The Paladin Part 35

Like climbing a cliff. It was the looks down that took a man's stomach, the occasional realization where he was and what he was doing and what he had to work with.

A while more down the road, thinking and thinking, watching the people they pa.s.sed for any sight of weapons. But there was no threat in the wagons and the carriages, in the people who ran from the trouble they foresaw, who drew aside in terror from a company they took for Oghin mercenaries. Very few young men, very few; exempt as some lord's servant, some lord's tenant farmer, a widow's son, all the various reasons a household could give for exempting a boy from conscription. And from those very few, nothing but bowed heads, averting of the eyes, as if they were terrified every moment a soldier's eye was on them that they might have that exemption revoked.

Of course conscript the young men out of the central provinces,especially from regions around the capital, especially from the towns and cities, where discontent fomented and young men gathered in taverns and tea-shops.

And d.a.m.ned if those that were left were going to risk their precious exemptions. So they would do nothing, dare nothing; but one could panic, accosted by soldiers, one could turn out to have a weapon.

So it was one of the women he rode down on of a sudden, when they next came on a knot of refugees-the hindmost, who struggled along under a bundle too large for her, and who had no hope of running. She looked up when he reined across her path. It was a tolerably pretty face. Or at least it might have been, except the dirt and the sweat and the fear. "Girl," he said, holding his fretting horse still, and saw out of the tail of his eye that the next to last straggler of the little group had delayed, an old man with the cart who looked as if he wanted desperately to do something-and was not sure how much a moral act was worth.

"Girl, just a few questions." In a cultured accent this time, pure courtly language. "I won't delay you, I won't hurt you. Who commands in Lungan?"

"Lord Ghita," she stammered.

"Is he there, personally?"

A definitive nod. Fear in the eyes, but a re-estimation, too.Who are you? that look said, scared, but with perhaps the sudden notion that she was not talking to a mercenary.

"Who's attacking him?"

"Lord?"

"Who's attacking Lungan?"

A hesitation. The horse pulled at the bit, and he held it hard, waiting for his answer.

"They say the lords south."

"Who's leading them?" "They say lord Saukendar. They say there's demons. They say-"

"What, girl?"

"He's come with their help." A quick swallow, as if too many words had gotten out. Her mouth trembled and she clamped it hard, her face quite pale.

"Where's the Emperor right now, do you know?"

A desperate move of her head.No. She looked at him, at his hands, at his face again.

And the old man still lingered, at the edge of his vision.

"That old man yonder looks like he'd like to help you. Do you know him?"

A frantic glance. "No. No. I don't."

"I'd travel with him if I were you. He's worth something."

"Lord?"

But he let the horse go then, and it walked on, his waiting company closing around him at that pace, a long day, tired horses.

"Ghita's in Lungan," he said, "and they know I'm involved in the south. The rumors have gotten north."

"M'lord," the squad leader said. Which was about all the conversation he usually had of the men. But they were steady and none of them were slow-witted. Not one of them made a suggestion. They talked, when they rode close to each other or when they stopped for a rest, in quiet voices, sometimes with looks his way or Taizu's. Sometimes they looked a great deal worried. They did now.

Wondering what we're doing? Shoka thought. Wondering how we're going to get into Lungan and what we're going to do and what they're along for?

So am I, man. I'm working this out as I go. Or maybe I have an affinity for women with baskets.

There was a wall and a hedge for shelter in the last of the dusk, an old shrine, which the men thought lucky: they made sacrifice of a little rice, a little wine, and paid their respect to the G.o.ds and their ancestors with more fervency, a couple of them, than might be likely in foreigners.

Asking the G.o.ds for help, maybe. Or for the welfare of wives and parents they might not see again.

But no one was there to see: the refugees had thinned out to a very few after dusk, and no one stayed near them. No refugees and no sign of other units, which was the thing he had worried most about-running into some other squad, real mercenaries inbound or outbound from Lungan. None so far, and either they had hit the pace that might keep them isolated on the road, or inbound troops were getting very few now and no one was coming out again.

So it was a plain, decent supper, a camp with a little leisure to sit and catch breath instead of fallingstraightway to sleep. "We could gain a little time," Shoka had told them when they stopped, "but I know this road we're on and I know Lungan, G.o.ds know I know it. We can stop now, get some sleep and get there by noon tomorrow, and if there's any traffic coming in at all, that can help us. I'd just rather not answer close questions if we can avoid it; and if we have to, better we do it on a good sleep. Take a little wine. Whatever lets you rest. All right?"

