The Paladin

by C. J. Cherryh

  Damn, they were all the only choices he had known how to make. If he had always been a fool he had had no choice about it, being a fool to start with; and if he had forgotten himself so far as to lay himself open to a girl with a stick, perhaps he had come down to a general disgust with living.

  He had not felt that since the first years, not since that long night in the first winter, when cold and exhaustion and solitude had had the knife in his hands and gods and devils knew what had kept him from using it then.

  He had been to the brink a few times since, but never at all in recent years. Not in this one, in this strange, different year when he had found himself taking a sudden interest in the world, when he had found the walls going down all around him, past and present and future. He had known the danger he was slipping toward, that he was laying himself open to more than sticks and a girl's temper.

  Strange that a man could become so fragile. It was good that he could see it at least, and build back the walls and recover the skills he had let fall. That was the compensation she gave him. A man would be a fool indeed to let the chance pass, a little good time was worth the pain. And nothing he could win of her by force was worth shortening the time she might stay, or breaking the peace between them.

  So he could recover his life if she left. When she left. It was a romantic fool who thought otherwise. He could buy some girl-servant from the village. There were always too many daughters. A village girl would fall down on her face and thank him for the honor of being concubine to a lord of Chiyaden. Hell with Taizu. Anyway. He could always find another pig-girl to teach. Maybe buy a pig or two to go with her.

  Maybe, he thought on the contrary, the spring planting would rouse something domestic in his farmer-girl. Maybe he could buy a few pigs for her. Help her with the gardening. Maybe all his notion of making her quit had only made life here seem too hard.

  Maybe he should take more of a hand with things and be gentler with her.

  It was worth trying.

  * * *

  "I don't want any pigs," she said to his suggestion. "I'd rather hunt them."

  So much, he thought, for that. But he took up the hoe and he went out to chop furrows in the garden, himself: Jiro had not lived this long to pull a plow—moving the occasional dead tree was enough for an old war-horse; and Jiro grazed placidly on the brown grass while humans sweated.

  "You're putting those rows too close," she said, coming up from the stable.

  He blinked sweat, wiped it off his face. "You could have said," he said with, he thought, remarkable self-control, "seeing I'm half done."

  "You ought to be this far over." She measured with her hands.

  "All right." His leg hurt. The hoeing was never his best job. And he had worked damned hard this year to get the rows straight.

  "You're limping," she said.

  "It's soft ground," he said. And swore to himself and started over.

  * * *

  The sword slid past her. "Turn," he said. "Give me your point. Now."

  Her sword came around to his fingers. He led it. And stopped. "Stand," he muttered; and stood holding his sword and meditating the lines of her stance, and the likely response to a move like that.

  She remembered the moves he guided her to. She could repeat them. He shifted an elbow, improved a line like a sculptor in clay.

  A smaller man, a lighter man, could turn a more powerful blow if the blade were angled just so, if the force slid along the steel; a swordsman of excellent balance could follow the force and slip under it.

  It was not the way his father had taught. It was the art of master Yenan.

  Forgive me, he thought to his ghosts. It was not pure form. It was a constant compromise, it demanded agility and the excellence of balance that, thank the gods, the girl had in unusual measure.

  It took perfection of style and turned it askew, to do things more common to the inns than to the teaching-masters.

  What has philosophy to do with pigs?

  Or what abstract does she understand, except revenge?

  "Again." He took up his guard. He followed the perfect, the schooled line, the natural course for the blade.

  He brought the sword down solidly. It slid.

  "Again."

  Harder this time.

  "Again."

  With real force, his heart in his throat.

  Steel grated and flashed around toward him and up again, in the wheeling stroke he had taught her.

  It was, he congratulated himself, a move of some subtlety.

  Her eyes shone.

  With hope that turned his stomach.

  Chapter Nine

  The arrows thumped into the target one after the other, six, seven, eight. The archer stood, bow bent, feeling out the gusts of wind that skirled up the pasture slope under summer sun, and a seventh followed.

  Center of the target, every one.

  Small woman with an uncommonly powerful bow, one she had made herself, under his close direction.

  Shoka stood leaning on his own and watching the concentration on the eighth shot, then quickly nocked an arrow on the carrying gusts and fired as she was about to loose the ninth.

  She fired all the same, and as the two arrows hit side by side, turned an amused look on him.

  "Damned good," he said, leaning again on his bow. "You don't spook."

  "I know it's you," she said.

  "Good. How do you know?"

  She pointed off across the field where Jiro grazed placidly on the slope, "He knows."

  He smiled. "Fair enough."

  "But in Chiyaden," she said, "there won't be anyone I'll let on my flank."

  Laughter died. "Well you shouldn't," he said, and took up his bow and walked away.

  There was silence behind him, no sound of string or impact. Retrieving her arrows, he thought. For his part he went and hung up his equipment and picked a few squash for supper.

  * * *

  The leaves began to turn, as the boy came back, with more rice and more wine and a few jars of preserves. "Thank you," Shoka said, bowing politely himself, and the boy bowed and accepted his small list of wants, which were few for this coming winter.

