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 washing." 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 washing-pail, and took a clean change of breeches and a shirt 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 shirt 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 that to 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 shirt 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. Gods, 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.
Damn, no, she was a headstrong bitch. 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 damned 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 refreshing shower, gods 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... gods, he had no right to have a son, to leave him a legacy of enemies and assassins 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 companionship 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 gods 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.
Damn.
He shifted 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. Damn, 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 passed, 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.
He flinched from it, stared off into the darkening forest and nodded absently toward the indoors.
"Wash up."
"Tomorrow you'll teach me."
He looked at her, having achieved a cold distance from the moment, heard what she was saying, and reckoned he was a fool if he did not get her to the nuns in short order.
"If you want me to teach you, girl, you'll start the same as every apprentice; the way you've already started. You work. You cook and you clean; and you learn not to question. When you've gotten that right, then you start exercises. And when you've mastered that, then we'll talk about weapons. Until then, don't let me catch you laying hand to that sword or I'm free of all promises. Do you hear me?"
"Yes."
Perhaps the look was still in her eyes. He was staring elsewhere, listening to the tree-frogs and the wind. He sat there a long time, until he had gotten her voice out of his mind; and her eyes out of his thinking; and until he had put Chiyaden at distance again.
* * *
He came to bed after dark, found his own mat, undressed and lay down to think, conscious of another human's presence in the cabin that no one had ever entered but himself—thought, in the dark, of the risk that he was taking. All the things that he had feared of her were still possible, including the chance, more credible in the dark and at the edge of exhausted sleep, that she was a demon more than usually adept at disguise: the villagers down in Mon knew that in the dark a demon had more power, and that if a man were fool enough to have converse with a demon and to share food with it or to take any favor from it, then that demon gained power; and when it got enough then it would drop the pretenses and show itself in its true form, with skull necklaces and fanged jaws and staring eyes....
It was a fear a great deal easier to deal with than the more sensible one, that the girl was crazed enough someday to take offense and slip toadstools into his soup.
It was a lot easier to deal with than the fear that someone had sent her.
But he had learned long since that a man had to go to sleep on worries like that some nights, because the body and the mind could only go so far on half-sleep and one-eyed watching. One just shut one's eyes and trusted one might wake up if something seemed wrong: so far he had always done it.
He needed a dog, he thought sometimes. But one had never come along; and he had, in his reclusive way, asked not even that comfort from the village, and betrayed no worries.
Being a legend was a damned heavy burden, sometimes; but being human to people he relied on had always, since Chiyaden, seemed too great a risk.
* * *
He heard the girl stirring and opened an eye, but he had been aware of the daylight coming under the door and through the shutter cracks for some time now. He watched with slitted eyes as she got up, still fully dressed, and took the water bucket out the door. Industrious. He approved of that.
He had shown her where the latrine was. He gave her a little time, in consideration of her modesty; he thought about getting up and getting dressed while she was out of the cabin.
No, he thought. Apprentice she wanted to be, she wanted to be treated like a boy, then damned if he would inconvenience himself.
He got up, wincing—gods, the move he had made; and the flip and roll yesterday made themselves felt this morning with a vengeance, so that he ached all down his back, his shoulder, his bad leg. He took a stretch and swore—damned if he was going to hobble about and stagger in front of the girl. Damned if he was.
He wrapped himself in his top blanket, made his morning trip to the latrine and headed back to the rain-barrel to wash as she came up the hill from the woods and the spring, lugging a full bucket of drinking water. He watched her from the corner of the house and ducked back again for a quick rinse under the dripping-bucket that hung at the corner by the rain-barrel at the back of the cabin.
The cold water made his joints ache and set his teeth to chattering; he wrapped in the blanket and walked—limped, because the shivering made his bad leg uncertain—up onto the porch and back inside.
He shed his blanket then and dressed while she was boiling up a little breakfast tea. She did not look his way, more than a one-time glance and a flinch away from him. She worked with her back turned then—well enough. So she knew she was female.
He shaved, which he did not always; and she gave him tea—a novel and luxurious thing, he thought, to have a warm start on a summer morning. He sat on the porch and sipped his tea while she stirred about cleaning the cabin and rolling up the mats with a zeal for work he found amazing.
A man could get used to that.
But he remembered his resolve about the nuns, and his sound reason for it. When she was finished, and came out onto the porch to report herself ready for other tasks, he said:
"My horse wants watering. You'll find the bucket down by the fence yonder."
