The Paladin Part 14

Her head hit the ground this time. She sprawled on her back head-downward on the slope with the rain beating down on her and her eyes white-slitted in the lightning flashes.

"You d.a.m.n fool!" he shouted at her. "It's raining!"

She fought for breath, mouth open, and writhed over and slithered toward her knees.

His hand was waiting when she got that far. She glared up at him and he did not wait then, he took her arm and pulled her up, pulled her to him. There was no chill. Her body burned like fever, her sides heaving in the effort to breathe. "Come on," he said, and pulled her toward the cabin, up the slope. She pushed herself away from him to be free, and kneed him hard: the knee missed. He let her go, since that was what she wanted, and she fell to her hands and knees in the mud of the hill.

"All right," he said. "Lie there."

He stalked off, gathered up his gear from beneath the tree and took it to the cabin, up the steps, onto the porch before he looked back in the gathering dark and the lightning flashes and saw her sitting where she had fallen, tucked up, a small lump beyond the gnarled old tree.

"d.a.m.n you," he muttered, and dumped the armor and staggered back, grabbed her by the arm and hauled her up again, feeling the chill in her limbs this time. He held her arms pinned and hauled her along till it was clear she was trying to walk. Then he picked her up and carried her, stumbling in the mud, slipping on the steps. A stabbing pain went through his leg. He almost lost her there. But he made it to the door and kicked it open, got her to the warmth and light inside and collapsed with her on the floor by the fire.

She was shivering. He held onto her, his arms wrapped around her until she pushed away from him.

Then he let her go and stripped off his wet clothes, dried his hair with a quilt and wrapped it about himself until his own teeth stopped chattering before he went back to her.

The water had boiled. He poured it into a bucket of cold water and put the oil-and-rags on to heat, then knelt down and started drying her muddy hair on the corner of his quilt.

"Let me alone."

"The h.e.l.l." He grabbed her wet shirt and hauled it up over her head while she fought to hold onto it, teeth chattering. "It's not a rape, you d.a.m.n fool, you're soaked. Get it off yourself, then."

"Let mealone! "

He jerked the shirt the rest of the way off. Livid marks stood out on her back, on her arms, old bruises and bruises yet to come. He touched her poor back gently. He squeezed out water from the cloth in the bucket and washed her shoulders, washed her neck, while the shivering doubled her into a knot and finally pa.s.sed, leaving her limp in his arms, her own arms folded tight as a shield against intimacy, her knees tucked up in a shivering that racked her whole body.

The breeches were running a muddy cold puddle. He pulled the tie and pulled them half off before she knew what he was about: he held her in one arm, lost the quilt from around him and got them down to her knees before her struggles got violent. He held onto her and hissed into her ear: "Girl, I'm cold, I'm tired, you cut me close to where it matters, and if you kick this d.a.m.n bucket over I'll let you freeze in it.

Settle down. Settledown , my word I'm not after your skinny body, you're all right, settle down."

He stopped pulling, she stopped fighting, and he wrapped the quilt around both of them and held onto her, just held her while she broke into a new spate of shivering, no hands where she would not want them, not that the thoughts were not there, but there were sober ones too-that he had pressed her hard enough, that things were already at the brink of no forgiveness with her, and that she stopped fighting now was the last little trust she had in him. So he held her like something fragile, and did no more than stroke her wet hair and sit there while his joints stiffened and one shoulder chilled, where the quilt would not reach.

He sneezed finally, and winced, and she moved.

"Let me go," she said in a faint voice.

He relaxed his arms. "There. You're free."

She struggled to get up. She hit the cut on his leg, and he grunted and took her by the arms while she was trying to disentangle herself without touching him at all.

He gave her the quilt. She s.n.a.t.c.hed it around herself and averted her eyes from him, sitting with her back to him. The lamp was guttering, sending the shadows crazy.

"I haven't quit," she said in a thin, hoa.r.s.e voice, and sent a chill of a different sort through him.

"I beat you," he said to her back, rationally, desperately, "with an attack you didn't know. I've been at this all my life. There'll always be one you didn't know. And I could have hit you with a hundred. Do you understand? There's no hope for you. No man will even fight you fair. They won't bother. They'll shoot you if you're lucky. That's what's true, never mind what you want. I can't teach you enough. I don't want to see you dead. You wouldn't believe me. You wouldn't listen. Listen now. You're good. You're possibly the most gifted student I've ever seen,including myself. But skill is worth nothing against men like that, against odds like that. I thought you'd come to the sense to see it. But you hadn't. You pushed me , and you're ready to push everything else; and you weren't ever going to see it until I pushed back."

She turned half about and looked at him from the corner of her eye.

"I haven't quit."

"Don't be a fool," he said.

