The Paladin

by C. J. Cherryh

"That'll be the caravan-master," Shoka said as two of the guards rode out from the halted wagons, a sedate pace, matching their own steady advance. "Let's act friendly, shall we?" And aloud: "Hello! We're fellow travelers. We'll pass you, by your leave."

  The riders came scarcely within talking-distance and stopped as Shoka reined in.

  "Travelers on the same road," Shoka said. "We'll ride past, by your leave."

  "You're of Chiyaden," one of the guards hailed him back.

  "That I am. Shoka of Tengu province. This is my wife, Taizu. And your master?"

  "Master Yi. Master Lun Yi of the kingdom of Shin."

  The speaker bowed; Shoka bowed; Taizu did.

  So they gained leave to ride with the guards along beside the wagons, while the wagons stayed halted, and the caravan-master rode out to meet them.

  * * *

  There was tea, themselves and the caravan-master sitting on mats while the caravan-master asked them news.

  "I have very little to tell," Shoka said. "My wife and I have been in living in seclusion on the edge of Hoishi, since the trouble in my homeland. I have no particular desire to go back, except my wife is homesick. So—" He shrugged, with no glance toward Taizu. "What can a man do? An unhappy wife or an unhappy journey."

  The caravan-master slid a glance toward Taizu, and whatever he might have suggested for a nagging wife, died stillborn; his mouth went shut firmly, and a breath later he shrugged and said, "Well, I have four wives. And I have all of them to feed or I'd not risk this road myself, and that's the truth."

  "Bad, eh?"

  "Bad." Master Yi waved a bony hand at the road and the land around. "Five attacks on this road this year. I travel with professional guards. You can see." Another wave of his hand, toward the caravan, the halted wagons, the caravaneers sitting in the shade the wagons offered, resting. There were at least fifteen guards, Shoka noted, who looked like hire-ons, by the plain, random style of their gear. "Costs me a fortune," master Yi said. "And it's not just in Hoishi. All along the road, from here as far as Ygotai. Bandits. Outlaws. You ride along fine as you please and whisst! arrows out of the brush. I tell you, I'd be nervous about traveling alone hereabouts."

  "One worries," Shoka said. "As far as Ygotai, you say."

  "And further! I tell you, bad times. Bad times. Time was, there was law up and down the roads. Nowadays you're on your own the moment you leave a town. Don't look for the local lord to keep up his highways! He's sent all his levies to Cheng'di."

  "To the Emperor."

  "To wherever the Emperor sends them. Mercenary guards everywhere. And no law. Good for trade in the capital. But terrible in the provinces. And a smaller caravan would be in serious danger. I tell you, you should have a talk with your young wife. You should have a serious talk, sir. Homesick is one thing. It's a very dangerous road. Very dangerous. If you'll take my advice, you'll go back to Mon and not spend another night on this trail, for your young wife's sake."

  "We're all right," Taizu said sharply.

  The caravan-master's eyes slid toward Taizu and lingered, carefully, with a little of apprehension as he took in details, one of which, surely, was the scar; and another of which was, perhaps, the overall look of her, in armor, with her little knot of ribbons and her hair shorter than a woman's ought to be.

  He cleared his throat.

  "We're honest," Shoka said. "You don't have to worry, master Yi. We're not spies. Ask me what you like about Cheng'di and I can tell you—but all old news. We've been away for a long time; and we're anxious for whatever you can tell us."

  Another slide of the trader's eyes toward Jiro, who stood grazing beside their baggage—one point in their favor, Shoka reckoned: Jiro's expensive accoutrements and his own accent and his costly if worn armor fit the story of a displaced gentleman-gone-rustic, and that fit the pattern of political troubles, while Taizu's scar, her diction—which had undergone some change under his teaching, but which still was not pure heartlands—and her unusual and very businesslike gear—meant, perhaps, something other than bandit, but still something worrisome.

  If they were both men, one might say—mercenary. Professional. And one might worry about the smaller one with the scowling face as one of the crazy sort, the sort that might mean fights in camp and bloodshed before all was done.

  Which made him crazier than his wife was and the both of them possibly more dangerous than bandits.

  "What about the roads east of Ygotai?" Shoka asked.

