The Paladin Part 13

"Long winter?" he taunted her.

"I'll try." She lifted the sword again.

He lifted his and began the slow dance. "Use the force of your fall. If you fall, don't waste yourself fighting it. Fall. Curl up onto the right shoulder. Come up fast onto the right knee."

She took the fall. She came most of the way up and cut at him.

He stepped back, the knee caught, but he cleared the reach of her sword.

"You missed."

As she scrambled up.

She went down again. And lay there panting under the weight of the body armor.

"That's enough," he said.

"I can do it."

"That'senough , I said." He walked over and picked up his sword-sheath, sheathed the steel and picked up the cane. "Go take your bath."

It was a quiet supper, a deathly quiet supper.

And he wanted like h.e.l.l to put a compress on his aching leg, but he had no wish to let her know that move cost him anything. So he drank a bit, measuring the amount of the wine left against the time till the villager came back. He went to bed without a word, and worked to find a position in which the leg did not ache.

It was worth it, if it put a healthy fear into the little fool.

Let her go on trying it. Let her bruise her backside and strain her gut and her knees.

He coulddo it with the armor, still. If the knee held.

d.a.m.ned if he wanted to demonstrate the fact.

* * *"On your guard," he said.

Her sword came up. He kept the exercises slow, balance and precision. The wind had been warmer today, until evening. The sky above the mountain was gray and pregnant with rain. There was no twilight, only murk, and an occasional spattering of rain onto the well-trampled dirt.

She kept hurrying the patterns. He resisted. The knee ached. It always would when the weather turned like this. He might have known it was more than strain. And he had no wish to rehea.r.s.e the pattern from yesterday.

"No," he said. "Patience. Patience."

She nodded. She kept the pace he set for at least three pa.s.ses; and then he took it faster. And faster.

Pattern and pattern and pattern and variation.

She threw herself suddenly into a fall then, and came up with a different line.

"Dammit!" He skipped back and swung the sword in temper and checked it.

As she did, her sword arm back, out of line, shock on her face.

He felt the sting of a cut on his leg, across the side of the thigh.

"Dammit!" he yelled at her as she got up. He looked at the wound: one had better, when one used the long-swords. One could be missing a limb and not feel it-yet.

Shallow, thank the G.o.ds.

"I'm sorry."

"So you drew blood. Congratulations. I'd have cut your head off. Hear me?"

She said nothing.

"You don't believe me, girl?"

"I believe you," she echoed back faintly.

He fingered the cut, which was running blood. And glared at her. d.a.m.ned if she believed it. d.a.m.ned if she did.

He walked over and picked up his sword sheath.

"I'll get something for it," she said.

"It's nothing."

"It's bleeding...."

"Let it be, dammit." He rammed the sword home with shaking hands and gave her a direct look. Rainwas spattering about them again, dark pocks on the dirt. "I gave you an order. You defied me. Now you're d.a.m.ned proud of yourself. Pulled a surprise. Now you think you're ready for your enemies."

"I didn't mean to."

"You're a d.a.m.ned arrogant little b.i.t.c.h, girl. I don't cry foul. I still have my leg under me. Better a.s.sa.s.sins have tried. I've pulled everything I've ever done with you. I pulled it then, which is why you still have your head , girl, and why I'm the one bleeding. It takes something to think through what I know and what you don't, and to keep on pulling back. I can see I was wrong. Ienjoyed teaching you. I told you: you're good for a woman. But the firstman you go up against is going to take your head off. I told you that from the start. You didn't want to listen. And I made a mistake. I made a grievous mistake when I thought that you'd come to your senses. I made another when I paced the teaching to what you could do. Now you think you're d.a.m.ned good. Now you think you're a match for men who've studied the sword for all their adult lives. Well, you're not. You go out of here the way you are and you're dead, for nothing, dead, the first time you try yourself against a common bandit."

"That's not what you said."

"I'm telling youquit , girl. I'm telling you use good sense and give up this whole crazed idea of yours.

There's nothing to be gained back there. Kill the whole d.a.m.ned lot of them and there's more maggots to take their place. There's nothing you can do. You'll only come to a bad end and an early one and to no good whatsoever."

"You gave your word."

"I gave my word. I also put a condition on it. When you'vefailed , girl, you've failed, and all the bargains are done."

"I haven't failed."

He drew a deep breath, looking at her, looking at his own creation staring back at him.

"Girl," he said, and drew the sword from the sheath again, "I wasn't fighting. I was teaching. You're about to learn the difference. On your guard."

She shook her head. "No."

"On your guard, dammit!"

"I can't hit you! You haven't got any armor!"

