The Paladin Part 4

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 d.a.m.ned 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 d.a.m.ned if he would inconvenience himself.

He got up, wincing-G.o.ds, 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-d.a.m.ned if he was going to hobble about and stagger in front of the girl. d.a.m.ned 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 showedher 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 ch.o.r.es, 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 st.i.tching 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 pa.s.sed 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 alittle; 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 hisown 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 gra.s.s in his pasture down by the stable.

Not that she had run the d.a.m.ned 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 grat.i.tude 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 G.o.ds. 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 G.o.ds she was not pregnant, that was all.

He waved a hand at her when she started to pa.s.s 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 st.i.tching.

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 st.i.tching 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?"