The Paladin Part 3

"Master Saukendar?"

He did not answer. She was leading him off from home, he thought; then she would take the trail downhill and try to double back to the cabin ahead of him.

But there was a way across and up to that trail she was on now.

He took the downhill slope off the side of the trail, going from tree to tree to stop himself gathering too much momentum. The climb up the other side was a quick scramble up among the pines, because her trail descended to that point.

Only one way down her side of the hill, unless she went down the slope or doubled back again; and if she did that, there was still another place he could catch her.

But there, dammit, she did head down the other slope, further up the bend of the two hills: he heard the cras.h.i.+ng in the brush; and then thought: no. Not.

He simply sat down where he was, figuring he could take the down-course and match her if he was wrong, but he figured it was a tree or a large rock that had just rolled down that hill.

And if he was wrong he happened to have a vantage that would show her quite plainly when she crossed a certain point below, or tried to climb the slope to reach the trail he had left.

But reckoning that he was not wrong and that the unaccustomed racket was a diversion, he sat, and he waited, and reckoned when she came past him on her way down the trail he could lay hands on her and teach her quite well how she would fare in a real fight.

But there was no sound, no sound for a very long while; and he grew uneasy, thinking that she might in fact have taken some route completely off the trails-a climb up and over the hill, slower, but entirely possible to young legs and light, quick feet. She this moment could be doubling back to the cabin.

Or she had realized where he was now; and was lying quiet; and it was a matter of outwaiting her.

d.a.m.n.

He heard a noise then, a stirring of brush coming his direction.

He crouched in his concealment beside the trail.

"Master Saukendar?" The voice came from quite close now, just beyond the trees, tremulous and out of breath.

d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n, and d.a.m.n. He said nothing. He held his breath and waited, and heard brush break going right back down the trail away from him. He broke from cover and plunged onto the trail in pursuit, having a brief sight of a ragged blue coat among the leaves. He doubled his speed, and she ran all-out ahead of him, dodging along the twists of the trail, her light-shod feet flying, up and over an outcropping of rock and around a turn as he came close behind.

He felt the trip-rope against his foot, he heard the sprung limb release. He saw the tree coming at him, did a turn and roll his muscles knew and his mind had outright forgotten; and a forty-year old body hit the rocky trail with a force that nearly knocked the wind out of him.

He rolled and got up again, bruised and outraged, shoved the quiver back on his shoulder and picked up the bow he had dropped.

"Dammit, girl!"

"I didn't catch you, did I?" the worried voice drifted down the trail.

"d.a.m.n you to h.e.l.l!" he yelled at her. And then caught his breath and his wits and decided on another tactic. "Truce. Do you hear me, girl? Truce for a bit. Listen to me."

"Will you not send me to Muigan?"

"Listen, girl. You're very clever. Someonehas taught you, haven't they?"

"We did it for traps. When the soldiers would come."

"The h.e.l.l."

"It's true. We did them. You aren't hurt, are you?"

"No."

"It wasn't a big tree."

"Listen girl..." He got another breath and calmed his temper. "It was a d.a.m.ned fine set. I'll give you that.

You want me to give you a trial, do you?"

"You'll teach me."

"I'll give you a chance. With an understanding between us."

"What?"

"That you come into the house. That you do what you're told. That any time you want to quit, you tell me and I'll take you to Muigan."

"Do I have your word, master Saukendar? You'll take me for a student."

Another deep breath. "Yes. You have my word."

"Does that mean sharing your bed?" He straightened back, feeling the ache in his bones. He had, G.o.ds witness, not thought of that in the bargain. Yet. "What if it did?" he shouted at the woods.

"Then we'll go on with this. I've gotten one promise from you."

"d.a.m.n your impudence!"

"I'm not a wh.o.r.e, master Saukendar. I'll cook your food and clean, but I won't do anything else for my keep."

He wiped the hair out of his eyes and, the sweat from off his face. He was offended. He also, no matter that she was a scrawny, scarred urchin, wished she had less virtue.

But she was not staying on the mountain, so it made no difference. She was still going to the nuns or to the village, and he had no mind to deliver her pregnant.

"All right," he said. "Those are the terms. You cook and you clean, and I'll teach you. And when you've had enough, you can tell me. I give you my solemn word. Is that enough?"

