The Paladin Part 27

"We're wrong. We're going wrong. I know we are."

He was freezing, with the wind driving against his wet clothing. His boots were double-weighted with mud. Jiro was in no better case. And at every turn it had been:I know, I'm sure. I know where I'm going.

"Look," he said hoa.r.s.ely, "look, girl, youdon't know where you're going. What are you trying to do, keep going until one of the horses breaks a leg? Let's get off this d.a.m.n dike, settle down and rest till we get some light, so we can see where we're going."

"We're all right," she said. "We just got fouled up back there, we've got to go down again."

"We don't know where we're going, we're d.a.m.n well liable to wind up north again for all we know-clear back to the d.a.m.n road!"

"No. It's this way."

"You haven't got the moon, you haven't got the stars,you can't dead-reckon your way across this maze- "

"I've got the wind!" "The wind shifts, dammitall!"

"And thefeel! The way the land is, the way the dikes run, I know what I'mdoing , dammit, Iknow where east is! "

"Oh, G.o.ds," he groaned, as the shadow that was Taizu started down the dike-side again.

Leave the b.i.t.c.h.Let her hike out there in the dark until she knew she was alone.

It was too d.a.m.n cold to stop. His teeth were near to chattering.

"d.a.m.n her," he said to Jiro, and untied the baggage and the armor and tied it on his own shoulders.

He hurt so much already there was hardly worse. It was Jiro's legs he worried for-an old horse, under his own armor, a cold night and muscles gone weak with chill.

He fell on the slope; he hit the water and the mud and for a moment could not get his feet under him or get a breath. He made it. It was the bad side. Oh, d.a.m.n, it was. But he got himself to his feet. Jiro was standing there on four feet and whole.

"Come on," he said, finding the reins. And he kept going, as far as the other end, where Taizu swore they could go on dry ground and trust the paths a while.

"Let my horse carry it," she said. "She's all right. She's all right, master Shoka."

"So am I," he said in what of a voice he had left. And added: "But Jiro's too old for this."

They put his armor up on the mare's saddle. Taizu started off again.

"We're lost," he said to her back. "We're lost. You know that."

"We're all right. We'll get out of this. It can't last too much further."

He swore a steady stream of line-soldier obscenities and limped after.

The sun was edging its way up a murky sky when the dike paths came to a line of trees; and as they came to that ancient stand of willow- An uncrossable expanse of river.

Taizu stopped, when they came over the dike face to face with that-stopped. Her shoulders slumped, and she turned around with a look of absolute desperation.

"It's all right," he said. "It's all right. We've come back to the Hoi, that's what we've done. You've led us true east. We're all right."

Her lips trembled.

"The river's on theright . We're back where we started!"

"No," he said. "No! We crossed the river Hoi, at Ygotai. It's the same that flows past Mon. It'sour river,after the Yan flows into it. It goes down to the Chaighin . . .Maps , girl. The benefit of maps, remember?

The Hoi and the Chisei come together at the east end of Hoishi. . . . Taiyi's straight ahead. Straight ahead as we're going."

Tears started down her face. She came and put her arms around him and rested her head on his shoulder, just stood there, shivering.

"You led us right," he said. "You brought us east. It was east all along."

Chapter Fourteen.

Shoka wiped his nose and drank the pleasantly steaming willow-tea with his supper-old mother willow and her sisters gave them a shelter, a canopy of ground-reaching branches that enveloped them, the horses, a level, tolerably dry bank, and a little of the river edge. Sometimes barges and boats pa.s.sed, bound from Ygotai onward to trifold Mandi, which sat astride the Chaighin where it and the Hoi became the Great River, and flowed on to distant reaches of Sengu and Mendang, and remote outposts where barbarian traders came. And sometimes those boats came back upriver bearing, one supposed, goods from Mandi's bazaars. A rough place, Mandi, a country place, lacking the graces of the imperial city-but prosperous with the trade from the joining rivers and from the outside.

Strange to think that that large city was not so far away, when they sat in their willow-tent sneezing and coughing and warm, thank the G.o.ds, the willow tending to confine the smoke so they dared a tiny fire now and again, and shielding them from the wind and the misting rain.

"On the whole," he had said to Taizu, that first morning, "we're quite well situated. Let the furor die down. Let them wonder where we are. We don't seem in any danger of being discovered, no one walks this sh.o.r.e, they go by boat-so I can't think of a better place for the moment."