He walked down to the stable with her, handed her the bucket and whistled Jiro over to put a tie on his halter.
He fed Jiro himself. The horse had no disposition for waiting for his breakfast; but when Taizu came trudging back with the water he showed her where the grain was and how much to feed and how to latch the bin securely.
He showed her the shovel too, and where to put the manure til the sun could dry it for turning into the garden.
But that was no news to a country girl.
"You know you're planting the squash too close," she said, and with an earnest frown that made him think again that maybe the nuns were a mistake, "And the beans aren't much. You ought to let me pick the seed, master Saukendar. A gentleman wouldn't know the things I do."
But he said to himself that she would be gone before the moon came full.
* * *
She seduced even Jiro, after he calmed the horse down enough to get her near him, and he had showed her what to do with the curry comb. She found the spots he liked scratched; and in a little while Shoka, sitting on the rail, saw Jiro standing with his ears flat and his eyes half shut, while the girl worked away at the caked and dried remnant of the mud he had gotten into.
Shoka felt a little betrayed: he had thought Jiro might well put her right over the fence.
But pig-girl that she was, she had the hands, and Jiro even let her work with his forelock and his legs—not the tail: Jiro tucked it tight into his rump and she could get only the end-strands brushed, but his kick when she tried to get him to relax it was only perfunctory, a statement of territories. The girl did not even skip out of the way, she just stepped aside in time, and Shoka sat on the top rail with arms on knees and watched with the unhappy thought that Jiro was showing his age—getting a little gray around the muzzle, evidencing more than a little complacency in his retirement.
The girl ducked under Jiro's neck and Jiro did not react; but the girl kept her hand quite properly on Jiro's shoulder as she dodged through, too, the way he had told her to; and Jiro was sun-warmed and lazy.
The girl's help with the chores, Shoka thought, would give him time to do the repairs in the stable, but he was not doing that sitting here and watching, sun-lazy as the horse, be-spelled and letting the lazy daytime flow through his mind, thinking, when he thought at all, that it was a great deal easier just to sit.
* * *
He sat on the porch, watched her work and weed; and took the chance finally to repair the stitching on Jiro's bridle, work that agreed with aching muscles and the bruises he had.
And when, in late afternoon, she came up to the house all sweating and with her hair sticking around the edges of her face: "Wash," he said.
She bowed and went in and got the bucket.
"Clean clothes," he said. "And take the water bucket for filling: no need to make two trips."
She bowed again, on her way across the porch, went back and came out again with a change of clothes in the washing bucket, and the empty water bucket in the other hand.
And passed him and stopped at the foot of the steps. "Master Saukendar—shouldn't I take my lesson first?"
"Are you questioning my methods?"
"No, master Saukendar."
"You were panting when you walked up here. You haven't the wind to spare. When you do, there's a slope, up through the trees. Run to the top, run down again. Do it every evening before your bath."
"All right," she said; and set the buckets on the edge of the porch and started off at a jog.
He watched her go, watched her disappear into the trees; and knew himself how high that hill was and what a climb the top was.
He had an idea that she would stay that pace about a stone's throw, and then she would run and walk a little; and finally take the hill at a walk if she had even that strength left.
It would be quite a while, he thought, till she would be back; and he looked at the sky with a little concern: he had no wish to be climbing that hill himself even at a walk, stiff as he was, with the leg giving him trouble, searching for the girl lost in the woods...
No, not that one. She might not make it to the top, but he trusted her to find her way down again. Eventually.
He sat and drowsed on the porch through a gold and lavender sunset and into the edge of dark until he heard running steps coming down the slope; and saw her returning—soaked in sweat, and staggering up to the porch, a pale-faced ghost in the dusk.
But by then he was on his way to the door.
He did not say a thing to her. He walked into the cabin. He heard her drag the buckets off the porch; and he was hungry and annoyed at the prospect of a late supper.
But he hung up Jiro's newly-mended bridle on the peg by the door, lit the solitary lamp and stirred up the coals. He had tea on and the rice simmered with some of the squash from the garden before she came trudging in out of the dark with a bucket of wet clothes and another of drinking water.
"You're late," he said. "I expect supper at dusk."
"Yes, master Saukendar."
"Eat." He dipped up a bowlful and shoved it at her; and she took it with a: "Thank you, master Saukendar," and staggered out to the porch to sit down in the dark, where a breeze made it cooler.
He took his own supper out. "I want my tea," he said.
