The Paladin

by C. J. Cherryh

  One, two, and three. As master Yenan had taught him.

  While the leaves fell and the garden turned to brown in the first frost.

  * * *

  "Up!" Shoka said, and sent the blade sweeping under Taizu's feet, spun it around in a turn that brought it for her back, lifted it to strike as she brought the correct counter back and held, reaching the end of the pattern.

  "Now what will be the next move?" he asked her.

  "You'll go low-line," she said.

  "I might not."

  "Harder to go up from that line."

  "That's why I might do it. You might not expect."

  "Dangerous, though."

  "I'm the best. What will I do?"

  "Some third thing. Not something awkward."

  He was amused, pleased, but he did not laugh. He did not go off his guard with her. Those were not the rules in the faster game.

  "What will it be?"

  "You could turn back again and make me follow."

  "What's the advantage?"

  "Following takes attention. It ends when the opponent intends. Intention is the blade."

  The old catechism, whispered on a frosting breath, under a gray autumn sky.

  "Again," he said, and took the pattern from the beginning.

  They were down to shirts and breeches. Sweat shone on her face and throat despite the cold; the white shirt clung and flared as she turned and struck and turned. He let himself go with the sheer beauty of the moment, the intoxication of movement, his and hers.

  That was what she gave back to him. Teaching her, he taught himself. It pleased her. In time, he told himself, he would please her.

  And there would be no more foolishness.

  He pushed her toward the old tree that shaded the cabin. She refused that and tried to gain ground, away from the tree roots. "Ha," he said, and cleared back, giving her room.

  Not pushing her, not forcing the novice into dangerous situations, not making a joke of her, for her pride's sake. He was honorable with her.

  But she pressed it. Getting him to back away, she wanted to push him, and in an eye-blink decision he let her, for her sake, gave her the ground she wanted, backed.

  She changed pattern on his second step.

  He made the instinctive move and pulled it with a sudden lurch of the heart, saw her whirl and turn.

  "Hold!" he shouted.

  She stopped. He saw the blood on her sleeve. His heart was pounding in his chest. She seemed only confused.

  "You're hit, girl."

  She looked down at her body while the blood ran down the hand that held her sword, still not finding it, though blood spattered in the dust. He took her arm and found the cut while she craned her head over to try to see. Blood soaked the shirt. He grabbed it by the tail and whipped it up over her head as she protested and hugged it to her chest for modesty's sake.

  It was on the back of her arm, a finger long, not, thank the gods, deep.

  "I didn't even feel it."

  "Fool." He shook her by that arm. "Don't try a trick like that on me again."

  "I'm sorry, master Saukendar."

  "It's shallow. It could have ruined you. Hear me?"

  "Yes, master Saukendar."

  He let her go and went and retrieved his sword-sheath, while she pulled her shirt back on and did the same, off the porch.

  "Come inside," he said then. "Damn, that's a good shirt."

  "I'm sorry."

  He brought her inside, pulled the shirt up again and salved the arm for her and bandaged it. By then, he knew by experience, she was beginning to feel the sting in full.

  "Does it hurt?"

  "Yes," she said.

  His heartbeat had settled and he was quite calm. He jerked her close to him by the cloth of the shirt she was holding to cover herself.

  "It could have been your arm, you damned fool. Don't ever push me."

  "Yes, master Saukendar."

  "Go wash up. And wash the shirt. You're a mess."

  She went. He frowned at her back and decided there was no damage done. But when he was washing up at the back of the cabin, at the rain-barrel, the moment came back to him again, that half-a-blink time he had had to react and realize he had reacted with an attack she did not know how to defend, one that would have, at fall force, taken her arm off. He kept seeing it, feeling sick at his stomach.