"Yes, m'lord," the squad leader said. His name was Chun.

"I don't think I've ever served with better," Shoka said after a moment; and the men looked shocked for a moment, then, with Chun, made deep bows, murmuring, "my lord," one and all of them.

There was fervency in the look they gave him, in the dark, in the light of their little fire. He usually hated looks like that. But not at the moment. It came from both sides, he thought. That was the difference.

Chun. Eigi. Jian. Panji and Nui, cousins. Liang and Waichen, Yandai and Wengadi. They did not, thank G.o.ds, look to him for miracles, just sane orders. And they tried, they kept trying-maybe because there was a woman in their midst, even if she was a demon.

"Um," he said after a moment, clearing his throat, and got up and walked away, wis.h.i.+ng then he had not said anything. It was a trap. They had no reason to be impressed with him. He had no right to use them.

He forgot,forgot , dammit, the sense he had gotten to, to keep himself away from people, not to attract their attention, not-with the little virtue he had attained-to make them into instruments. Not to be used, himself; and not to use others. And not to make them love him.

Dammit.

Why can't I learn? What makes me do such things?

Taizu stood by him. Taizu touched his sleeve. "Master Shoka."

It stung. He took his arm away.

"Master Shoka." Again the touch at his arm, urging him toward the shadows of the hedge.

He drifted that way with her, into the dark, and stopped there, with no present inclination to talk, even to look at her. But he put his hand on hers where it touched his arm.

"Is everything all right?"

"Of course it's all right." He kept his voice down. I have no idea what I'm doing. I have no plan. I have no idea where our enemy is. I've led you all into a d.a.m.n mess I can't see out of. Of course things are fine.

But that would scare Taizu, and scared, she might make a mistake, and making a mistake, die for it.

There was no sanity anywhere.

She put her arm around his. She rested her head against his shoulder. That was all. And he thought about the bridge, sorting through images and memories, every crossing he had made of the Lungan bridge, every detail he could recall of its construction, whether Ghita would go so far as to dismantle it-at least the center. Or how many Imperial troops Ghita had at his disposal, and how far down the ranks he had replaced officers with his own men. . . .

"Can we sleep together?" she asked. He drew a ragged breath, thinking about the men back there, about people too close to him, people tearing him apart. Taizu hugged his arm.

Never since the willows. Not a single chance. They had been sleeping together, right enough-stinking of blood and dirt and horse and smoke, so exhausted they fell unconscious two breaths after they lay down and waked stiff with whatever position they had fallen into; and he had felt apt to the same kind of collapse tonight, until she said it and he reacted-to a woman m.u.f.fled to the nose in blood-caked bandages and sweaty armor.

He hugged her against him, same as hugging a rock. And said, fingering dust-rough, tangled hair and a bandaged cheek-"We can't unwrap this. We'd never get the dirt back right."

"Just let's do it."

"Scared?"

"No." Short and sharp. She s.h.i.+vered in his arms. Hard. "Dammit."

He knew that reaction. He held her a moment. He walked her along by the hedge, into the deeper shadow of a mulberry and the old wall. He set her down and they started undoing ties. "We can't undo all of it."

"That's all right," she said; and: "Oh, d.a.m.n," she said, when sleeves and armor got in the way.

"Simple tactical problem. Patience. Patience always wins, that's what my master used to tell me. ..."

There was no finesse in either of them: short, fast; and afterward, he felt his heart fluttering, the whisper of the leaves a thin, surreal sound over Taizu's hard breathing. He felt her touch on his cheek.

In case there was no more time. Because it warmed the body, occupied the mind, blotted everything out. And she was too smart to cozen with a.s.surances. Or to come to him with any. She was just there, and he could think again, if he were not too far gone with exhaustion.

He shut his eyes. He was home again. The leaves whispered overhead like rain on the cabin roof.

"Remember the winter," he murmured into her ear. "The monkey and the daughter."

"I remember." m.u.f.fled through the bandages and thick with sleep.

"I wish I could tell you I've got a plan. I haven't. We're going in to figure one out. That's what you're along for."

She said nothing for a while. Then: "We can get Ghita."

Straight and simple, putting it together the same way he had. Nine men whose lives were expendable-hands and backs and swords when they were needed. Themselves-minimal force, straight to the balance-point.

That was granting they got through the gates.

