The Paladin Read online

  Then, on the second, self-chastising thought that she was not the boy she looked to be, and that a girl alone had every reason to be wary of shut doors and a strange man at night, "Look here, if you don't want to go inside, I'll bring you a bowl and a cup of tea onto the porch. I'll give you that much hospitality. You can sleep out here and nothing will bother you. But you'll be out of here and down the road in the morning."

  "I'll take the food," she said.

  * * *

  He brought tea and rice out onto the porch, and set it down on the far side of the steps. He took his own supper to the other end and sat down as the girl came up by the steps and took the bowl and the chopsticks. She sat down and began to eat without seeming to stop for breath. He had cooked twice and half again his ordinary supper, and given her a heaping bowl, which he saw diminishing with amazing speed. They sat on the porch, cross-legged, in the deep twilight. He ate his own without attention to manners, throwing looks her direction. She sat like a lump in the tattered coat, her bare head bowed over her dinner—black, thick hair bobbed off like a farmer-lad's, hands so thin the sinews stood up and made shadows when the fingers moved, eyes twice dark with the shadows around them when she looked up at him over the rim of the bowl.

  "I could have cooked for us," she said with her mouth full. "See, you need some help up here. The rice is overcooked."

  "It hasn't killed your appetite."

  "Still could be better. Tomorrow I'll show you."

  "And I'm telling you there's no bargain. You sleep on this porch tonight. In the morning I'll take you down to the village. I'll arrange for someone to take you in."

  She shook her head; a slow, definite move.

  He scowled at her, thinking of his solitude and his peace of mind; and thinking of the nights. Sometimes he damned the loneliness; but he had his ways: he got up each morning and he tended his horse and his garden; or he hunted or he mended whatever time and the weather had broken, and took no thought for the world at all. He refused to regret the court or Chiyaden or the fine clothes or the praise of men who had done nothing, when the need came, but save themselves.

  Til this fool girl came talking about justice, disturbing his peace and, staring at him with her dark, mad eyes, making him think of other advantages of human company he had forsworn nine years ago, scrawny unwashed waif that she was. He was already promising her things he would never promise, to come down into the village and deal with the people; but she had walked a long and dangerous way on her foolish notion—a very long way from Hua province, and she had been appealingly clever about it. No eye would expect the girl bent under the peasant basket-pack, the oversized coat, the reed hat.

  The basket changed the balance center, changed the walk, made the bearer neuter and neutral. It had fooled even his eye until he saw her walk without it.

  Clever, he thought—if she had in fact thought at all about that part of it.

  But even a man with a tatty basket could draw bandits and trouble somewhere along that road. Four weeks. He could not reckon how she had gotten as far as she had.

  Except she was uncommonly lucky.

  Or she was someone's spy, and she had had abundant help getting this far.

  "I know livestock," she said. "Have you got pigs?"

  "No. I hunt."

  "I can take care of the horse. And I know lots of ways to cook rabbits."

  "That's fine. Your new master down in the village will like to know that. And they keep pigs."

  "I want you to teach me."

  "To do what?" he asked. "To be a fool? You couldn't even make it back again to Hua. You're lucky to have gotten this far."

  "I'll make it. And I'll get my revenge. Nobody will stop me."

  Hua province. Gitu. The names conjured images of the court and Ghita and his hangers-on. The old anger stirred in him, outrage for old insults; he shook it off like unwelcome rain and said around a mouthful of rice: "Carrying a sword. You're just damned lucky the magistrates didn't lay hands on you. Don't you know the law?"

  "That's why it's in the basket."

  "You'd lose your right hand, girl. Do you understand that?"

  "That's after they catch me," she said. "No one caught me. No one caught you. You rode right out, with the soldiers all hunting you."

  "I ran for my life, girl. That's the plain truth of it."

  "You killed the men they sent after you."

  "I was lucky. It was a bad day for them. A better one for me. But I'll limp for the rest of my life. I don't know any damn secrets. I'm not a teaching master. I just live up here in peace, thank you, and I don't need a cook and I don't need a pig-keeper."