"So you can beat me. That's no news. So what did you prove? That I was sorry I made a mistake? That I did make one when I hit you?" Her voice went to a croak and died. She turned half about, clutching theblanket around herself, himself sitting there in the cold with not a st.i.tch on. But she stared off ahead of her with her chin trembling and the tears running down beside her mouth. "You didn't believe I could hit you again. I knew I could. You remember it wrong."

He smothered his anger, got up and grabbed a quilt off his mat and hugged it around himself. "There's truth in that. Not all of it's true. You listen to me, girl. The d.a.m.n leg caught. I strained it, it went bad on me. I'm not what I was. But luck won't always run in your favor. And I won't help you kill yourself."

"If you stop now," she .said, "I'll go with what I know."

"You'll get yourself killed!"

"Maybe I will." The voice croaked and broke again, the face, the unmarred side, like a white jade image in the guttering lamplight. "But Ikeep my promises."

That stung. He stared at her a long while, and when he spoke his own voice cracked. "We'll talk about it. Tomorrow, not tonight. Go lie down on your stomach. I'll bring the rags. Are you hurt anywhere?"

She shook her head, kicked off the sodden trousers from about her ankles and got up holding the quilt around her. She tried to clean up-picked up her dripping clothes and his and put them in a pile by the door on her way to her mat. For his part he got up, tied a cloth about himself for decency and pulled on his remaining shirt for warmth before he put the rest of the rags on to heat at the hearth and brought the hot ones to her.

She made no fuss about it when he peeled the quilt back by degrees and applied the compresses.

And tempting as it was to talk to her and try to explain while she was quieter, he did not think there was reason in her, not tonight. He picked a bit of mud from her hair-she had made a mess of the quilt as well as his armor that was lying out on the porch in the storm; and he ventured to peel her wet hair away from her face. The scar stood out plain on her pallor. And she flinched from that slightest and only touch that had nothing to do with treating her injuries, flinched and turned her face the other way.

"Are you so angry with me," he asked, "only for showing you the truth?"

She did not answer.

"Well," he said, "they chop heads for that in Chiyaden. I can't say you're different than the rest of the world."

He rested his hand on her shoulder, gave her a pat if only to annoy her and went to trim up the guttering lamp-wick and fetch the second round of compresses, cold, himself, and wishing he had someone to return the favor.

Chapter Eight.

She was moving moderately well in the morning. He was the one limping, and he sat down gingerly with his bowl of rice. They ate on the mats inside, considering the chill of the morning, although they had the door open, and the shutters, for light. His armor was a sodden mess, still. That would take long work, to recover it from its muddy heap on the porch. He had wrung out their muddy clothes and spread them by the hearth to dry before he went to bed, and they had them to put on. The cabin was a shambles, the matting and the quilts muddy and stained with leaf-mold and blood, rags and buckets competing for hearth-s.p.a.ce with the rice-pot.

He had cooked the breakfast too. He asked nothing of her this morning. He gave her no orders. If he asked himself why, he thought with the edges of his mind that he had tried her too far and done something wicked, pushing the girl to a desperate self-defense: and that was how he had ended up on the defensive, not that he was less than he had been, not that he had outright failed to defend himself, but that he had known d.a.m.ned well he was in the wrong and had no wish to hurt her in the bargain.

But, he told himself, she was not a student, she was a girl, and no one would have reasonably expected a girl to go berserk. No one of his skill should use his arts all-out against a woman-that was why his instincts had laid him open to a cut on the leg, that was why he had given ground. He could have taken the sword away from her. He should have. If it were a boy, he would have. He would never have felt that moment of dismay. He would never have taken the first step backward. Or the second.

d.a.m.n her.

He had set the empty laundry bucket in front of the door last night, as if it were carelessness; and tried to stay awake, or at least not to sleep too deeply, for fear she would try to escape in the night. Not for fear of murder. He had no thought she could succeed at that; and certainly he deserved better than that, even if she was a peasant and a woman, without any concept of honorable behavior. But he was mortally afraid of her trying to slip away and leave before he could make himself clear to her. It would be like her obstinacy to try to leave in the middle of a rainstorm. d.a.m.n her again.

He was a fool ever to have encouraged her. A fool to have taught her. A fool not to have taken her by force and ended her silliness. He could bring her to good sense. Pleasure itself could seduce her away from her lunacy.

That was what was the matter with her, anyway. Her first experience with men had put fear in her, driven her away from what was womanly and twisted all her thinking. He could cure that. No womanhe had ever slept with had complained of the experience. She certainly would not.

d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n, and d.a.m.n. Give the b.i.t.c.h straightforward conditions. Tie her hand and foot if he had to.

No more negotiations.

Why inh.e.l.l had he backed up and gone for the sword, to match her even?