  "Good as far as Mandi. Then chancy. Is that where you're going? Where is your wife from?"

  "Hua."

  "Hua!"

  "How is it there?" Taizu asked. Her fists were clenched on her knees. She bowed, being polite. "Please."

  "I can't say. I don't know." Master Yi bowed too. "Everything I know is from rumor. But they say it's very bad everywhere east and north of Mandi. You'd be advised to listen to your husband. People are killed every day on these roads. Terrible things happen."

  Master Yi fell silent, locked stare to stare with Taizu. He gave a twitch of the shoulders then.

  "The regency is still in power?" Shoka asked.

  "Oh, yes. Oh, yes. That doesn't change." Another odd look.

  "We've been very isolated," Shoka said, and held up his cup as the caravan-master's boy poured more tea. "Thank you. —You've traveled this road recently then?"

  "Twice this year. Our last trip before the snows. But we met with a caravan in Shothai—" The master had his cup filled. "And they plainly warned us. It's profit. Profit. There's shortage in Chiyaden. Where there's shortage, supply sells. That's my politics. That's all my politics."

  "Prudent man. Gods prosper you, master Yi. We wish you well."

  "I'll tell you," master Yi said. "If you won't take good advice and go back—you'd be safer far to travel with us. For a likely man like yourself, for your wife, no charge, seeing you bring your own gear and I suppose, your own food. Out of the goodness of my heart I offer it."

  Shoka bowed. "That's very generous."

  Taizu gave him a furious frown. "No."

  "I'll talk with my wife," Shoka said. "I'm minded to accept, master Yi. It's a very kind offer."

  "It's too slow!" Taizu said; and Shoka said: "Excuse me," and bowed to the caravan-master, stood up and seized Taizu by the wrist, dragging her up and off to have a word with her on Jiro's other side.

  "It's good sense!" Shoka said. "Speed isn't enough. We can go as far as Ygotai with this lot! Use your head, girl!"

  "That man is already suspicious! If we stay around he's going to go on wondering and pretty soon he'll start figuring you could be wanted by the law and there might be some money in us!"

  That was a thought, audacious and crooked, decidedly a thought on Taizu's side of the slate.

  "I trust us!" Taizu said. "I trust you, I don't trust this master Yi and his people. They're barbarians! Gods know what thoughts might get into their heads. They could get scared if they get to thinking you could be wanted! They could do all sorts of things and if we're sleeping with them and eating with them there's no way we can defend ourselves! I don't like it, I don't like it, I don't like it."

  She knew stealth. She had gotten from Hua to Hoishi, alive.

  And gods knew—outland traders might not know his face or his gear; but someone they met on the road might, and might talk, and an outland trader might get ideas what his life could be worth in gold. . . .

  In certain terms, he was more danger than protection to Taizu; she was right in that; and that both galled him and worried him.

  "All right," he said. "All right. I'll agree with you."

  She drew a quick breath and let it go without a word.

  And he led her back to master Yi and bowed. "Master Yi, thank you, but my wife is shy of strangers, and I've humored her this far. I thank you profoundly for your good advice, but a married man, you understand how it is with wives—"

  Doubtless master Yi suspected how it must be with this one. Shoka put on a rueful face
and tried to look as embarrassed as possible, not quite looking master Yi in the eye, and not missing, either, master Yi's shake of the head.

  "M'lord, I trust you know what you're doing. I can't urge you strongly enough,"

  "Women," Shoka said. He bowed again. "I certainly admire you, sir." And as he walked away: "Four wives. That's truly amazing."

  "I recommend the stick," master Yi called after him.

  Taizu started to turn around. Shoka grabbed her by the shoulder and marched her over to pick up the baggage. He climbed up to the saddle as Taizu thrust her arms through the ropes of the bedroll and the rest of their gear, and started off, with yet another bow to master Yi.

  "Not a word," he said under his breath. "Not a word, Taizu."

  She managed quite well, walking along with her head down while they passed beside the caravan, picking their way on the brushy margin, among rocks and in and out among the wagons as one side or the other of the trail offered sufficient room. Caravaneers stared at them. No few leered at Taizu, and two exchanged words in their outland tongue and laughed.

