The Paladin Part 17

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 s.h.i.+rts."

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 s.h.i.+rt.

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 s.h.i.+rt," 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 deerskininside, 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 Hois.h.i.+ ever tried them.

d.a.m.n.

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- G.o.ds, for time to stop.

For death not to happen.

"I've got a fool on my hands," he said to the horse. Foolish to be talking to the horse. But he had, for years, because otherwise he never used his voice.

Until she came. And his whole life began to turn on that point.

"I teach her," he told the horse, who turned back a sympathetic ear, "because it's the only thing that keeps her here. Make her armor to keep her from killing herself. What else can I do? Eh?"

Jiro curved his neck around and lipped the hem of his s.h.i.+rt.

"Woman's a d.a.m.n fool," he said, and scrubbed and curried with a vengeance. "She's not ready yet. Not near. She's finally getting the common sense to know it. At least she's come that far.Men are her problem. It's not Gitu gives her nightmares. It's every d.a.m.n man who might look at her. Go out on that road. Looking for bandits. G.o.ds!"

Horse and rider came rumbling up the rise of the summer pasture, and Shoka watched from the fence, elbows on knees, as Jiro took the crooked course toward the two men of straw and rags, as the sword came up, Taizu leaned from the saddle and hit one, Jiro veering about again- Lazy horse, Shoka thought, seeing Jiro had gotten into a rut. He knew straw figures when he saw them.

School exercises.

But the sword strokes came very precisely on one or other of the lines of dye they had painted on the figures.

Back and forth, back and forth, from the straw-men at this end of the pasture to the straw-man at the other, till his rump grew tired with sitting and Jiro was lathered and hard-breathing. "Suppertime!" Shoka yelled at her as she pa.s.sed him and turned about again for the far end. "Walk him down!"

She drew in, Jiro bouncing and snorting and still ready to go for the targets. She got him down to a walk, and walked him down to the targets at the end, and to the rail, and reined in again.

A little s.p.a.ce for breathing, he thought. There was a view from that vantage, out over all the valley, the whole of the mountain-skirts laid out to the west, toward the sunset and the gilded clouds.

But it was only that for the moment. He saw her gazing east, toward the dull, dark end of the sky; just sitting there for a while, facing that ill-omened direction.

He slipped from the rail, distressed, and waited until she finally reined about again. Then he wanted to seem not to have noticed, not to make any notice of it.

But she slowed Jiro again and turned him and looked back a moment more before she came back to the stable.

And she looked at him the same strange way, from the height of Jiro's back.

So he knew then that it was leaving she was thinking of. That the sun had begun to turn south again from its northerly wandering; and the fall was coming.

On a day like this she had come here. On an evening like this, with the sunlight gilding the edges of things. He remembered.

She said nothing about it at supper that night, on the porch. Or at breakfast, and still there was a kind of melancholy silence about her that told him that she was holding some debate with herself.

Perhaps, he thought, holding to hope, she was in the way of changing her mind. Perhaps that silence and that melancholy boded well for him.

He dared not ask and begin an argument: she was stubborn; she might go the opposite way out of habit.

It was her sense of duty she was struggling with; it was- Fondness, perhaps. A reluctance to leave what was comfortable; to leave a man who was at least her teacher. She weighed that against anger, against grief, against vows made by a child with no understanding of the cost of them to the woman she would be.

He had taught her to weigh things. Taught her to think things through, and the hardest thing in the world now was to keep himself quiet and pretend he had no notion there was anything amiss and just let herdo what he had taught her and think down all the paths of the thing.

Trust her to use good sense at the last.

But he feared to go anywhere out of sight of the cabin, for fear that she might make up her mind without him of a sudden, and go, like the child she sometimes was, simply deserting him.

The very thought of that hurt. One day and another one pa.s.sed. He began to think perhaps he had read her wrong; or she had changed her mind.

Then he came back up the hill one afternoon to find her at the hearth, rolling up a packet of smoked meat in leather, with others by her.