  "You'll change your mind."

  "Listen to me, girl. I'm not going to change my mind on this, no more than on anything else in the last nine years. That's one of the privileges of living alone, you know. I do what I want; and what I want is my mountain, alone; and my quiet; and no damn chattering girl to complicate my life. You talk too much. You're going down into the village where there's someone to take care of you, get you a husband and a roof over your head."

  "No."

  "The road down there is the border of the Empire. If I have to go all the way to the village I'm violating the terms of my exile. But I'll take you as far as the bottom of the mountain. I'll take you right into the village."

  "No."

  "That's all I can do. Forget about Gitu. Forget about Hua province. You're safe. You're out of reach of Gitu and Ghita, and you'll do well to stay that way."

  "All you have to do is teach me. Then you don't have to worry about taking me anywhere, do you? I can go anywhere; and they won't catch me."

  "Fool," he said. And he thought, looking at her in the soft twilight, that there might have been a handsomeness about the girl before she was hurt: and more than likely reckoning what could happen to a girl on the roads and in a raid—hurt in more ways than that wound down her cheek....

  She was old not to be married. She was very young to be a widow. But that was entirely possible. That she had been raped was altogether likely, somewhere along her journey. He did not want to set off a flood of tears, but as he thought about it, the more it was likely that the girl, scarred and foreign and surely no virgin, would find no husband in the village, that she would spend her days as some family's nurse, someone's drudge or some farmer's untitled concubine. He thought of the damnable nuisance she posed to him; thought finally with a sense of comfortable moral sacrifice he had not felt in years, that there was a nunnery in Muigan, a few days north, inside Hoishi province, and there was a chance to do something charitable and maybe win a little virtue in the gods' record-keeping, if the gods in fact cared for anything lately. The little gold he had would have been a small thing to him, in his days in Chiyaden, but it was a great deal to border folk, in these uncertain times; and if he could give the girl dowry enough to buy her into Muigan nunnery, she would not be so ungracious as to forget her benefactor: she would make prayers for his well-being and his father's. That way he could do his father a service, discharging an obligation that had worried him, do himself one, if it mattered, and a girl with no prospects would find a decent life and a respectable old age, much more than she would ever find as a farm-wife in Hua province.

  There was risk in that plan. Certainly he thought he should not entrust her or the money to some boy from the village. He had to go to Muigan himself and conspicuously violate his exile to do it. But probably the Regent would not notice it, or the Regent would hear the whole of the business and, understanding it for what it was, be sensible enough to let the matter lie and not stir up a long-settled problem. It had been a long time since someone had presented him a problem that had a clean, easy solution. He felt quite magnanimous then, congratulated himself on his good sense and his exemplary behavior, and gestured at her with the chopsticks. "I'll tell you what I'll do. You stay here and rest a day or two, then I'll take you a way through the mountains to Muigan up in Hoishi. There's a nunnery there—"

 
"No."

  "Listen to me, little fool. I'll buy you in. I can do that much for you. You'll have a respectable dowry. What do you think of that?"

  "I don't want any nuns and prayers. They did me no good. I want Gitu's head. I want his—"

  "I'm offering you a respectable dowry. I'm offering you a safe place to live, with enough to eat, good clothes, security for your old age. Think about growing old. Think about living beyond this year, girl. Gitu's head! You're talking nonsense."

  "I don't want to be a nun."

  "Then take the money! Try to find a husband in the village. There's no way you can get back to Hua; you're lucky to have gotten this far alive."

  "I want Gitu dead."

  "You'll die, that's what's going to happen if you go back on that road."

  "Not if you teach me."

  He restrained his temper. He took a slow, slow sip of the cooling tea. "You want me to go. Is that it? You want me to go up to Hua and be a fool in your cause."

  "No."