"Yes, master," she said; and got up after a second try and staggered after it and brought out his cup and hers.
"Eat," he said, when she sat there after, staring at the bowl in her hands and no seeming strength to lift it. "Eat, do we have food to waste?"
She dutifully ate, tiny bite by tiny bite, and did not finish what he gave her. "I'll have it for breakfast," she said.
He scowled at her, finished his, and said, "You can wash the pot before you go to bed."
She nodded, and got up and fetched the pot out of the cabin, staggered off the side of the porch and went around toward the back of the cabin where the rain-barrel stood.
He went inside, stripped down and was comfortable in his bed in the dark cabin by the time she brought the pot in.
* * *
She was moving stiffly in the morning, but she stirred out at dawn, while Shoka lay in his blankets and caught a little more rest. When she came back and while she was making breakfast he went out for his own bath at the rain-barrel, shaved at his leisure, and came back to the porch again to find a hot cup of tea.
No complaint from her, not one objection.
Poor fool girl, he thought, sitting there sipping tea and watching Jiro cropping grass in his pasture down by the stable.
Not that she had run the damned hill to the top, he did not believe that for a moment; but at the least she had made a brave try at it. The stable was cleaned; the garden was weeded. He watched her this morning as she gave him his breakfast and carefully sat down on the rim of the porch with her own.
Poor fool indeed. Sore in every muscle. He rubbed the soreness in his own bad leg, and remembered the wound that had lamed him—the melee on the road, Jiro all but pulled down and trying to get up again under him, a blade coming from an angle where the breeches were not double-sewn, a blow that took his health and destroyed his belief in his own invulnerability.
He remembered another thing, when he thought of that; and while the girl was around back washing up the dishes, he went inside and rummaged among the pots by the cookpit, til he found the small clay jar with the beeswax stopper. It held an herbal grease he used nowadays for cooking-burns and sunburn. But it had other virtues. It was thanks to that salve he had healed as well as he had.
"Here," he said, when she came in, and he offered her the little pot. "For the wound." He indicated the line of it on his own face. "Morning and evening. It lets the skin stretch."
She looked at him with a little bewilderment, unstopped the jar and smelled it.
"Do it," he said. So she took some on her fingers and smeared it on the side of her face; and further down her neck where the wound was drawing. She gave one little sigh and a second, and turned a look of gratitude toward him—for what relief he very much remembered.
"That wasn't four weeks ago," he said, indicating her face, because that small discrepancy worried him.
"No," she said. "On the road."
Tight and clipped. She had no evident desire to talk about it; and did not complicate matters with confidences and tears.
Thank the gods. Sobbing women had always affected him; fools who expected rescue from their folly had always infuriated him; and considering that she was only a girl and a person of no high upbringing, she was remarkable, he thought, in many ways quite remarkable in her level-headedness.
One hoped to the gods she was not pregnant, that was all.
He waved a hand at her when she started to pass the jar back.
"Keep it. I get it from the village. Use it all if you need it. Meanwhile Jiro wants currying, the garden wants watering—we missed the rain; and when you're through with that, I'll show you how to deal with the tack."
* * *
"Slower!" he shouted after her, as she started her evening run up among the trees: day upon day of such running—and her time grew shorter, her wind grew better; but that headlong attack on the hill told him well enough how far she was going—about a third of the way up, he reckoned, maybe half. She had no idea how to pace herself. "Slower! You have to hold that pace!"
She slowed. He watched her from the porch until she disappeared among the trees, then turned his attention back to his leatherwork, using a hammer, block and punch, making holes for lacings in what would be, by a few hours work, a good pair of shoes.
He had been saving that hide. But the girl could not go barefoot, to the nunnery, to the village, or on the mountain in the winter.
He had gotten her pattern, traced it on with a piece of charcoal, and cut it in the afternoon. Now came the stitching.
The soles were done by the time she showed up again, sweated and coughing, and leaning with her elbows on the porch.
"Off," he said. "Go. Wash. You're a sight."
She caught a breath and got up and looked at what he was doing. The work was not at a stage that looked like anything.
It was the last time he let her see the boots until he had finished them, on the day after. They had started out practical, and plain, but he had thought that a bit of fox-fur about the calf was easy enough to do; and that a little extra stitching on the front would make the top resist stretching; and the pattern might as well go down around the instep while he was about it.
