The Paladin Part 5

"Thank you, master Saukendar." She stroked the fox-fur.

Which was all the thanks he got, when he had hoped for maybe a little more, but it seemed she thought the gift was extravagant. "Tomorrow," he said, "I'll show you the mountain."

She looked at him cautiously, with a dawning excitement in her eyes.

"I might do a little hunting," he said.

Taking her hunting with him was one way that he thought of not to leave her unwatched with Jiro and his belongings in the cabin: there were still times when he remembered, just as he was about to fall asleep of nights, that he knew nothing for certain about her, and that she might simply be a patient enemy, waiting her chance to do him harm.

He disbelieved that by broad daylight; but he did not disbelieve it enough to leave her in possession of the cabin for hours on end. In that consideration it seemed only prudent to find out what she did know about stalking-game or other quarry-and what kind of traps she might think of.

She would have taken her bow when he took up his from beside the door. "No," he said. "Not unless you need a walking-staff."

She gave him an offended look.

But she left the wretched bow and followed him into the woods.

He had piled up brush here and there about the mountain, and that was usually good for a rabbit now and again, just a matter of walking quietly and never touching the shelter itself, but setting snares here and there.

Taizu moved well enough keeping up with him, and she watched where she was putting her feet. She made little sound in the brush, evading the branches that might whisper against a pa.s.sing arm or leg.

Not a farm-girl's skills, he thought.Not a farm-girl's way of moving.

He recollected the trap she had set for him, a d.a.m.ned skillfully set one.

That was another thing no farm-girl would know. Like we set for the soldiers, she had said.

He stopped finally to let the woods settle, moved up to a rocky slope and sat down; and in that idle time he thought to teach her a few simple hand-signs such as his father had taught him.

She repeated them for him, quickly, clearly, signs for actions and directions, and for the various animals that came and went on the hill.

Then he taught her the one forman .

"There are bandits yonder by Hois.h.i.+," he whispered. "And now and again a boy from the village comes up here with supplies. You've seen the village. The bandits-are different. I trust you'll know."

He caught a momentary expression as she nodded-something angry and hard and patient.

"If you see anyone that doesn't look like a villager, you don't lead them to the cabin; you don't getyourself caught; and you warn me as fast as you can. Understood?"

Again that look of intense concentration.

"Repeat the signs," he said. It was what his father had done to him, making him recall after he had stopped expecting it.

She gave them back to him and named them aloud, one by one, without a mistake.

Quick. d.a.m.ned quick to understand.

It was a mortal shame that a girl owned the G.o.dgiven gifts that would make an exceptional student of arms.

But it was of no use at all to a nun, or to a farmer's servant-to know how to hunt. And he imagined how amused the court in Cheng'di would be to see him crouched here in serious converse with a pig-keeper or teaching a woman hunter-signs; and he imagined much more what a joke they would make of it if he took to teaching her more martial skills than that, or taking her for a partner in his hunting.

But if it kept her content, if in the process of fulfilling his promise to her he taught her to protect herself so he needed not worry so much about her becoming a hostage or f.e.c.klessly guiding some bandit attack back to the cabin- Well, by the G.o.ds above and below, he did not have court gossip to contend with any longer, it was not Chiyaden he lived in now, and if Saukendar took a girl to warm his bed and if it amused him to teach his girl to hunt with him and to do men's work-then that was his concern and none of theirs.

Let her immediate anger burn itself away in hard work; and let her grow fond of the place and of him.

Then natural womanly impulses would take over, she would give up her notions of revenge and settle into the turning of the seasons and the planting and the hunting.

d.a.m.n, it was easy to get used to her.

She could be some use on the mountain;she had a wit and spirit he had not imagined in any woman outside the court. She...

... was the first human being who had stirred anything in him in years, and he had no inclination to see her go back down a road she had survived as much by luck as cleverness-this time armed with a fatal over-confidence. Fools always perturbed him. Young fools he personally could forgive, and principled young fools he could even admire, remembering his youth and his young notions of justice....

But the world at large gave them no special grace, the G.o.ds, if they existed, made no exceptions for good motives; and young fools never understood that.

They came back again toward evening with a rabbit their snares had taken: summer was no time to take the larger game, in the months that meat spoiled quickly. Deer came across their trail and they let them go; it was past the season for berries, but there were wild greens to pick, and they came back cheerful with the makings of a fine supper.