There was a moving in the brush further down the trail. In a few moments she came around the bend of the path, sweaty and scratched and filthy, her shorn hair standing on end and matted with twigs and leaves; but her eyes were s.h.i.+ning.

He scowled at her, and slung his bow to his shoulder and waved a hand down the trail.

"You walk in front," he said.

Chapter Three.

They were back at the cabin by noon-the girl had shown him where she had hidden her pack, which was one of half a hundred places he might have guessed if he had wanted to risk taking an arrow in the back, or risk her raiding him while he was raiding her hiding-place. Her basket rested in a tight little nook under one of the rock ledges frequent on his mountain, and where-he saw by the lack of sign on the ground around about-she had been canny enough to go on the rock if she had come and gone much there at all.

She had retrieved the ungainly basket, hauled it up onto the ledge where he waited, and taken it onto her back, walking ahead of him into the clearing much as she had walked into it the first time, a load of wicker borne by two skinny bare legs.

She shed the basket on his porch, and looked at him, the sweat running on her face.

"What have you got in that?" he asked, pointing at it with his unstrung bow.

"My blanket, my clothes, some food."

"Show me." She unpacked there on the boards, rummaged out the hat, a pile of dirty clothes and blankets, the rag-wrapped shape of a sword; a few clay bowls, a tin pot, several small packets neatly done up with braided straw cord.

"What are those?" he asked.

"Brown beans," she said of one. "Mushrooms. Ginger root. Berries."

"Show me," he said. It seemed only prudent.

She frowned and untied the cords to show him, indeed, it was only what she had said. He went through the dried mushrooms, and they all seemed wholesome.

He took up the rag-wrapped sword, unfolded the filthy cloth from a plain, serviceable bull's-hide grip, and pulled the blade from the sheath.

"Not bad," he said, trying the balance of it. He put it back in the sheath. "But you're a long way from needing it."

She looked at him anxiously, and at the sword which he kept in his hand-which he fully intended to keep.

"First," he said, lifting the corner of a once-yellow quilt with the tip of the sword, "these need was.h.i.+ng."

He touched her arm with it, plucked at the browned-blue coat. "I trust you've found the spring."

A nod.

"Fine." He stirred the heap of clothes lying on the porch. The aroma was that of sweat, old laundry and mildew. He wrinkled his nose and went inside, leaned the sword against the wall, took a generous lump of soap in a leather wrapping, threw it into the was.h.i.+ng-pail, and took a clean change of breeches and a s.h.i.+rt from the peg. He gave both to the girl, who watched from the doorway. "All your clothes, all your blankets, and your person, before you cross this threshold. Understood?"

"I'm very clean."

One hoped.

One hoped that scrubbing would work a miracle, but the figure that came trudging back from the woods had breeches knotted up with plaited reed about the calves to keep the hems out of the dirt; the s.h.i.+rt hung loose almost to the knees. She carried the huge basket, heavy, one supposed, with wet laundry; and the hair was still a mop, the skin was sun-browned now that the spots and crusts of dirt were gone-one had not expected the old-ivory and cinnabar-rose of the courtesans, but one still cherished a little expectation.

Decidedly not; and the scar, more the pity, was uglier and more inflamed after the scrubbing. Shoka felt a sympathetic twinge for that, in his own left leg.

He had not been completely sure she would come back from the spring. If she were in fact mad, she might start the whole business over again; and in that thought, he had not let Jiro out. But he had hung a cord from post to post of the wooden porch, and when she came up with her basket, he showed her thatto dry the clothes and blankets on, while he went down to the stable and let Jiro out.

The old warhorse snorted and did a little flip of the tail as he skipped out into the afternoon sunlight, in much better humor. Jiro ran for a bit and finally lay down and rolled on his back as if he had just come in after a long day's ride.

So Jiro's world was back in order, with a stretch and a roll in the warm dust, and a good shaking afterward.

By that time, the girl had the laundry hung, and sat on the porch waiting for Shoka as he came up the hill to the house.

He shed the armor and changed to a light s.h.i.+rt and cloth breeches, gave a sigh of relief, and settled down on the porch while he set the girl to weed the garden-it was something she well knew how to do, he reckoned, and he was due a little work for his trouble, none of which he had asked for, especially considering he would be paying a year's wages for her sake to the nunnery at Muigan.

