropped dead around him, closer and closer, knowing that within mo ments he too would be blasted into fragments by one of the erupting fires. Then he felt someone close to him in the dark, holding him, shel tering his body with his own. Darkovan started awake again, shaking. He rubbed his eyes and looked around him at the quiet barracks room, dimly lit with moonlight, seeing the dim forms of the other cadets, snoring or muttering in their sleep. None of it was real, he thought, and slid down again on his hard mattress. After a while he began to dream again. This time he was wandering in a featureless gray landscape in which there was nothing to see. Some one was crying somewhere in the gray spaces, crying miserably, in long painful sobs. Darkovan kept turning in another direction, not at first sure whether he was looking for the source of the weeping or trying to get away from the wretched sound. Small shuddering words came through the sobs, I won't, I don't want to, I can't. Every time the cry ing lessened for a moment there was a cruel voice, an almost familiar voice, saying, Oh, yes you will, you know you cannot fight me, and

other times, Hate me much as you will, I like it better that Darkovan squirmed with fear. Then he was alone with the weeping, at the inarticulate little sobs of protest and pleading. He went on search ing in the lonely grayness until a hand touched him in the dark, a rude indecent searching, half painful and half exciting. He cried out "No" and Bed again into deeper sleep. This time he dreamed he was in the student's court at Evertin, prac bicing with the wooden foils. Darkovan could hear the sound of his own panting breaths, doubled and multiplied in the great echoing room as a celess opponent moved before him and kept quickening his ments insistently. Suddenly Darkovan realized they were both n***d, that the blows struck were landing on his bare body. As his faceless oppo pent moved faster and faster Darkovan himself grew almost paralyzed, slagrishly unable to lift his sword. And then a great ringing voice for bade them to continue, and Darkovan dropped his sword and looked up at the dark cowl of the forbidding monk. But it was not the novice master at Evertin onastery, but Cyan Hardais. While Darkovan stood, frozen with dread, Cyan picked up the dropped sword, no longer a wooden practice sword, but a cruelly sharpened rapier. Cyan, holding it out straight ahead while Darkovan looked on in dread and horror, plunged it right into Darkovan's breast. Curiously, it went in without the slightest pain, and Darkovan looked down in breaking dread at the sight of the sword pass ing through his entire body. "That's because it didn't touch the heart," Cyan said, and Darkovan woke with a gasping cry, pulling himself upright in bed. "Hades," he whispered, wiping sweat from his forehead, "what a nightmare!" He realized that his heart was still pounding, and then that his thighs and his sheets were damp with a clammy stickiness. Now that he was wide awake and knew what had happened, he could almost laugh at the absurdity of the dream, but it still gripped him so that he could not lie down and go to sleep again. It was quiet in the barracks room, with more than an hour to go be fore daybreak. He was no longer drunk or fuzzy-headed, but there was a pounding pain behind his eyes. Slowly he became aware that Dan was crying in the next bed, cry ing helplessly, desperately, with a kind of hopeless pain. He remem bered the crying in his dream. Had he heard the sound, woven it into nightmare? Then, in a sort of slow amazement and wonder, he realized that Dan was not crying. He could see, by the dimmed moonlight, that Dan was in fact mo tionless and deeply asleep. He could hear his breath coming softly,