Could nine years take that much away from a man?

You're off your center, master Saukendar. . . .

She had said not a word this morning, not had her bath, nor had he: he had only pulled himself to his feet and dressed, opened the shutters for light and started breakfast before he brought her clothes to her.

They had had no supper, the morning was cold and wet, and she had dressed and sat down in a lump on the matting, not near the fire, not near him.

But the food brought a little interest when he gave it to her and sat down. She at least attacked it with appet.i.te. "I said we would talk," he said then.

She did not look at him. Or stop eating.

"I tried to tell you in words," he said. "You wouldn't hear words. You won't believe me. You insist to be a man. Then take a beating like one, take my advice like one, and listen to me when I tell you haven't the reach, you haven't the weight, you haven't the strength, and unlike a boy, you won't grow into it. You won't succeed at this. There are other things to do with your life. There are other things worth having."

Long silence. She took another bite and never looked at him.

"I want you to stay here," he said. "I'll go on teaching you. I'll teach you everything you can learn. But give up this notion of revenge. It's not going to buy you anything but grief. Someday you can be very good. Someday you might have a son or a daughter to teach."

She looked up at him the way a tiger might, glancing up from its meal.

"I'm very fond of you," he said.

It got nothing but that stare.

"Have I deserved to be hated?" he asked her. He had argued cases before the Emperor and before high magistrates and felt less at risk. "You came to my mountain, you disturbed my peace, you demanded this, you demanded that, you insisted I not touch you, all of which I've granted; and now I deserve a look like that?"

There was a little tightening of her mouth. A blink.

"Or are you sulking because you've lost?That's not manly behavior. Are we changing the rules today?"

The mouth trembled. The eyes flashed. "You caught me by a d.a.m.n trick. I didn't lose. You cheated."

"We're not talking about games, girl. You're talking about killing a man. Is he an honest man? Not by anything I know of him. So where is this talk about rules and tricks? Where is any man that will fight duel with a woman? Have you killed, yes. Meet you fair he won't, for his pride's sake. Cut off your hand for carrying a weapon. That, he will. But I haven't taught you to go killing honest men. They're the only ones who'd deal fair. Don'tever take your opponent's word for anything. That's the lesson."

Her face had lightened a little.

"But there's another one," he said. "And that's that you're not equal to this. Give up this notion. Stay here. I'm not a cruel man. Everything I've done, I've done trying to stop you from a mistake. Stay and you'll see I'm not the ogre I've been. I don't even say you should share my bed, though I won't say I don't hope you'd want to."

She shook her head.

"No," he read that. "But no to what?"

"No." "Taizu, for G.o.ds' sake,talk ."

She set her bowl down on the mat in front of her. And stared at it and frowned.

"Taizu-"

She held up her hand, asking quiet. So he was quiet, and waited, and after a moment she said: "Are you going to interrupt me?"

"No," he said.

A moment more she stared at the floor, her hands on her knees. Then: "You cheated to beat me. I didn't expect that of my teacher. I should have, you're right, and I won't forget it, master Saukendar. I wouldn't have trusted anyone else. Now there isn't anybody." Her chin trembled, and she lifted her hand, insisting on his silence until she had regained her calm. "I told you my bargain. I'll cook and I'll clean. And I'll stay another year. I haven't quit. You'll go on teaching me and you won't cheat me: teach me what I need to win. Whatever it is."

She's grown, he thought, dismayed. She's learned that much. All right. Another year and more time, and maybe that's the cure for everything. Then she'll come to her senses. Otherwise she can find ways to escape. And d.a.m.ned if I want to track her down.

"I haven't quit. It's still your word."

"You've failed, girl.That's the bargain."

"No. Till Iquit , you said. You can't change that just because you say something different."

"Dammit,quit means when you can't learn any more. And you've gotten there. You're going to kill yourself."

She shook her head solemnly and looked at him with hard reproach, tears br.i.m.m.i.n.g.

"Dammit," he said aloud, "you could have a broken back. Or a broken skull."

"If you'd been able to hit me."

"If I'd beenable! Girl, you're sadly mistaken."

"Maybe I am. I don't know. You said you weren't playing fair. Maybe you weren't telling the truth.

Maybe you lied to me about that too. How do I know?"

"d.a.m.n your impudence."

"I haven't quit.That's the truth, master Saukendar."

He was quiet a time more, his breakfast cold and mostly untouched. He poked at it, and set the bowl down with a queasiness in his stomach. "Are you going to keep your word? They never said you lied."

"I have kept my word."

"Are yougoing to?"

Backed to the wall. "Yes."

"Are you going to cheat me this time?"

"You need to learn respect for your teacher, girl. Your failures are nature's, not mine. I can't help your incompetence."