"You see to the rabbit," Shoka said, putting his bow away. "I'll see to Jiro this evening." Which he did, taking more time than he was wont to do on days when he hunted-but supper was arranging itself without his doing a thing, and he felt himself wonderfully at ease in his life.

He came up the hill to the smell of cooking, he sat down on the porch in the twilight as he had gotten very accustomed to doing, and had his tea and a bowl of savory rice and greens and rabbit.

And had the girl's not unpleasant company, as she talked about the woods and asked him what sort of mushrooms grew there and compared them to the mushrooms in Hua province. She named plants and asked if they grew on his mountain and he confessed he did not know all the answers.

"It was not part of my study," he said, "in Cheng'di or in Yiungei. I know the common names, and the mushrooms, and the ones to avoid."

She made a sound past a mouthful of rice. "I know. I can do that for you too."

Meaning that he should not send her to the nuns or to the village. So she was still eager to stay, even considering the work he heaped on her- "It's good," he said, tapping the bowl. "Very good. You're an excellent cook."

Her face darkened, as if that had made her remember something or someone; and he thought desperately, searching for something to draw her away from that: Ask her what? About her family?

G.o.ds, no.

Her marriage prospects?

None.

"You did very well today."

She nodded.

d.a.m.n. One ploy down.

"You've hunted before."

A second nod.

"G.o.ds, girl. Talk."

She stared at him, puzzled and disturbed.

"What," he asked her, "did you hunt back in Hua?"

"Rabbits. Mushrooms."

"Elusive and treacherous things. Who taught you to stalk?" "My brothers." Her jaw knotted. "They're dead now."

d.a.m.n, again. There was no way to talk to her without touching something dark. Or maybe there was nothing but that, inside her, around her. He felt the coming night a little colder.

"So far," he said, between bites, "I haven't seen any reason to take you to the nuns. So far, I don't intend to."

"You said you'd show me how to make a bow."

"I don't recall I said that."

She stared at him, slowly chewing.

"For one thing, you don't haggle it. If there was any long grain in that piece of wood you ruined it. What did you use, an axe?"

She nodded.

"Where is it?"

"Lost it."

"Where?"

"Threw it at this man."

"Who?"

"On the road."

"I didn't ask where, I asked who."

"Man came up on me in the woods."

Piece by piece. "A man could get tired talking to you. Can't youtell a story, for the G.o.ds' sake?"

"You want me to say?"

"Entertain me."

"It was muddy and I got wet: I was going to make a place to sleep; but this man came up across the stream, and I couldn't talk, he might know I was a girl; so I grabbed up my stuff and I was going to leave, but he told me stay. So I said keep away. So he came across the stream and I flung the axe at him and I ran. I was afraid to go back for it. I figured he could be behind me carrying it."

He nodded. "Why not the bow?"

"It was wet. It was raining." He sighed, rested his chin on his hand, his empty bowl in his lap, and looked at her, while she looked at him as if he had totally bewildered her.

G.o.ds, what is this girl?

"He was going to come at me," she protested.

"I don't doubt."

She looked at him with misgivings then, as if confusions had piled up on her; she ducked her head and hunted a last few grains of rice on the side of her bowl.

"Girl," he said, "I don't know what happened back in Hua, but bandits have rarely bothered this place.

You don't have to be afraid."

"I'm not afraid."

"You can't right every d.a.m.n wrong in the world, even when it's your own wrong. Take that from me.

People have come to me, asking me to come settle some grievance or another. All the stories are sad.

But you know I can't help them? That's the greatest wisdom I've learned up here on this d.a.m.n mountain.

Manage your own troubles. Live peacefully. The sunrise and the sunset are more important than the rise and fall of Emperors. That's my whole philosophy. I give it to you."

She frowned and stared at her empty bowl.

"You understand me?" he asked her. He was not sure, sometimes, with her accent, that she did understand the language he spoke, or the words he used. He tried to keep things simple.

"I hear you."

"I didn't ask if you heard me, I asked if you understood."

"Teach me to make a proper bow. Teach me the sword. That's what I want."

"Girl, there are a lot of things I can teach you...."

She shot him a wary, worried look under one brow, the kind of warning the man might have gotten before she flung the axe.

"Among them," he continued doggedly, "the gentleness a man ought to use with a woman."

She scrambled up to her feet, disappeared inside and came out with the bucket they used for drinking water, to set it on the porch the way she always did before her evening run up the hill.

"You can leave that off," he said.

"No," she said.

"I said to leave it off. Dammit, it's dark under the trees. You've hiked all through the woods; you can run tomorrow." "I said I would run it."