  A little straw. The cabin thatch held quite well. Rice and wine, a double portion. But he laid out for the boy a fine lot of furs and a little smoked meat besides.

  So Taizu came out and watched the boy go down the mountain, herself squatting on the porch, arms on knees.

  Not so timid now, Shoka thought to himself, observing her there in front of him, small figure with a tail of braid between her shoulders. More of curiosity than apprehension—

  Perhaps Taizu did not even know the change in herself. He could see it, slow and sure, subtle as the changes in her body—shoulders broadened with muscle, legs strong and shapely, as she had acquired other, more womanly contours.

  He had known half a hundred courtesans, soft of skin and pale and certainly never showing such an unfashionably broad back or taking such a graceless posture. Certainly Meiya never would. But, gods—

  * * *

  He whiled away the winter with stories, with moral tales master Yenan had told them: with, sometimes, stories of the court, and of things he had never told to any courtesan, nor any man either, when he came to think of it—duels he had fought, and skirmishes with the conspirators who had plagued the old Emperor in his decline. He was telling the tales to someone outside the court and beyond those politics, without family to be offended, someone whose eyes flickered with understanding when he named this sword tactic and that, and what his opponent had done right and wrong—not by way of boasting, only pouring everything he knew out to the only person since his father had died that he had ever felt moved to tell these things.

  She at least knew the reputations of the men he named. That amazed him. "They tell stories in Hua," she said, amused and a little piqued, one night that he said as much. And he felt strangely naked then, to discover that a simple quarrel in the court had spread so far and been embelli
shed beyond all reason—in the versions she recounted.

  "Sorcery, hell," he said, regarding lady Bhosai's death. "She was blackmailing lord Ghita. She drank from the wrong teacup. I tell you, Cheng'di was like that. You never trusted anything. They deserve all they got."

  She looked at him, distressed.

  "They killed the good ones," he amended. "But lady Bhosai wasn't one of them. Lord Riga was. At least—" He was whittling a filler for a crack the cold had warped into the door planks. "I could have supported Riga. He wanted to overthrow the heir. Dammit, if I'd done it—" He peeled off one long hard curl. "Well, someone else would have gotten him. Riga was a man of principle. That was all. No great intelligence. Couldn't be worse than the young Emperor. But he wouldn't have lasted the day, once he declared himself. As it was, Ghita found him out and killed him. I could prove the one who did it. I couldn't prove the link to Ghita."

  He looked up at her, at a face intent and listening, asking him no questions.

  "All of which is past," he said, and drew another long stroke down the wood. "Past and dead. I don't know there was ever a thing I could have done. Not for myself. Not for—anyone else." He had never mentioned Meiya's name to her. And he found her listening and the night and the storm urging it was something she might understand, something that might explain a great deal to her, that he wanted her to know. But he could not bring himself to mention Meiya's name. Meiya had faded too much. And Taizu never asked, though that part, he knew, was a story the people knew.

  * * *

  "This was the inner court," he said, laying out sticks to frame the rectangle. It was still winter. Night was outside, and wind; and they worked over a good supper, a little wine. The stories became tactical problems, things he had witnessed. He set pebbles in the sand. "Gates." He stuck twigs upright. "Guards." A leaf with a pebble on it. "Lord Hos in his bed."

  She gave a grim laugh. It was an attempted murder he showed her, one where the assassins had failed. Where there had been more tricks than lord Kendi's men had counted on.

  "The walls are slanted, so. One can climb them with a grapple and a line. This wall has windows. Two."

  "How big?"

  "Big enough for a slender man."

  She nodded, paying strict attention.

  "So. Over the walls. In through the windows ..."

  "Is there a dog?"

  "There's a monkey. It wakes."

  "In the dark. The guards are going to be there in a moment."

  "Have you left your line?"

  "I did. I didn't take it down. I think I'd better get clear of there."

  "I think you'd better. But there's guards here now—" He moved two twigs. "Armed with pikes."

  "I have the bow."

  "Can you take two?"

  She nodded.

  He moved more twigs. "So far you're doing better than the assassin. But two more guards have come up at your back."

  "No arrows in my hand. I'd better get around the corner."

  He planted two more twigs. "Sorry. You couldn't see them from the wall. They both have bows."

  "The other way, down and roll, hit the doorway."

  "The monkey's raising hell."

  "The old man's awake. I'm down this hall the other way. The guards rush in. I'm there with the bow, at their backs."

  "Not bad."

  "I just wait for the rest. That's the other two."

  "The man's little daughter runs into the hall."

  Her face shadowed.

  "Happens," he said.

  "Not fair, master Saukendar."

  "Will you die for that girl?"

  She shrugged. "Let her yell. Like the monkey. She'll bring her papa."

  "You'll shoot him in front of her."

  "Happens," she said.

  "Two more guards."

  "If the girl's still yelling, good. Let them come in."

  "They do."

  "They're dead. I'm out for the wall."

  "Hell, use the front gate. Take a horse while you're at it."

  "There might be servants there too. I'm for the wall. I'm up and over."

  He nodded. "You've left no witnesses but the daughter." And with calculated force. "Suppose she might come after you."

  Her eyes shadowed again. "Gitu hasn't got a daughter. Not fair, master Saukendar."

