The Paladin

by C. J. Cherryh

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

  She nodded. She kept the pace he set for at least three passes; 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 gods.

  "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. Damned if she believed it. Damned 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. Rain was spattering about them again, dark pocks on the dirt. "I gave you an order. You defied me. Now you're damned proud of yourself. Pulled a surprise. Now you think you're ready for your enemies."

  "I didn't mean to."

  "You're a damned arrogant little bitch, girl. I don't cry foul. I still have my leg under me. Better assassins 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. I enjoyed teaching you. I told you: you're good for a woman. But the first man 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 damned 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 you quit, 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 damned 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've failed, 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. Hell if it will, girl. Hell 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 damn 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. Damned 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 of thinking 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.

  Damn.

  "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 gods'—"

  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 snatch after the cane sword, "Without the damn 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 s
ide, 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 hit her, 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 passes 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.

  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 damn 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.

  "Damn 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 hell." 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 damn fool, you're soaked. Get it off yourself, then."

  "Let me alone!"

  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 passed, 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 damn bucket over I'll let you freeze in it. Settle down. Settle down, 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 snatched 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, hoarse 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 the blanket around herself, himself sitting there in the cold with not a stitch 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 damn 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 I keep 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 i
n 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-space 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 damned 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.