  * * *

  He kept seeing it again and again: he looked at her from time to time as they sat inside at supper—not the porch, in the chill of this evening's wind—because the sight of her whole and hale was a cure for what he kept seeing in his mind: Taizu bloody on the ground, crippled even if he had been pulling his blows—

  Or if he had not—

  She looked at him between mouthfuls of rice, worried-looking, knowing, he was sure, that he was thinking about her, that he might have something to say about the situation; perhaps thinking that she had made some unforgivable mistake, which was not the case. It was a student's mistake. It was his—that he had stopped expecting her to do fool things like that.

  He enjoyed teaching her, he looked forward to the sessions, he took pleasure in the things he had not been able to do in years, and it brought back his boyhood to him—not the deadly years, not the duels, not the blood and the pain, but the sheer pleasure of skill and excellence. His father's voice. Master Yenan's. The gray dusty courtyard at Cheng'di, with the red-painted dragons on the gates. Faces of friends, most of whom were dead.

  Taizu, in motion in the sunlight—Taizu, at guard, every line of her beautiful, from the slender turn of ankle to the set of her hips to the sheen of her hair in the light—

  He had given her that grace. He could hardly remember the pig-girl. And the scar was part of Taizu. It had a certain symmetry: it belonged to her, it was part of the face and the person that he had come to depend on being there, day and night—

  Kill Ghita.

  Gods. Leave the mountain, trek across the country, throw her life away—

  Like hell she would.

  Like hell he would let her.

  "I'm sorry," she said finally, in a meal that was all silence.

  He shot her a scowling look.

  "I know what I did," she said.

  Ask her, she meant.

  Then they would talk about it, then it would be all right and everything would go back to what it had been.

  Until something worse happened.

  "What did you do?"

  "I thought I'd be clever. I thought I'd find out if what I thought was right, if why you learn in patterns is because they're in balance with where your feet are, and if you let me back you up then you were going to let me follow right into what you wanted—so I thought I could stop that by changing."

  He stared at her, frowning, in long silence, following every bit of it. Then he said: "You were thinking."

  "I—" She pressed her lips together and was very still for a moment, then nodded. "I'm sorry, master Saukendar."

  He rested his arm on his knee, his chin on his arm, and stared at her. "Listen to me, girl. You wanted me to teach you. I have, so far. You're extraordinarily good, for a woman. Probably better in the forms than most that come out of the schools in Cheng'di. But that won't save your life, you understand me? I gave you a promise because I didn't want you wandering off and getting yourself caught by the bandits or starving on the road. Look at you now. You're a damned pretty girl. Have I done badly for you?"

  Her lips were a pale line in the lamplight. "No," escaped them, hardly a move at all, and her nostrils flared, her eyes moved in panic like a trapped rabbit's.

  "Scared to death I'll make a grab at you. I haven't. Not that it's been easy, understand. But I've kept my bargain, haven't I?"

  A nod of her head, after the same fashion.

  "This isn't Chiyaden. A woman who lives up here—had damned well better know how to hunt; how to use a bow; had better be strong enough to swing an axe and run a hill. The ladies in the court learn the sword and t
he staff. There's nothing wrong in that. A woman ought to be able to take care of herself—"

  —it wouldn't have helped Meiya.

  —If I had been there—

  —If I had seen it coming—

  "—and I'd gotten lazy in my retirement. I enjoy the exercise. And if I want to teach a woman more than a lady usually learns, that's my business. But when I teach her, I have to teach her the other things too, like the good sense to know her limits."

  "You promised—"

  "You listen to me. If there's a mistake, it's mine, in hoping you'd have the sense to quit. I've treated you like a woman. If you think you backed me up—"

  "I knew I didn't."

  "Damned right. I should have pushed you right into the tree. That's what I mean. Maybe you're good enough to take a peasant or two. Maybe you could carve up a bandit. Most of them are rotten swordsmen. A lord's bodyguard is a different matter: every one of them a man twice your weight, a good span on your longest reach, maybe not as agile, but don't count on it—a man who spends at least an hour a day in the exercise court isn't a light matter for anyone, young miss, and even if you get one of them on his bad day, his three friends will take strong offense. Give me your hand. Give it to me!"