  "Let me tell you something. Kill Gitu and there'll be another of his breed in his place before the seat cools. It's not one man. It's the whole damn court. It's the young fool on the throne. You think I wouldn't have stayed, if there'd been a chance to better things? There wasn't. That's why I'm here, on this mountain. Kill Gitu! You go to that nunnery, girl, and you spend a long life praying for your family: that's the most good you'll do them. I can't do anything, I have no intention of throwing my life away for a fool—you or the young Emperor. Listen. You're a brave girl. You've come a long way. I've no doubt you mean all of it. But I'd do you no favor by doing what you ask. If you were a boy, I'd say you're too small. But you're not a boy; and what you ask is out of the question. —Listen," he said, and held up a finger as she opened her mouth. "In the morning it'll be different. You sleep on it. You think about it. It's stupid to throw your life away. Nobody expects you to take on a man's job, and trying it, let me tell you, that makes you a fool. You don't have to die; and that's what it amounts to, because you haven't got a chance in hell of taking anyone with you. You take my offer, and go to Muigan. If you want to learn—the nuns can teach you."

  "No."

  "Dammit, you will. I'm being generous. You'd better recognize the fact."

  "No."

  He raked a hand through his trailing hair. "You're tired. You've been through an ordeal. Listen: this much I'll do. You can rest here as long as it takes you to come to your senses about this. I promise you, I won't lay a hand on you. You can sleep wherever you like. It's summer. The porch is pleasant enough, a damn sight more pleasant than the road. You don't have to do anything until you have your strength back. Then you'll know I'm right; and I'll take you to Muigan and make sure you're all right before I leave."

  "No."

  "You're deaf, girl! Your whole idea's preposterous. Enough about it. You're going." He put the tea-bowl into the empty rice-bowl and stood up, walked over and took hers, from which every grain had vanished.

  She stared at him flatly as she gave them to him.

  "I'll bring you out a mat and a blanket," he said. "You can have the porch to yourself. Or you can be sensible and come inside where it's a little warmer."

  She said not a thing.

  "The porch, then," he said; and shook his head as he walked inside.

  He set the bowls on the table, went over and rolled up the topmost of his two sleeping mats; and took his topmost blanket with it. "Girl," he said, walking out onto the porch.

  But she was gone, basket, bow, and all.

  He flung the mat and the blanket down.

  "Girl?"

  She might have gone aside to the woods for a moment, for a call of nature.

  But to have taken the basket with her—

  "Girl?"

  Damn.

  She might worry about his intentions. Gods knew she had likely had reason.

  She might have taken her basket of rags to the woods to make a bed for the night. Or gone to the stable. Either one was safe enough.

  But her behavior worried him, not for her, but because there was a great deal more than strange about her; and because of the deep twilight, considering which most girls would not choose the woods for safety, or go off to a strange, dark stable, if they were too afraid of a gentleman to sleep on his porch. Dammit, she had proposed living here as his student: and she was afraid to share the porch with him.

  He had an uneasiness himself now, about the girl, the hour, the peculiar look of her.

  He was reluctant to call out again and betray that worry. He was ashamed to go back in to the house again and take up his sword from the peg by the door; but he was not a fool, either, to go down to the stable in the dark without it.

  Jiro was down there, in the stable for the night, not loose in his pen where he could deal with an intruder. At least, Shoka thought, he would let the horse free, and the girl would be ill-advised to go into that pen or bother things in the stable after that.

  There was no commotion down at the stable. No one, he was sure, could have come near Jiro without him sounding the alarm. But he thought again of bandits; of the chance of fire, if the girl was crazed enough; and Jiro was the only living creature he cared about. The thought of the girl or any possible accomplice doing harm to the horse was unbearable.

  Damn, he thought, there was no chance the girl could come into the stable without noise. He was being a fool. The girl upset his evening and his sense of order in things and all of a sudden it seemed the whole world was unraveling, old instincts waking, old apprehensions coming back to haunt him.

  He reached the ramshackle stable, walked along beside the wall in the almost-dark, hearing Jiro's quiet, ordinary moving on the other side of the wall and taking reassurance in the sound.