"You think that'll protect you. h.e.l.l if it will, girl.h.e.l.l if it will, from a proper strike. And I don't need it against a beginner."

She threw the sword away.

"Are you quitting?" he asked her. "Is the bargain off?"

"No."

He sheathed the sword and picked up the cane. "I'll give you one more advantage. Pick up the sword,or you've quit. Hear me?"

She bent and gathered it up again. The rain-spatter became a sudden downpour.

He came on guard. She did.

He let her worry; and let her settle. He gave her that grace, while the rain turned the ground treacherous.

Her face was waxen-pale, her lips a set line.

"All right," he said, starting a slow movement.

"I can't hit you."

"You can try. You want to trade weapons?"

"No."

"So you know, girl. Just so you know. You want to get your own cane? You can. I'll let you."

She broke her guard and started to turn.

He attacked. She evaded him with a wild, off-balance spin and recovered her guard, wild-eyed and indignant.

"You believe your enemy?" he asked her. "That's d.a.m.n foolish."

He attacked again, again, again, and brought the cane through her guard, clipped her leg, clipped her arm and evaded a desperate return attack, spun under and brought the cane around hard into her side.

She fell. She rolled half-up again and he hit her again, two-handed.

The sword left her hand.

He hit her again. And a fourth time. She made a try after the sword-hilt and he knocked it from her hand when she brought it up. She rolled after it and he let her get most of the way up before he knocked her flying, skidding facedown in the mud.

She did not move then. He stood there with his leg shooting fire from knee to spine and his heart hammering with apprehension until she stirred, moved her feet and got her arms under her.

"This is what you could look for," he said. "You'd be dead. No excuses. No allowances. The world won't pity you. d.a.m.ned if I'll let you walk out of here thinking you can take a man in a fight. You're not strong enough. You never can be. That's the end of it."

He threw the cane down. He walked past her in the rain, left her there to cry it out and come to terms with matters on her own, walked up onto the porch and inside, feeling the ache in the leg, finding, as he had climbed the steps, that his whole boot was soaked with blood; finding as he walked inside and untied his breeches to bandage his leg, that he was shaking.

The girl was probably going to heave up her guts between crying and cursing him. But he had not broken any bones. He had hit her nowhere that could cripple her. He knew that he had not. And the kind ofthinking she had to do took time. Alone.

So he got down the pot of ointment and bandaged his leg and started the fire up, figuring she was going to need the rags when she came in.

Thunder cracked. Rain hit the roof in a gust.

She'll freeze out there.

He limped to the door and opened it.

She was gone from where she had lain. She was out there in the rain, battering away at the tree with great clumsy strokes, left and right, thump-thump. Thump. Staggering as she swung.

d.a.m.n.

"Taizu!"

He was not sure she heard in the rain, in her state of mind. He swore and went out onto the porch.

"Taizu!"

Thump-thump. Thump.

"Dammit,Taizu! "

He went out after her, in the sheeting rain, down the steps and across the yard. "Taizu, for the G.o.ds'-"

She turned about, cane sword in both hands. He stopped, seeing the anger and the shame in her; and the threat of violence.

"I could take you," he said, "even bare-handed. You'll never have the strength. It was a fool's choice. Do I have to prove that?"

She threw down the cane sword, there in the puddles and the mud, and with her hands and her teeth began to strip off the bindings of the armor as she stood, drowned in the rain. He did not help her. He only stood and watched as she flung it down in the mud. She looked to be crying, but the rain washed it away. She treated his armor like that. But he said nothing, just stood.

She took off the padding from her arms, the rain plastering her shirt against her, streaming down her face as she continued stripping the padding, down to her feet. Then he understood the move, the s.n.a.t.c.h after the cane sword,"Without the d.a.m.n armor," she screamed at him, and he dodged back, to the side, back again, but she gave him no room, no second to regroup.

"Dammit!" he yelled, remembered his own sword lying in the mud and feinted to one side, threw himself into a slide and grabbed it.

He cut at her legs; she cleared that sweep and he got himself room, hurled himself up and launched back in an attack on her blade, trying not to hither , which consideration she did not return. She clipped his arm as he skidded. She skidded on her turn and he brought up short, square with her, even.

"All right," he said between breaths, and invited her with a disdainful motion of his other hand. Tentative then, the exchange, a trial of position and guard, then an attack that startled him into a defense and a turn, into a quick flurry of pa.s.ses that continued soundless and without contact for a moment.

Fool!he said to himself, and ducked under her attack and shoved her with everything he had.

She hit the ground downslope and skidded in the mud. She was halfway up before he caught up with her and slammed her back again with a half-pulled kick.