She did not object. In fact she worked very diligently at her weeding, a fetching perspective, while he drowsed somewhat at his ease and thought over such weighty matters as how much work he ought by rights to ask of her in return for his instruction; and whether she might be a decent cook; and, truth be told, what chance there was she might settle down and become a tolerably decent servant-as well she should serve him, he thought, as some cabbage-farmer down in the village, if she had no disposition to be a nun.

She was clever: she had proved that. A lady could never survive the mountain, but a peasant girl certainly could; and warm the winters and cook his food and weed the garden....

He and Jiro could hunt and laze about the pasture, and he could build the cabin a little larger, working in wood being by much his favorite occupation....

Revenge against lord Ghita. G.o.ds, it was the kind of foolishness only a child might think of, who had been abused, who was crazed with grief for her family and the loss of everything familiar; more than that-he knew this from his own experience-her whole mad dream was only a place to go and a purpose to hold her sane when the world had left her nothing else.

She had only to see that there was still some good in life within her reach, and that her mad notion of revenge was impossibly out of any girl's reach and any man's, for that matter; and then she would use good sense. The mountain could offer her peace. Food, rest, a roof over her head and nothing to fear for the rest of her life.

If she was still sane, which was still a question.

d.a.m.n, no, she was a headstrong b.i.t.c.h. If he wanted a woman he could deal with the village for that commodity too: there were poor girls who would take to the life up here well enough, and be d.a.m.ned grateful for it. It was simply that this one was there in front of his eyes-bending over in the bean-patch-and that he had not so much as seen a woman in nine years. There were far comelier and far gentler and more reasonable girls to be had, any time he wanted a disruption in his life-perhaps a compliant, sensible young woman who would come and go occasionally, once a month or so, a small refres.h.i.+ng shower, G.o.ds witness, not a thunderstorm. Pack her off to the nuns. A good harvest of furs could buy some village daughter from her parents, a girl of thirteen or fourteen, who would be quite happy to weed his garden and cook his dinners, and think his cabin on the mountain quite a fine, snug home when and if he chose to have her live there.

But-his mind slipped unbidden to other banished thoughts-have a child... G.o.ds, he had no right to have a son, to leave him a legacy of enemies and a.s.sa.s.sins and a peasant mother; or a daughter whose life would be brute drudgery with some villager. That was why, he reminded himself, he had taken no village daughter in the first place: that, and the fact that in those first years when he had never been certain of his own safety, a woman had only seemed a potential hostage for his enemies.

After that, once he had settled to the pattern of the mountain and come to believe that he was safe-by then he had grown so solitary, so wrapped in his reputation of infallibility with the villagers, so nestled into his place of respect with them-that to ask for companions.h.i.+p seemed too much intimacy with them and too much need to confess to anyone. Besides, any village girl he might take would be chattering about him to her relatives and spreading rumors that might well get to traders' ears; and from traders'

mouths-to the heart of Chiyaden, attributing G.o.ds knew what ambitions to him by that time.

So the young girl so deft with the weeds yonder-wakened thoughts he had consciously, sensibly smothered for more years of celibacy than he had let himself take account of.

d.a.m.n.

He s.h.i.+fted his position, leaned back against the post by the steps, and watched her move and bend-not forgetting the arrow which had flown past just this morning; but finding that he had not quite become a monastic in his isolation. d.a.m.n, he was not.

Even if she were a little mad, there were things to recommend her-like the fact she had no kin in the village to tell tales to; and like the fact she had come with sense enough and skill enough already to take care of herself if trouble did come.

Mostly-she was there, within reach, and no daughter of the village ever had come that close to him.

There was supper on the porch, where he preferred to have it. Taizu had made rice with mushrooms; and the thought of poison did cross Shoka's mind, but he grew quite reckless today, a state of mind quite, quite foreign to his methodical ways and his sense of order.

So the sun went down, leaving them in the dusk, on the porch, with his given word and her anxious expectations.

"There's the porch or there's the inside," he said.

"I'll take inside," she said, and shot him a look. "A corner to myself."

"I promised," he said firmly; and a light came to her eyes, the shadow pa.s.sed, the whole of her regard suddenly opened to him in a way that made no sense at all for a handful of heartbeats-until he remembered the faces in Chiyaden streets, the shouting crowds, the adoration that he had believed in...

until the need came, and no one was there.