The Paladin Part 10

"No, master Saukendar." Softly, precisely, neither blade nor eyes moving. "But you won't let me go on doing that. What do I do now?"

"You're very forward." As softly, his own eyes on hers. But she was absolutely correct. "The next move is like the first. Practice the first, again. Be my reflection till I tell you otherwise."

One, two, and three. One, two, and three.

"The next," she said.

"Again," he said. And: "Impatience is a flaw," he murmured as they stopped. "There's always just enough time when you do something right, no more, no less. Your sword has no blade. It has only your intention. When that goes astray you have no weapon. Continue."

One, two, and three. As master Yenan had taught him.

While the leaves fell and the garden turned to brown in the first frost.

"Up!" Shoka said, and sent the blade sweeping under Taizu's feet, spun it around in a turn that brought it for her back, lifted it to strike as she brought the correct counter back and held, reaching the end of the pattern.

"Now what will be the next move?" he asked her.

"You'll go low-line," she said.

"I might not."

"Harder to go up from that line."

"That's why I might do it. You might not expect."

"Dangerous, though."

"I'm the best. What will I do?"

"Some third thing. Not something awkward." He was amused, pleased, but he did not laugh. He did not go off his guard with her. Those were not the rules in the faster game.

"What will it be?"

"You could turn back again and make me follow."

"What's the advantage?"

"Following takes attention. It ends when the opponent intends. Intention is the blade."

The old catechism, whispered on a frosting breath, under a gray autumn sky.

"Again," he said, and took the pattern from the beginning.

They were down to shirts and breeches. Sweat shone on her face and throat despite the cold; the white shirt clung and flared as she turned and struck and turned. He let himself go with the sheer beauty of the moment, the intoxication of movement, his and hers.

That was what she gave back to him. Teaching her, he taught himself. It pleased her. In time, he told himself,he would please her.

And there would be no more foolishness.

He pushed her toward the old tree that shaded the cabin. She refused that and tried to gain ground, away from the tree roots. "Ha," he said, and cleared back, giving her room.

Not pushing her, not forcing the novice into dangerous situations, not making a joke of her, for her pride's sake. He was honorable with her.

But she pressed it. Getting him to back away, she wanted to push him, and in an eye-blink decision he let her, for her sake, gave her the ground she wanted, backed.

She changed pattern on his second step.

He made the instinctive move and pulled it with a sudden lurch of the heart, saw her whirl and turn.

"Hold!" he shouted.

She stopped. He saw the blood on her sleeve. His heart was pounding in his chest. She seemed only confused.

"You're hit, girl."

She looked down at her body while the blood ran down the hand that held her sword, still not finding it, though blood spattered in the dust. He took her arm and found the cut while she craned her head over to try to see. Blood soaked the shirt. He grabbed it by the tail and whipped it up over her head as she protested and hugged it to her chest for modesty's sake.

It was on the back of her arm, a finger long, not, thank the G.o.ds, deep. "I didn't even feel it."

"Fool." He shook her by that arm. "Don'ttry a trick like that on me again."

"I'm sorry, master Saukendar."

"It's shallow. It could have ruined you.Hear me? "

"Yes, master Saukendar."

He let her go and went and retrieved his sword-sheath, while she pulled her shirt back on and did the same, off the porch.

"Come inside," he said then. "d.a.m.n, that's a good shirt."

"I'm sorry."

He brought her inside, pulled the shirt up again and salved the arm for her and bandaged it. By then, he knew by experience, she was beginning to feel the sting in full.

"Does it hurt?"

"Yes," she said.

His heartbeat had settled and he was quite calm. He jerked her close to him by the cloth of the shirt she was holding to cover herself.

"It could have been your arm, you d.a.m.ned fool. Don'tever push me."

"Yes, master Saukendar."

"Go wash up. And wash the shirt. You're a mess."

She went. He frowned at her back and decided there was no damage done. But when he was washing up at the back of the cabin, at the rain-barrel, the moment came back to him again, that half-a-blink time he had had to react and realize he had reacted with an attack she did not know how to defend, one that would have, at fall force, taken her arm off. He kept seeing it, feeling sick at his stomach.

He kept seeing it again and again: he looked at her from time to time as they sat inside at supper-not the porch, in the chill of this evening's wind-because the sight of her whole and hale was a cure for what he kept seeing in his mind: Taizu b.l.o.o.d.y on the ground, crippled even if he had been pulling his blows- Or if he had not- She looked at him between mouthfuls of rice, worried-looking, knowing, he was sure, that he was thinking about her, that he might have something to say about the situation; perhaps thinking that she had made some unforgivable mistake, which was not the case. It was a student's mistake. It was his-that he had stopped expecting her to do fool things like that. Heenjoyed teaching her, he looked forward to the sessions, he took pleasure in the things he had not been able to do in years, and it brought back his boyhood to him-not the deadly years, not the duels, not the blood and the pain, but the sheer pleasure of skill and excellence. His father's voice. Master Yenan's. The gray dusty courtyard at Cheng'di, with the red-painted dragons on the gates. Faces of friends, most of whom were dead.

Taizu, in motion in the sunlight-Taizu, at guard, every line of her beautiful, from the slender turn of ankle to the set of her hips to the sheen of her hair in the light- He had given her that grace. He could hardly remember the pig-girl. And the scar was part of Taizu. It had a certain symmetry: itbelonged to her, it was part of the face and the person that he had come to depend on being there, day and night- Kill Ghita.