Chapter Nineteen

The gates at Lungan were the narrow spot, Shoka had figured all the way. In the long peace, towns had spilled past their gates if they had them at all; but Lungan with its bridge was the gateway to Pan'tei and to Cheng'di, the very heart of the Empire, and the old Emperor, acting as chief of engineers in his father's time, had ordered the gates refurbished and thickened, the walls heightened, built the walled market that was also the bridge garrison at need, built the gatehouse on the Anogi road in case it ever needed to be manned.

It was now. Absolutely.

They adjusted their pace and picked their company going in the narrow gate-a pig-seller with two animals done up in slings and a returning slops cart all in the same general area, and Shoka reined around the slops cart, hoping to clear the questions of the gate-guards.

But a guard shoved a spear in his horse's path and s.h.i.+ed him up. "Where?" the man asked. Fittha, taking them for Oghin, likely, and willing to give them grief.

Shoka had the courier chit. He stopped his little column in the gateway, creating a deliberate roadblock, with a flock of goats not far behind them. "Captain's business, coming up from Anogi."

The man examined the chit. d.a.m.ned if he could read it, Shoka thought. He took it over to his officer, as bleating goats began to leak around the nervous horses. The officer came back, and the company, on previous orders, backed and s.h.i.+fted in what could be restlessness on the horses' part, but contrived to block the gate. Goats bleated, dogs barked, and the slops cart was probably in it somewhere.

"Clear the gate!" the officer yelled. And a stream of something foreign.

"Aghi!" Shoka yelled back and pointed at the chit, maintaining his company right where it was.

"Pig!" the Fittha yelled at him. "Report to the camp, second on your left, straight on, move your a.s.s, pig!"

And shoved the chit at him.

Shoka took it and sent his horse off fast. His company followed.Stay to the background , he had warned Taizu.You're too much question as it is.

But she came up beside him as they clattered along the street and around the second corner, by a tea-shop with shattered screens and a crowd of customers that got hastily back to the walls and out of their way.

Used to dodging soldiers, apparently. A squad was coming from the other direction, and they went single-file for a moment.

Get in, he had listed the points for Taizu and all the others, find out whether soldiers come and go on the street, see if there's a way to sink into the city without reporting through Ghita's command or getting shut into that camp.

So when they got further down the street that led to the bridge and found soldiers no uncommon sightanywhere along the way, Shoka slowed the pace and finally took them around a corner, on a row of cheap restaurants. The air stank of cheap beer, overloaded sewers and the wind off the stockyards.

"Good as anywhere," Shoka said, and stopped and got down. Taizu dropped to her feet beside him, a spatter of something noxious, as the rest dismounted and gathered around. "Food and drink, someplace for the horses-" He looked up at the advertis.e.m.e.nt of lodgings and looked further up at a rickety stairs.

Not the most prosperous place in town. Officers would lodge in finer places. Common soldiers would set up in tents, off in the camp they were supposed to go to. But mercenaries being mercenaries, they came and they went, and officers counted on payday to get them on the rolls where they could be accounted for and a.s.signed: that had been the system ten years ago, not the official procedure, but the actual one.

And tent s.p.a.ce being limited, if some mercenary squads put up in hostels, that had been winked at, so long as the town magistrate sent no complaints to the higher-ups.

He hoped, as he led the way into the dingy restaurant, that that was the way Ghita's officers ran the army.

Trail-cooking was better than the garlicky, oily mess thePeony dished up. They picked at it, picked out the edible bits, ate the rice, drank the cheap wine and took a collective breath.

Three rooms, stables, meals for the lot of them. "The innkeeper's going to be d.a.m.n happy," Shoka said.

"He was scared when I asked for rooms. I said we were real quiet, I didn't let my company get drunk, and I pointed out with all the soldiers in town he might be glad to have us laying claim to the room down here, we were a real a.s.set-keep the place safe and all."

"What about the camp?" Taizu said.

"We'll take a walk about. I had a talk with the innkeeper-got a little sense where things are-being new in town. Ghita's here, all right, quartered in one of the big houses. The camp's where the line-troops stay, but there's a lot of billets about town, those that can afford it, mostly cavalrymen, a lot of damage-d.a.m.n loose discipline. I asked him if he ever got soldiers in here, he said not usually, it used to be a lot of workers from the slaughterhouses and the tannery down the street, they were used to the smell and a lot of the other teahouses didn't like the air about them-"

The men had never understood his levity, all this ride long. This time they seemed to, slight, shy humor, down-glancing.

Only Taizu-by the line between her brows-was not smiling. She ate, pulling the bandages with the fingers of one hand to get food into her mouth, drinking and soaking the filthy cloth while she did.