He had never bothered making decoration for his own: they were boots and the oiled-leather kept his feet dry, which was all he asked; more, he had never had the time. Now he took the time, now that the garden was weeded, the stable was strawed, Jiro was well content, and the cabin had become marvelously orderly in the time the girl had been here.
So he set the finished boots on her sleeping mat the evening they were done, while she was still out running the hill; and waited patiently for her to find them when she went in to cook.
She was very quiet inside when she had gone in, for a long time, when there was usually the clatter of pots and the making of dinner. She came out finally with the boots in her arms and bowed formally. "Thank you, master Saukendar," she said, in a meeker, more anxious voice than he had ever heard her use.
"Do they fit?"
"Yes, master Saukendar."
"Well?"
"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 passing 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 damned 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 for man.
"There are bandits yonder by Hoishi," 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 get yourself 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. Damned quick to understand.
It was a mortal shame that a girl owned the godgiven 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 fecklessly guiding some bandit attack back to the cabin—
Well, by the gods 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.
Damn, 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 gods, 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?
Gods, no.
Her marriage prospects?
None.
"You did very well today."
She nodded.
Damn. One ploy down.
"You've hunted before."
A second nod.
"Gods, 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."
Damn, 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 you tell a story, for the gods' 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.
Gods, 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 damn 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 damn 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."
"I say you won't." He put his feet down on the ground beside the porch, got up and walked up the three steps, a little stiff: he always was when he had been sitting cross-legged. "You also said you'd do as you're told; and you're not running in the dark." He saw the fear in her eyes, and lowered his voice. "Do I worry you? You needn't worry. Because a man says he'd like to show you a little kindness, do you think it's cause to run away from him?"
The fear did not go away. She only looked at him as if she were caught between choices, each one terrible.
"Girl, I wasn't celibate before I came up here; and if you think you look like a boy, and if you think I can share a cabin with a woman after nine years on this mountain and not have certain impulses, you've got a damn sight more to learn about men."
"You took me for your student, master Saukendar. What kind of man would lay hands on his student?"
"You're a girl! You don't change that!"
"Your word didn't say anything about that. You agreed. That's all of it."
"You listen to me, girl. You don't change nature. What you ask isn't reasonable!"
"You swore it."
"I was humoring a lunatic!"
"But you swore it. And it's your honor, isn't it, if you break your word the gods will remember it. You swore you'd take me for a student, and that you wouldn't lay a hand on me. Are you going to break your oath?"
"Fool! You won't last it out. There was never any hope of that. High time you realized it and started thinking about how you're going to provide a living for yourself."
"All you have to do is teach me. And I got here, master Saukendar, I got here on my own and you say yourself I'm good in the woods. I set a trap you walked right into, didn't I? And I've done everything you've set me to do, so you don't have any cause to complain about me. You teach me the same way you would a boy, and I'll learn the same as any boy."
"The way you run the hill?"
"The way I run the hill."
"Oh, come, girl, don't lie to me. You've never finished that course."
"I do!"
"Damn, you've never even seen the top of the hill. You sit down when you get winded, you rest till you think it's time and you run down, don't tell me you're going all the way to the top."
"Then follow me."
That stung: he could not run that hill himself, not with his lame leg, and he was sure she knew that and that she was deliberately making the point. He folded his arms and gave her a hard look. "Girl, you're trying me."
"I'm not a cheat."
He gave her a long, long stare. "You maintain that you're going all the way to the top. That you're not waiting it out. You're not lying to me."
"No."
"A truth for a truth: I expected you not to get halfway. Now tell me that you didn't, and I'll call it even and nothing will change. Students have pulled tricks like that since the sun was spawned. But by the gods if you lie to me eye to eye and I catch you in it, all agreements are off—and I will catch you, understand me?"
"I'm not lying!"
"Last chance."
"I'm not lying. "
"Stay off the hill tonight. Get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow you'll need it. Or you'll tell me you've lied. Because if I find out you have—I'm free of anything I ever promised you. That's the end of it."
* * *
Jiro laid his ears back when the blanket and saddle went on; and he pricked them up again as Shoka led him out into the daylight where Taizu waited, sitting on the fence.
"All right," Shoka said, as Jiro worked the bit and rugged at the reins close-held in his fist. "I'll give you a head start. Down to the far end of the pasture and up again."
Taizu looked in that direction, the long slope of the shoulder where an old burn-off had left very few trees, part of the hill clear of woods had grown over with grass and weeds. He had hewed the saplings of the regrowth, burned and cut the stumps; used the trimmed trees for railing; and widened the pasturage year by year. Now it compassed all of a broad downward slope before it dropped away suddenly at the end and sides.