G.o.ds. Leave the mountain, trek across the country, throw her life away- Like h.e.l.l she would.

Like h.e.l.l he would let her.

"I'm sorry," she said finally, in a meal that was all silence.

He shot her a scowling look.

"I know what I did," she said.

Ask her, she meant.

Then they would talk about it, then it would be all right and everything would go back to what it had been.

Until something worse happened.

"What did you do?"

"I thought I'd be clever. I thought I'd find out if what I thought was right, if why you learn in patterns is because they're in balance with where your feet are, and if you let me back you up then you were going to let me follow right into what you wanted-so I thought I could stop that by changing."

He stared at her, frowning, in long silence, following every bit of it. Then he said: "You were thinking."

"I-" She pressed her lips together and was very still for a moment, then nodded. "I'm sorry, master Saukendar."

He rested his arm on his knee, his chin on his arm, and stared at her. "Listen to me, girl. You wanted me to teach you. I have, so far. You're extraordinarily good, for a woman. Probably better in the forms than most that come out of the schools in Cheng'di. But that won't save your life, you understand me? I gave you a promise because I didn't want you wandering off and getting yourself caught by the bandits or starving on the road. Look at you now. You're a d.a.m.ned pretty girl. Have I done badly for you?" Her lips were a pale line in the lamplight. "No," escaped them, hardly a move at all, and her nostrils flared, her eyes moved in panic like a trapped rabbit's.

"Scared to death I'll make a grab at you. I haven't. Not that it's been easy, understand. But I've kept my bargain, haven't I?"

A nod of her head, after the same fashion.

"This isn't Chiyaden. A woman who lives up here-had d.a.m.ned well better know how to hunt; how to use a bow; hadbetter be strong enough to swing an axe and run a hill. The ladies in the court learn the sword and the staff. There's nothing wrong in that. A woman ought to be able to take care of herself-"

-it wouldn't have helped Meiya.

-If I had been there- -If I had seen it coming- "-and I'd gotten lazy in my retirement. Ienjoy the exercise. And if I want to teach a woman more than a lady usually learns, that's my business. But when I teach her, I have to teach her the other things too, like the good sense to know her limits."

"You promised-"

"You listen to me. If there's a mistake, it's mine, in hoping you'd have the sense to quit. I've treated you like a woman. If you think you backed me up-"

"I knew I didn't."

"d.a.m.ned right. I should have pushed you right into the tree. That's what I mean. Maybe you're good enough to take a peasant or two. Maybe you could carve up a bandit. Most of them are rotten swordsmen. A lord's bodyguard is a different matter: every one of them a man twice your weight, a good span on your longest reach,maybe not as agile, but don't count on it-a man who spends at least an hour a day in the exercise court isn't a light matter for anyone, young miss, and even if you get one of them on his bad day, his three friends will take strong offense. Give me your hand. Give it to me!"

She gnawed at her lip and carefully put her small hand in his.

"Now push my hand to the floor."

She tried. She made him resist harder than he had expected, but he held, even when she threw her shoulder into it unexpectedly.

She sat back frowning.

"Do you want to try to holdme off?"

"You said don't engage."

"Sometimes you have no choice. Sometimes there are five and six of them and you haven't got a d.a.m.n choice. Sometimes they come in numbers larger than that, and sometimes there's no room to back up,you've got to take the room. I've taught you the moves a woman can do. But there are some you can't."

"Try me."

"What you want is impossible, girl. A man doesn't have to be better than you to beat you. He just has to be stronger and half as good-and that means some d.a.m.n door guard can lop your head off. That means some ox of a line soldier can bash a cheap sword right through your guard and if he doesn't get you on that one his partner will, from the back. That's the way it is in the world. You're not strong enough. You can't do everything with the blade and you can't evade everything that comes at you."

"All I have to be is good enough for one."

"You're out of your senses. You won't get that far, you'll die in a d.a.m.n ditch, for nothing.If you're lucky."

"I'm not afraid."

"You're a fool, then! Or a liar."

"You swore you'd teach me. If you haven't been teaching me right, you're breaking your word." Her eyes glittered with unshed tears. "And you'd be a liar, master Saukendar."

"d.a.m.nyou."

Her chin trembled. And she stared at him in defiance.

"Listen to me, girl. Listen. If I hit you all-out, as can happen, I'll break your bones. Right across the shoulder. First honest match, snap, there goes the arm. Is that what you want?"

"If you teach me so you can hit me, that's the way it is, isn't it? You want me to get killed."

"You d.a.m.ned little fool, I'm telling you it happens."

"You gave your word."

"I told you how that happened. Listen to me. You're good. You're very good. But you can't do the things you want. You can't change nature. Forget this crazy notion of yours. You've got a roof over your head. You've got a warm bed. You can stay with me as long as you like." He took a deep breath and took the chance, out loud, the way he had been thinking it-h.e.l.l with his heritage, the things they would say in Cheng'di. h.e.l.l with the look his father would give him, if his father were alive to see it; but his father, thank the G.o.ds, had not seen a good lot else that had happened, either. "As my wife, or as close to that as matters for anyone. It's not a bad life here. Is it?"

"No," she said sharply, scowling.

"No, what? What are you going to do else? March on Gitu's castle? Be a d.a.m.ned fool? They'll cut you up for dog meat."

"You swore an oath."