The Paladin

by C. J. Cherryh

  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 showed her 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 chores, 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 stitching 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 passed 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 a little; 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 his own 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 grass in his pasture down by the stable.

  Not that she had run the damned 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 gratitude 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 gods. 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 gods she was not pregnant, that was all.

  He waved a hand at her when she started to pass 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 stitching.

  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 stitching 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?"

  "Thank you, master Saukendar." She stroked the fox-fur.

  Which was all the thanks he got, when he had hoped for maybe a little more, but it seemed she thought the gift was extravagant.

  "Tomorrow," he said, "I'll show you the mountain."

  She looked at him cautiously, with a dawning excitement in her eyes.

  "I might do a little hunting," he said.

  * * *

  Taking her hunting with him was one way that he thought of not to leave her unwatched with Jiro and his belongings in the cabin: there were still times when he remembered, just as he was about to fall asleep of nights, that he knew nothing for certain about her, and that she might simply be a patient enemy, waiting her chance to do him harm.

  He disbelieved that by broad daylight; but he did not disbelieve it enough to leave her in possession of the cabin for hours on end. In that consideration it seemed only prudent to find out what she did know about stalking—game or other quarry—and what kind of traps she might think of.

  She would have taken her bow when he took up his from beside the door. "No," he said. "Not unless you need a walking-staff."

  She gave him an offended look.

  But she left the wretched bow and followed him into the woods.

  He had piled up brush here and there about the mountain, and that was usually good for a rabbit now and again, just a matter of walking quietly and never touching the shelter itself, but setting snares here and there.

  Taizu moved well enough keeping up with him, and she watched where she was putting her feet. She made little sound in the brush, evading the branches that might whisper against a passing arm or leg.

  Not a farm-girl's skills, he thought. Not a farm-girl's way of moving.

  He recollected the trap she had set for him, a damned skillfully set one.

  That was another thing no farm-girl would know. Like we set for the soldiers, she had said.

  He stopped finally to let the woods settle, moved up to a rocky slope and sat down; and in that idle time he thought to teach her a few simple hand-signs such as his father had taught him.

  She repeated them for him, quickly, clearly, signs for actions and directions, and for the various animals that came and went on the hill.

  Then he taught her the one for man.

  "There are bandits yonder by Hoishi," he whispered. "And now and again a boy from the village comes up here with supplies. You've seen the village. The bandits—are different. I trust you'll know."

  He caught a momentary expression as she nodded—something angry and hard and patient.

  "If you see anyone that doesn't look like a villager, you don't lead them to the cabin; you don't get yourself caught; and you warn me as fast as you can. Understood?"

  Again that look of intense concentration.

  "Repeat the signs," he said. It was what his father had done to him, making him recall after he had stopped expecting it.

  She gave them back to him and named them aloud, one by one, without a mistake.

  Quick. Damned quick to understand.

  It was a mortal shame that a girl owned the godgiven gifts that would make an exceptional student of arms.

  But it was of no use at all to a nun, or to a farmer's servant—to know how to hunt. And he imagined how amused the court in Cheng'di would be to see him crouched here in serious converse with a pig-keeper or teaching a woman hunter-signs; and he imagined much more what a joke they would make of it if he took to teaching her more martial skills than that, or taking her for a partner in his hunting.

  But if it kept her content, if in the pro
cess of fulfilling his promise to her he taught her to protect herself so he needed not worry so much about her becoming a hostage or fecklessly guiding some bandit attack back to the cabin—

  Well, by the gods above and below, he did not have court gossip to contend with any longer, it was not Chiyaden he lived in now, and if Saukendar took a girl to warm his bed and if it amused him to teach his girl to hunt with him and to do men's work—then that was his concern and none of theirs.

  Let her immediate anger burn itself away in hard work; and let her grow fond of the place and of him. Then natural womanly impulses would take over, she would give up her notions of revenge and settle into the turning of the seasons and the planting and the hunting.

  Damn, it was easy to get used to her.

  She could be some use on the mountain; she had a wit and spirit he had not imagined in any woman outside the court. She...

  ... was the first human being who had stirred anything in him in years, and he had no inclination to see her go back down a road she had survived as much by luck as cleverness—this time armed with a fatal over-confidence. Fools always perturbed him. Young fools he personally could forgive, and principled young fools he could even admire, remembering his youth and his young notions of justice....

  But the world at large gave them no special grace, the gods, if they existed, made no exceptions for good motives; and young fools never understood that.

  * * *

  They came back again toward evening with a rabbit their snares had taken: summer was no time to take the larger game, in the months that meat spoiled quickly. Deer came across their trail and they let them go; it was past the season for berries, but there were wild greens to pick, and they came back cheerful with the makings of a fine supper.

  "You see to the rabbit," Shoka said, putting his bow away. "I'll see to Jiro this evening."

  Which he did, taking more time than he was wont to do on days when he hunted—but supper was arranging itself without his doing a thing, and he felt himself wonderfully at ease in his life.