  She gnawed at her lip and carefully put her small hand in his.

  "Now push my hand to the floor."

  She tried. She made him resist harder than he had expected, but he held, even when she threw her shoulder into it unexpectedly.

  She sat back frowning.

  "Do you want to try to hold me off?"

  "You said don't engage."

  "Sometimes you have no choice. Sometimes there are five and six of them and you haven't got a damn choice. Sometimes they come in numbers larger than that, and sometimes there's no room to back up, you've got to take the room. I've taught you the moves a woman can do. But there are some you can't."

  "Try me."

  "What you want is impossible, girl. A man doesn't have to be better than you to beat you. He just has to be stronger and half as good—and that means some damn door guard can lop your head off. That means some ox of a line soldier can bash a cheap sword right through your guard and if he doesn't get you on that one his partner will, from the back. That's the way it is in the world. You're not strong enough. You can't do everything with the blade and you can't evade everything that comes at you."

  "All I have to be is good enough for one."

  "You're out of your senses. You won't get that far, you'll die in a damn ditch, for nothing. If you're lucky."

  "I'm not afraid."

  "You're a fool, then! Or a liar."

  "You swore you'd teach me. If you haven't been teaching me right, you're breaking your word." Her eyes glittered with unshed tears. "And you'd be a liar, master Saukendar."

  "Damn you."

  Her chin trembled. And she stared at him in defiance.

  "Listen to me, girl. Listen. If I hit you all-out, as can happen, I'll break your bones. Right across the shoulder. First honest match, snap, there goes the arm. Is that what you want?"

  "If you teach me so you can hit me, that's the way it is, isn't it? You want me to get killed."

  "You damned little fool, I'm telling you it happens."

  "You gave your word."

  "I told you how that happened. Listen to me. You're good. You're very good. But you can't do the things you want. You can't change nature. Forget this crazy notion of yours. You've got a roof over your head. You've got a warm bed. You can stay with me as long as you like." He took a deep breath and took the chance, out loud, the way he had been thinking it—hell with his heritage, the things they would say in Cheng'di. Hell with the look his father would give him, if his father were alive to see it; but his father, thank the gods, had not seen a good lot else that had happened, either. "As my wife, or as close to that as matters for anyone. It's not a bad life here. Is it?"

  "No," she said sharply, scowling.

  "No, what? What are you going to do else? March on Gitu's castle? Be a damned fool? They'll cut you up for dog meat."

  "You swore an oath."

  "I made a simple promise! It doesn't count, to a madwoman!"

  "No, you said you swore. And so did I, master Saukendar. I swore an oath too. And you'll teach me."

  He gnawed his lip, glaring at her. "You're a damned hard-headed bitch."

  "I swore. And I'll do it. And you will. You'll teach me the right way. You won't cheat."

  "I didn't cheat!"

  "What else is it, if you held back on me?"

  "Damn you for a fool! You want your bones broken?"

  "I want justice, master Saukendar. I want you to do what you promised. If you can't teach me any better than that, it's your fault, isn't it, master Saukendar?"

  "Fool, I say! It happens. It happens to men and the best of them. What chance do you think you have? You get tired, girl, you get tired and you make a mistake, you get hot in the damn armor, you can't pick your footing, some damn footsoldier guts your horse—what in hell do you think you're going to do then?"

  "You can teach me that. The way you promised."

  "Fool," he muttered, and said nothing else for a long while. Finally he passed out of the mood to say anything, and went over to his mat and undressed, not caring about her sensibilities, deliberately defying her presence, and walked over to the hearth to pour a little rice wine and to heat it.

  "Want any?" he asked brusquely, looking her direction. But she had gathered up the dishes and she was putting herself to bed, clothes and all.