  It was not easy, that passage. He thought fondly of taking that pair who laughed and seeing whether their humor extended to a beating. But satisfaction was much too expensive.

  Down the long, long row of wagons, until they were well into the clear of the road, and rounding the curve of the hill.

  Then Taizu turned half-about and said, indignantly: "They were making fun of you!"

  "If we want them to report us to the nearest magistrate I can certainly go back and teach them proper respect: that should get our descriptions up and down the road as fast as anything I can think of."

  "You didn't need to bow to them!"

  "Dear wife, I thought I did rather well. We're well ahead of them, and if they mention us to the magistrate in Ygotai let's hope they report a doting fool and his spoiled wife who probably left their bones in the forest. I was Shoka to my intimates, not to folk at large, and I doubt they'll connect that name with Saukendar—but they might, if I'd cracked their heads. Wouldn't they?"

  She still frowned, but she made no more argument,

  "I didn't use the demon story."

  "Oh, no, the next caravan through the village will pick that up, and we'll be famous!"

  "Another reason why I thought you might just be right about making speed on this stretch. Their logical assumption is that we turned north at Ygotai, ahead of the caravan—if they realize it's me. We told them the truth about Hua. That's precisely what they'll think is a lie. So they won't look on that road."

  Taizu turned around again as she walked, her expression thunderous. "On the other hand they just could believe Saukendar wouldn't lie."

  "I hope I had a reputation for being smart. —Look out for that bush!"

  She glanced back and skipped around it and the rock behind it. "All I can say is, if I was the magistrate in Ygotai and they told me about a gentleman clear out here with all that expensive armor, I'd be suspicious, and I'd know he was in some kind of trouble, and I'd know there wasn't any lord Shoka because that's not a proper name."

  "He'd know there were a couple of mercenaries, that's what, one female."

  "Who didn't want hire with the caravan."

  "Because they had better prospects elsewhere. Gitu was hiring them ten years ago. I don't think he's changed. And you m'lord anybody with a full rig of armor. I'm at least a mercenary captain, and that's more than master Yi can hire. He knows that. If he believes the wife story, that's fine; if he doesn't he'll think we're mercenaries—"

  "Who walked out letting those fools laugh at us!"

  "They won't sleep well tonight. Mark me. That was stupid of them, letting us among them to see how many they are. That's why I acted the fool, and they laughed at the situation. When they get to thinking back on the style of the gear and the rest of it, they're going to have two and three thoughts on it, none of which agree, all of which are going to make master Yi damn nervous from here on, much more than if we were a simple pair of bullies they might have feathered outright. We walked away. They shouldn't have let us do that. And now I'm sure they're thinking about that and hoping we were fools."

  She looked at him with her mouth open, walking sideways and backward. "You're so tangled up! You've told them so many things they'll suspect us for sure!"

  "They won't know what we are. Till, as you say, some other traders overtake them. Then they'll know, and by then we'd best keep ahead of the rumors." He thought of plaguing her again about going back. And thought: Gods, there is no going back, is there? Ghita will know, soon or late. And assassins will come again. Even on the mountain there's no safety now.

  Well, I knew as much when I began this. No helping it. No helping anything now.

  Straight in and straight out, and maybe, if we're very lucky—go for the south and the mountains, and lose ourselves there, where even the imperial guard won't follow.

  Damnable mess this woman's talked me into.

  * * *

  The sun became a golden glow behind the hills on the other side of the river, and a touch of gold at the peaks of the hills that rose high on their right.

  That went too, as they came to the place where the river ran noisier over rocks, and where the hills of the Barrens truly closed in.

  Beyond this was not a place to travel in the dark, a narrow place fit for ambushes, where the river flowed in a riven, sometimes wooded gap and the ground was stony and the hills were broken and tumbled on either side.

  "This is where we stop," he said, when a turn of the hills brought them face to face with that.

  "I did it by dark," Taizu said. "But I didn't have any horse, and I hid a lot, whenever I could."

  He shook his head, thinking of her with that damned great basket, light as she had packed it; and her alone in that place made for ambushes.

  And he climbed down and led Jiro off where there was still a little ground free of rocks.