And Taizu: "I hope the north river isn't this wide, without going back-"

"It's not." He sneezed, and wiped his nose, and seeing how low Taizu's spirits were, got himself a willow-wand and sketched her the wedge shape of Hoishi, with its two main rivers, the Hoi and the Chisei. And Taiyi, the other side. "The Chisei never is much. A soldier knows these things. His supply depends on them. I've neglected your education in maps, girl; maps are the essentials of any campaign-"

His voice was going. They had rubbed the horses down when they had first made their camp, they had cut gra.s.s on the dike-side, numb with cold and staggering with exhaustion, and seen that Jiro and the mare had a breakfast. Then they had stopped, tucked up in the quilts their mats had managed to keep dry, both of them cold as corpses and holding onto each other. Warmth came, warmed bodies, warmed limbs, enough to shiver a while, enough for Shoka's leg to start hurting again, an agony that would have kept him awake if he were not so mortally exhausted. As it was he simply clamped his jaws and tried to think of something else, waiting for exhaustion to win out, determined not to give way to the pain in Taizu's hearing. But she made a sound, a kind of steady, hurt whimper with every breath, until he stroked her wet hair and hugged her and she stopped, evidently realizing only then that she was doing it.

Poor girl. There was no strength, he thought, could have carried her; it was the simple, stupid vitality of the young, who had no experience to tell them what was possible.

And seeing her moving around, with the afternoon, a man had to move again, and see to his gear. It washer job, washing their clothes. But it was not the cabin on the mountain, it was the field again; a man took care of his own things if he had no servant. And he did not.

There was no way all the dirt would ever come out of the cloth or the leather. "We'll look like mercenaries for certain," he said, while she used a pot of oil soap to try to restore their tack and the leather of their clothing.

"It's a mess," she said.

"It's always a mess." The leg hurt enough to distract him from the rest of his stiff muscles. "I think I tore something in the knee. I'm not sure whether it's good or bad."

"We haven't got the rags. Except these."

He looked at the oily rags she was using, heating them over a tiny fire in a tin pan; and the ache was enough to blur his vision, the thought of warmth on the joint enough to make his speech thick. "We can try it."

It did help. It helped so much he lay back on the ground beneath the willows and shut his eyes and opened them to find the whole world gone dim.

Twilight.

Taizu sitting by him, waiting.

That was how the willow-tea.

And the map-drawing in the fading daylight, Taizu watching the lines he drew with that thinking-frown on her face and her lip caught in her teeth in that way she had when she was desperate and worried.

Terrified.

"We can go two ways from here," he said. "Back along the Hoi till we can cross; or up to the Chisei.

West or east. Your choice."

"If I wasn't with you," she said, fists clenched, "master Shoka, I'd be on into Taiyi."

He shook his head. "You'd be dead back on the riverside. With a good number of bandits to your credit. But you'd be dead." He saw her chin trembled. He thought of home again, on the mountain. He thought of the a.s.sa.s.sins and the armies, thought of sleepy lord Reidi in Keido, who might be forced, finally-to do something about the exiled lord Saukendar, if only to loose messages north.

Thought of the villagers of Mon, who had fed him all these years, lying dead for no fault but relying on him.

Thought of a young fool who tried too much and did too much and who, d.a.m.n her, had cleaned their tack and their armor and washed their clothes and made him tea and now had the gall to call him useless and an enc.u.mbrance.

It must be the pain. His eyes stung, and he ma.s.saged the aching leg. Her hand rested on his. She leaned forward and put her arm about his neck, her cheek against his.

"Please let's go home. Let's go home. I'll marry you."

He put a hand up to push her back. "Forwhat? To keep me from getting you killed?"

He saw the glistening on her cheeks in the last of the light. "It doesn't matter what happened," she said.

"It doesn't matter anymore. I'll be your wife. Please let's go home."

Whatever she did-was always at the wrong time. He thought that again: that it was always the right promise at the wrong time.

d.a.m.nhonor andd.a.m.n the pride that made men fools. Take what she offered. Take her across the river to the wilds of Hoisan, find another mountain. Have sons and daughters.

d.a.m.nthe things he had taught her, encouraging the woman he loved to put a premium on honor, and pride, and all the things that made men fools- But, he had thought, she had come to him already equipped with that. And she had compelled him to teach her. And believed in him, beyond the point she knew him in his mornings and his out-of-sorts days, his worst days and his lameness and all his faults- She was the invulnerable one. She was young. She was all those things.

And it took his weakness to stop her and make her plead with him, never saying it:Don't kill yourself. I can't stand to watch you. I'll marry you.

He touched her face. He said: "Did I teach you this? Pull yourself together. Plan your retreats. If you want to go back across the river and think a while-we can do that. But I don't say you should give up. I don't say you should ever give up. We can go back a while. That's another part of soldiering. You reconnoiter, you gather information. We've created a little stir, so now I'll tell you what we do, we go back into Hoisan, we wait for the rumor to get to the capital, if it will; we spread the word-like I said, remember?-that I'm at large. That the woman with me has a grudge with Gitu. Let our enemies lose sleep. Let them grow thin worrying. Let the time be ours. You and I-we can be with them-we can be with them closer than their wives of nights. That's what I'd do."