  "No," she said without looking at him, tucked under the quilts with her back to him and pulled them over head.

  "It's going to be a long winter, girl. Drink some wine with me. We'll talk about the court. Talk about whatever you like."

  "No." From under the quilts.

  He stood there thinking ungentlemanly thoughts a good long moment, while the wine heated. Then he took the wine-pot and blew out the light.

  "I'm going to my own mat," he said in the dark.

  No answer from the other side of the room.

  So he sat down in the dark and drank the wine down to the bottom, and tried not to think about her, the sword that had nearly crippled her, or Chiyaden and ambushes of ungrateful peasants.

  He kept seeing that moment behind his eyelids. He saw the first man he had ever killed. He saw a score more after that, and the wreckage a sword could leave of a man. Good men. Maimed and screaming in the dirt.

  He had himself another woman and he was as helpless to reason with this one as with the first.

  He should have slept with Meiya, he told himself, the first time the idea had ever crossed his mind. There would have been scandal. A quick marriage. And Meiya, no longer virgin, before the Emperor had ever taken the notion to claim her for his murdering fool of a son, would have been safe from everything that had happened to her at the hands of her husband.

  He should listen to no nonsense now, should take the direct course with Taizu, go over there and show her what a man's strength was worth against her prudery: she would warm after a night or two, would come to sense, would find a gentleman's ways different than the men she had known—

  It all seemed very reasonable. Until he thought about Taizu.

  Until he remembered what she would say to him at the critical moment:

  You gave your word, master Saukendar.

  * * *

  "How's the arm?" he asked her at breakfast.

  "It's fine, master Saukendar."

  He ate a few more bites.

  "I can do my lesson today," she said.

  He said nothing.

  "I'm not stiff, master Saukendar. There's nothing wrong with me. You mostly missed me."

  "I pulled it, dammit. I laid myself wide open pulling it, I risked my neck stopping, let's get the thing right, shall we?"

  "I wouldn't have hit you—"

  "Then what in hell do you think you're holding a sword for?"

  Taizu had her mou
th open. She shut it, fast.

  "All right," he said, glaring at her. "You want me to teach you like a man, you've asked for it."

  * * *

  The skirts of the armor came to her knees. "It's heavy," she said, swaying as he cinched it in with ropes about her waist, crossed around her chest, because it had to overlap to fit; and he had padded up her arms and her legs with leather wrappings and old rags, because the armor-sleeves and the shin-guards were impossible.

  "You want me to teach you," he said.

  "What are you going to wear?"

  "I'm not worried," he said. "You're the one apt to lose a hand." He stood back, took up his sword and pointed at hers. "There you are. On your guard."

  She staggered a little in the moves. But she steadied.

  He put her on Jiro's back on the next day and let her have the feel of riding in that weight of metal, when before, she had only sat Jiro bareback when he was lazing about the pasture. She did not fall off. But Jiro was on good behavior.

  "If you're going to be a gentleman," he taunted her, "you should know how to ride."

  And he swung up in her place, took up the reins and said: "Pass me up my spear. You have a lot to learn, girl. We'll see how well you handle a rider."

  It was more boiled rags that night.

  "Do you want to quit?" he asked her.

  She turned a dark and accusing eye on him, face down on her mat while he was putting compresses on the backs of her knees. "No," she said.

  And he: "It only gets heavier with the wearing."

  * * *

  The arrow flew, the deer started at the sound of Shoka's bowstring and the arrow led the stag truly, arced straight for the heart—not hunting for sport, but meat for their winter, and they took no chances. The stag lunged at the impact, ran a few steps and went crashing down in a snowy thicket.

  He cut its throat for good measure, and Taizu looped a rawhide rope around its feet and flung the other end over a branch.

  Venison for the whole winter season. Hide and horn and bone for a fine pair of breeches and a knife-hilt and whatever else winter evenings could devise.

  "I never had venison," Taizu had confided to him.