  Then something hit the shed beside his head; and he dropped and rolled and scrambled, muscles acting while mind realized that what had dropped to the dust with him was a spent arrow with white, ragged fletchings and a forged bronze point.

  He reached the dark of the stable door, rolled aside on his shoulders and tumbled into the interior, kneeling on the straw. Jiro's soft, worried snort reassured him he was the first and the only disturbance in the dark inside; and he trusted absolutely what was at his back. It was outside, the forest-edge, the near-dark all about: that was what he looked to.

  "Girl!" he shouted out. "Damn you, your pallet's on the porch, the way I said; I did exactly what I said! Don't make me hurt you!"

  "I'll come in," the girl's voice came back, far away from among the trees, "when you swear on your honor you'll teach me."

  "Girl, I won't put up with this nonsense. You're asking to get hurt!"

  Silence. Long silence, from the woods. He shifted his position on the straw, favoring the leg an assassin's knife had lamed, rested his shoulders against the rough post of the door and gazed toward the woods in the deepening dark.

  He thought about fire again, the complete vulnerability of everything he owned up there in the cabin.

  And Jiro, who was a target even those wretched arrows would not miss if he were outside in the pen.

  At closer range—that ragged-feathered arrow could have killed.

  He swore to himself, and clenched his hands and thought that at least he could break the mud and moss out of the gaps in the sapling logs that made the stable, and get a view of the house from the back wall. He could make holes like that all around, and keep an eye to things in the clearing so far as a moonless night let him.

  The thought crossed his mind that the girl might indeed be working with the bandits; or she might be a demon under illusion.

  But a madwoman loose in the dark with a bow and a crazed notion of revenge was worry enough to keep a man from his sleep.

  Chapter Two

  Shoka changed position in the nest of straw he had piled up by the stable wall, rubbed the cramp in his leg—it had been one side or the other all night long, sleep by fits and snatches, and the damned straw prickles coming through the open we
ave of his shirt and breeches. The ground was stable-soil and stank no matter how clean he kept the place; it was a damp and damned uncomfortable bed to spend the night in.

  He had a bit of twine strung across the door-frame and tied to a bucket on the far side. He kept a watch out in various directions, not neglecting the far slope of the hill from the long bare slope of the pasture. He did not know how many he might be dealing with, or whether it was in truth only one mad girl; but he had not lived this long by taking matters lightly.

  Nine years on the mountain had taught him to let go his suspicions, to let a leaf fall without suspecting some hand had disturbed it, let a fish jump in the brook without his body tensing, prepared for all the things his father's teaching had set in him, mind and muscle. Go easy, he had told himself year after year, breathe the wind, let the leaves fall and the seasons turn and put the old life away.

  That was all the wisdom he had learned on the mountain, the simple art of sleeping sound at night with no traps rigged, the simple assumption it took to walk to the spring unarmed, to watch a fox's antics, to ride old Jiro bareback and doze on his back on the lower pasture, the both of them content in the sun and the summer and the smell of sun-warmed grass.

  Now he sat in the dark with his sword across his lap, with straw coming through his clothes and the damp making his forty-year old joints ache: more, every nerve in his body was on edge and his stomach was uneasy with the old anxiousness, his brain working on every detail of the land and every noise in the dark.

  Like old times.

  Like everything he had tried for years to bury.

  Damn the girl—who, by doing nothing, was doing everything right: others who had come against him, by doing something, had succeeded in nothing—and made themselves easy marks.

  He waited, and traded views on the house and the clearing, the woods and the pasture. Nothing stirred and Jiro gave no alarms, only shifted quietly at his moves about the stable.

  He most expected trouble in the hour just before dawn, and rubbed his eyes and kept scanning the shadows on all sides of the stable for small movements. What chilled his blood was the thought, with him through the night, that all the fool girl had to do, if she was intent on murder, was to fire the woods itself and take out on the trail. If she did that and did it the smart way, from several points about the clearing, it would be a narrow thing to get himself and Jiro down the root-tangled slot of a trail; if she did that, enemies would know the only road down and archers could wait in ambush.