  "Nothing's fair, girl."

  "Well, it's not poor lord Hos I'm after. It's Gitu. There isn't any daughter to worry about. If there was, she'd be well rid of him."

  "He's got two sons and a flock of men-at-arms."

  "That's why I won't go into his castle after him. Wait in the fields. That's the way I'll do it."

  "You'll never take him with the sword. The bow, I'm telling you. It's your best weapon. Let me tell you another thing—" He drew a breath. "Do it and get away from there. Come back here. You'll be safe here. Plan to survive your enemy, dammit."

  She had looked down the moment he said that, about coming back to the mountain. And that stung.

  "I'm still the villain, am I?"

  "No, master Saukendar."

  "Master Saukendar. That's my court name. That's for talking about me. People called me Shoka, to my face. I'd rather you did."

  "I'm your student, master Saukendar." Without looking up at him.

  "I know. You won't sleep with me. I've got that memorized—it's not very long. That wasn't what I asked you. I just told you I've never liked that name. Saukendar is a damn fool. A story. Tinsel and air. Shoka is who I am, who I've been since I was a boy. Saukendar was what my mother used to call me when I was late to supper."

  She gave a strange little breath. It might have been a laugh. She did not look up from her hands and her lap.

  "I had a mother," he said. "Unlikely as it seems. Her name was Jeisai. She died of a fever. When I was twelve. After that my father had just house-servants."

  She did not look at him.

  "An uncle, an aunt, two cousins," he said. "I was late in my father's life. I missed my grandparents on his side. I do remember my mother's family. More cousins. Some of them may still be alive."

  There was still no response.

  "Even in court," he said, "we had kinfolk. It's not the sole prerogative of Hua."

  No answer still.

  "Damn, girl. —Taizu. If I haven't jumped on you in a year and a half, do you expect I'm getting too friendly because I talk about my relatives? I'm not a damn statue."

  "No, master Saukendar."

  "Shoka, dammit. You could at least call me by my right name."

  "Master Shoka, then."

  He sighed and leaned his elbow on his knee, hand behind his neck. "Gods."

  She got up and fled to her mat, her side of the room, and sat there, not looking at him.

  In a moment more she found use for her hands, braiding the rope she had been working at, the length of it pegged to the wall at the end of her mat.

  "Girl. Taizu."

  The fingers flew. The braid lengthened like magic. Never a look in his direction.

  "You really try me," he said. "Dammit, I could come over there and be as rude. Where are your manners? You act like a damn rabbit!"

  The braid lengthened another palm's-length. And her fingers stopped. "I respect you too much," she said without looking at him. "I want to do what makes you happy. But I don't want to sleep with you. I won't. That's all."

  "Thank you," he said coldly. And then thought, with a little pain in the gut, that it was the first time she had ever confessed any fondness for him. And it was not the sort he had hoped to foster.

  It was better than hatred.

  It still made a cold bed that night.

  * * *

  They had practiced in the snow; they had practiced on the porch and up and down the steps, for practice with bad footing.

  It was the yard by the old tree again, breath frosting on the air, and mud up to the knee.

  Taizu went down, messily. He followed up with the sword while she slipped a second time on her recovery
.

  She had a handful of mud ready with hers. But she did not throw it.

  He tilted his head to one side, looking down at her. "You should have," he said. "In your position nothing can be worse."

  "I'd have to wash two shirts."

  He laughed and offered his hand. "Up. Try it again."

  She gave him her sword-arm and he pulled, helped her up, himself muddy to the knee. Helping her, he got it on his hands. And she contemplated the handful she had, shook it off and wiped her fingers on his shirt.

  It took boiling to get their clothes clean. But he cherished that day, that he saw Taizu laugh.

  There was still hope, he thought.

  * * *

  "Master Shoka," she said the next day, "can I have this?"

  Holding the hide of the wild pig they had shot.

  "Of course. For what?"

  "For a shirt," she said. And laid a hand on her shoulders. "If I double-sew it, it gives me some protection. Without the weight. I think, after yesterday, I'd do better to have it."

  He said nothing for a moment. Then he nodded grimly.

  "All right," he said, and went and got the deer-skin, that was the finest of the skins they had. "No sense doing a patch-together."

  So of evenings he carved small plates of bone, none above the size of a finger-joint, to fit the double-sewn lining of the armor he intended for her: pigskin outside, on the shoulders, soft deerskin inside, and little lozenges of bone sewn into the lining of the shoulders, down the back, and around the ribs and on the skirtings.

  A woman's armor, light and flexible, to protect against grazing blows without sacrificing agility.

  In the case of bandits, he told himself. Even if she might not go, it was worth having, in case the brigands from over in Hoishi ever tried them.

  Damn.

  * * *

  Jiro grunted and rocked to the strokes of the brush, great fat lump that he had grown to be, well-fed and comfortable, and Shoka brushed til the winter hair flew in clouds in the sunlight that filtered in through the cracks of the stable walls.

  Another year on the old fellow. There was more white around his muzzle, and Shoka tried not to see that. But when he was done he leaned on the horse's neck and patted him hard and wished—