Taizu nodded and set off at a jog toward the railing of the pen, ducked under and set out at an easy pace across the pasture beyond.
He led Jiro over to the gate, opened it, led him through and swung up to the saddle as Jiro worked the bit and started to move.
"Faster!" he yelled at the girl.
She quickened her pace; and he let her get a good long start across the pasture before he gave Jiro his head.
Jiro snorted and fought for more rein. Shoka held him in, feeling Jiro's uneasiness, seeing the way Jiro's ears came up with the girl a distant figure framed between them.
Faster and faster, Jiro fighting to break loose of the rein, the gap between them and the girl less and less. Jiro's ears went back. The warhorse knew one purpose to a chase and he had no compunction at all in a fight.
"Faster!" Shoka yelled.
The girl did not look back. She put on a burst of speed and Jiro ducked his head, fighting to get the bit.
"He'll knock you flat!" Shoka yelled. "Keep ahead of him!"
She dodged around one of the few standing trees and Jiro needed no rein to veer around and keep after her. The horse kept fighting for the bit, trying all his tricks as the girl reached the fence, hit the top rail with her hands, and dived back the other way, halfway through her course.
The horse fought to turn and cut her off, and Shoka took him wide, complete turn about, while the girl lit out on the uphill slope of the meadow.
Damn, she was not winded yet.
He put Jiro to a faster pace; and the girl took a dodge through a series of three standing trees, in and out among a handful of small, sharp stumps he had not yet cleared.
"All right, girl," he muttered to himself; and loosened up on the reins a bit, letting Jiro take the weaving course at a faster pace.
But the girl suddenly sprinted all out for the stable fence higher up the hill.
Damn, she was going to make it.
He gave Jiro his heels then, a full-tilt course uphill, to cut in between the girl and the fence at the last moment.
She veered off as Jiro's shoulder all but brushed her and Jiro spun on his own, coming up on his hind legs as Shoka reined back and then let up again.
Jiro dived after the girl, and the girl ran all out, for the side fence, this time, then as Jiro closed that distance, cut across and tried to double back to the stable fence.
"No, you don't!" Shoka yelled at her, and pulled Jiro across to cut her off a second time, nettled and amazed that there was so much speed left in the girl.
She changed direction again for the side, a sudden sprint and a dart down the pasture, and he herded her back again; another sprint toward the uphill, and he cut that off.
The girl was drenched in sweat now; and reeled back as Jiro came close with his shoulder, reeled back and darted opposite to Jiro's right-hand cornering, shot straight for the fence; but Shoka put his heels to Jiro and Jiro stretched out in a run, cut between her and the fence, hard-breathing and snorting as he turned.
She dodged back almost under Jiro's rump: Jiro kicked and Shoka reined him aside, which Jiro took for a full-about signal and dived again to head her back.
She turned again, stumbled this time; and kept running, while he took Jiro about and spun him into a full turn to get Jiro under control before he dived after the girl again; and the girl dodged back toward the fence, stumbling now, while he reined circles around her.
He did not expect the final sprint that flung her for the rails. She grabbed the fence, tried to go over it and collapsed on her knees in the dust there, clinging to the rail. She bent helpless for a moment, coughing, gasping after breath, then shook back her sweaty hair and stared sidelong up at him, one eye in eclipse under the mop, the other glaring reproachfully up at him what time she was not coughing.
Daring him to say that she lied. And he knew now in his heart that she had not. She had run that damned mountain, beyond any doubt.
He hated to be caught in the wrong. And doubly hated, even considering that she was a fool and worse for everything she wanted, to have asked the impossible and pushed her as far as he had, twice over, to end up with her in the right and himself very conspicuously the villain in the exchange.
Damn. And he had put his word on the outcome.
"All right," he said finally, from the height of Jiro's back, "I'll teach you as far as you can go. But wherever you fail, you fail, and I'll hear no excuses."
She tried to straighten up. She hauled herself up against the railings and hung there.
"You'll cramp like hell if you don't cool down slowly," he said. "Walk up to the house, wrap up, I'll put some water on to boil."
She nodded, just that single move of her head. She climbed awkwardly through the fence and staggered off across the stable pen.
Damn, damn, and damn.
But he found himself seriously considering that she might make a student after all. She was fast enough and strong enough to learn far more than he had reckoned; and perhaps—one hoped—she would listen to good sense along the way.