Like I've always done. And G.o.ds know if they even care.

Taizu rested her head on her arm, one hand at the back of her neck.

"All right," she said.

In that beaten, weary way that had never been Taizu.

The morning came with a gentle damp in the air, an autumnal chill next the water. A boat pa.s.sed. The voices of the rivermen and the splash of oars pierced the stillness.

They lay close beneath the clammy quilts, for nothing other than warmth, and Shoka tried to keep his coughing still-wishing not to disturb Taizu and not to attract notice. But Taizu coughed too, and it was a long time before either of them stirred out, to make a breakfast their throats were too sore to enjoy, to cut gra.s.s for fodder and tend to the horses, and to huddle in damp quilts and reckon their situation-howmuch food they had, how long they could avoid discovery.

Jiro and the mare made acquaintance-too much noise and too much stubbornness for two fevered, exhausted human beings to trust; and the mare too close to her own home to trust she might not bolt-excepting the attraction of Jiro, who was less inclined to desert them and go kiting off to the dikes-excepting the horses were as sore and tired as their owners, willing to rest and fill their bellies while their owners huddled in a nest of blankets that would not quite dry and coughed and sneezed til their sides ached.

"It was like this in Shangei," Shoka said, in what of a voice he had left, "the year we had to ferret the rebels out. Never stopped raining."

"What rebels?" Taizu said, a croak of a voice that might have been a man's.

"Lord Mendi had a nephew," Shoka said, and tried to tell the story, except he took to coughing, and it never would stop until Taizu brewed up willow-tea and he got a little warmth on his throat.

He coughed when he talked, so did she, and mostly their noses ran. So they heated up the rags they had, turn and turn about put them on chests and backs and throats, drank willow-tea for the fever and the sore throats and mostly stayed under covers, while the boats pa.s.sed, and the rains spattered on the willow-leaves, and winds swayed the trees and shook down water to keep the blankets damp and keep their clothes from drying.

The third day it was better. Taizu trapped some minnows on the riverside and made a hook and used some of their saddlery cording; that night they had their fill of fish and rice with wild herbs, risking a larger fire than usual. A man felt he might live after that supper; and he said: "I think tomorrow night we might ride back to Ygotai."

She said nothing for a long moment. His heart began to beat faster, because he reckoned that she was not thinking about Ygotai and the south, but about slipping off north tonight, and leaving him and the horses and everything behind.

Except she no longer looked like a peasant. She had not her basket to hide her sword, her shirt was too fine, her shape was not a man's: she could look the peasant squatting on the riverside to fish, and wave at the boatmen and feel quite smug in her deception while he suffered in hiding- But not on the road, not under close scrutiny.

He had time to think of that. He almost said it out loud, but she sighed and said: "Yes. We could."

It was not the absolute affirmative he hoped for. He thought of saying:Well , will you? But that would start her arguing, and arguing could send her off to Hua. So he nodded placidly, as if he had never had such a thought. "After moonset. We might have trouble at Ygotai. But once across the bridge-there's no worry."

"Where will we go?"

He shrugged. "Wherever we find pleasant. It's what I say: let our enemies worry." He coughed. Thatwas still with them. "Wherever it is, high ground and drier."

There was fish for the next day. They were almost out of rice, so they saved that. And come dusk of that sunny, warmer day, they saddled up and put on their armor and tied up their hair-"No need to look like brigands," Shoka said.

"It's dark," Taizu said. "We're hiding. I thought no one was supposed to see us."

"No need toact like brigands, then," Shoka said; and made her stand still, sulking as she was, until he had arranged her hair. Then he turned her around aad made her lift her chin. There was a furious scowl on her face. And her eyes glistened.

"Where's your center?" he asked her quietly.

She gave him no answer for a moment. It was a dangerous moment. Everything could break.

But she said: "Next year.Next year, master Shoka."

Not husband. "Am I divorced, then?"

A long, deep breath. "No." Her voice still broke into hoa.r.s.eness. "I don't break my promises.Any of them."

And she walked off to sit on the riverside and wait for full dark.

So he came and sat by her on the rocks. Cranes were flying in the dusk. From somewhere there was the smell of smoke. But they had had that before. Perhaps it was all the way from Ygotai, perhaps from some farmhouse they had never found.

"We'll find a place in Hoisan," he said, "set up a camp just like the bandits. We'll set ourselves for winter.