  "I've got an idea," Taizu said as they were boiling up a little water: it was yesterday's rice and jerky, with tea.

  "Gods save us. What?"

  "About the arrows. What we do—" She was sitting on her heels feeding twigs of scrub into the tiny fire while he sat cross-legged on their mats, close by. "What we do, I go in first, just right down the trail, and I make a lot of noise like a fool. And if there's anybody there, you'll be behind me and you can pick them off. That's better than both of us getting shot at or somebody hitting Jiro."

  "No, they'll just shoot you outright. You don't look like a woman, from a distance."

  She gave him an offended look.

  "I thought you liked looking like a boy," he gibed at her. "There's nothing wrong with the idea, except making you the target. We could always wait for master Yi. I knew this was ahead somewhere: I remembered it, but I like the look of it less by twilight."

  "I don't trust that man. I don't trust any of his people. And they won't trust us. Like you said, they've had time to think, and they'll want to have us back in their reach. I'm almost more worried about them than I am the bandits."

  He frowned, thinking on that point, thinking about Taizu, too, who he had long known was not dull-witted, but by the gods, he began to see the journey she had made and how she had made it.

  Damn clever girl. Damned clever.

  One had to take her very seriously. Even if his own choice would be to go with the trader and crack skulls if it came to it. Taizu in the field had all the patience she lacked in other matters. Paradoxes.

  "I knew a boy like you. Things were never real to him until the steel was out. Then he used good sense."

  "He's dead," Taizu guessed. "All your stories come out that way."

  He shook his head. "He's in holy orders. That's the only thing kept Ghita's lot from taking his head—last I heard. You know if you'd gone to Muigan, you'd have ended up abbess."

  She wrinkled her nose at him, and sifted tea into the water.

  "The nuns would have taught you the stick, you know
. Same as I did."

  "Too many do-this'es. And praying." She made a face. "Not me."

  "Celibacy, too. I don't think you'd have liked that."

  She made another face at him. "I said, tonight. After supper. I'm hungry."

  "Well, I might be out of the mood by then. Who knows?"

  The look turned wicked. "Master Shoka, you haven't been out of the mood since I've known you. Here." She held out the pot to pour tea. He held out his tea-bowl and trusted her accuracy.

  "It's Shoka," he said. "Plain Shoka, if you please."

  A worried glance from under brows. The smile was gone.

  "I wish you'd gone back, master Shoka. Now I'm afraid they're going to hear about you leaving the mountain. And then what?"

  "They've tried before. They tried several times when I first came, when they'd found me. They stopped. It got too expensive for them."

  "This time they might not stop."

  "They might not. So we leave to the south. We go through the hills. We find another mountain further away."

  She looked at him a long, long time.

  "Your dinner's getting cold," he said, and popped a rice-ball into his mouth.

  It was a cold supper, of course. She ate her own rice and jerky, listlessly, between sips of tea. He ate his with appetite, boiled up a second round of tea apiece, and leaned back to drink while she finished her dinner in silence.

  "Admit it," he said. "You've gotten a little good sense thanks to my teaching. I won't say one word. You know everything I'd tell you. Plan a retreat. Always plan a retreat. I have one planned. Don't think I don't." Damn lie. He leaned his head back against the rocks, hoping that she was not going to find another excuse tonight, that her mood would not put her off. She slipped into that so easily. It took a few more years to put that much distance between a man and his dead, and to persuade him that the day and the moment were the important thing. "Enjoy life, girl. Or you let them kill you day by day. And I don't give the bastards the satisfaction. Take everything the day gives you. Enjoy the sunset. Enjoy the rain. Or a man who loves you. What the hell. I don't think I'm that bad. Am I?"

  She looked at him over the rim of the tea-bowl, a short glance, and again, sidelong, thinking about it, Taizu-like. A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, and a brow lifted. "No, I don't think so." The smile disappeared. "I'm a farmer. I know how nature is. I've seen the goats and the pigs have a fine time. I had four brothers, two married." The mouth trembled. "And what I got was something different. You know? That doesn't surprise a farmer any. Goats aren't polite either. But hell! master Shoka—" She ripped up a handful of grass and flung it. "My bad luck. Isn't it? I'd like them to try now. That's what. I'd like that."