"What are you doing?" he asked her by way of challenge: he already knew the answer.

She did not look at him immediately. She finished rolling the packet and put it with the others. Then she looked his way, as if facing him was very hard for her, "I'm going," she said.

"You're not ready yet."

"How long will it take? Till Gitu dies of old age?"

"Two years aren't enough. How long do you think a man studies with a master? Three and four. At the least. How long do you think Gitu's studied?"

She shrugged and turned and wrapped up the packets in an old rag and tied it.

"I haven't spent two years teaching a fool!" he said. "If the law catches you with that gear they'll cut your hand off."

She did not look at him.

"They'll catch you, girl. You don't walk like a peasant, you don't look like a peasant, you don't move like one, and you don't look like a boy anymore. Do you?"

"I can when I want to."

"Oh,h.e.l.l , girl, not a chance. You're not shaped like a boy, you don't walk like one, either.Or like a peasant girl. So what are you going to do?"

She frowned. "Keep to the woods. Keep to the trails."

"With the bandits. A wonderful plan."

She stared into nowhere. "Can I take my mat and my blanket?"

He gave a wave of his hand, beyond talking for the moment. His breath seemed stopped up in his throat.

He leaned against the wall by the door and folded his arms and looked at the floor.

"Can I take my mat?"

"d.a.m.n, take anything you want. Except Jiro. I don't care."

There was long silence.

She sniffed then, and he looked up and saw her crying.

"Well, you don't have to go," he said. "No one's making you. I don't want you to go. I'm begging you notto. How much plainer can I make it?"

She took up her bundle and went and dropped it on her mat.

"I'll stay here tonight," she said. "Tonight I'll sleep with you. There won't be any other time."

He drew in his breath, cold to the bones. "I don't understand you, girl."

"You said I shouldn't be afraid. So I want you to sleep with me. I want that to remember on the road. If I get a baby now it won't stop me. Nothing will stop me. I'll get there. I'll be as smart as I can. I'll come back here if I can."

"You'll do that and just walk out of here."

She nodded, calm now, and he stared at her in desperation.

Then he walked over to the corner shelf and got down his armor and flung it down by his mat. "Well, you might as well pack double, girl."

"No!"

"Whatno? I'm not leaving you to the bandits. Don't tell me that's not what you planned from the start."

"I said no!"

"Sorry." He got his sword and put it with his bow and quiver by the door.

"You're banished! They'll kill you!"

"So they will." He drew a breath and looked around him, at the place with its shelves and its acc.u.mulation of things that he had saved over the years, the familiar place, the familiar things. He felt a sense of panic, like finding himself poised on the edge of a fatal drop. But the step was easy. Very easy.

He had learned that at the edge of duels, of judgements, of skirmishes. When there were no choices, one moved, that was all. He took down the whole hook of smoked venison and laid it on the hearth. "No sense to stint ourselves."

"Dammit, I'm not asking this!"

He looked at her and gave a smile, a laugh, a shake of his head.

"I'm not asking it!I don't want you! "

"That's all right. I forgive you." He found his leather breeches hanging from a rafter, pulled them down and tossed them onto his mat. "Have we got clean s.h.i.+rts?"

"Dammit!"

"You've learned bad language, girl."

"I don't want you to get killed!" "That's a sensible ambition. Best I've heard out of you yet." He took a spare s.h.i.+rt from the peg and threw it atop the pile. "I don't want you with your hand lopped by some magistrate. I'm along to settle questions like that; and you're still learning. Something could come up. Don't be arrogant. Take help when you need it."

She wiped tears, crossed the room in a few strides and started to s.n.a.t.c.h his armor up. He turned that intention with a little move of his hand. And she knew better than to carrythat further.

"No," he said firmly. "Girl, you can take out down that trail and try to leave, but I can still track you. So can we save all that and start out together, tomorrow, like two sane people?"

"It's my revenge, my life, my family. You have no business in Hua!"