"It's not funny, master Shoka!"
"I'm not joking. I know what it costs. Damn, I know what it costs." He saw her going away from him—saw her, even if they lived, deserting him ... to save herself; and even that would generate rumors; and leave him—wishing himself dead . . . pining away, like the damn fools in the ballads he tried to evade. But even a real heart could break, after so much and so long. He clamped his jaw and stared at the rolling hills in front of them, that led down and down to Choedri—that they were going past, soon, quickly: Saukendar's thoughts, going on in coldest good sense, telling Shoka-the-man that what he wanted and what he hoped had no place in the world and there was certainly no leisure for his worries now. The rumors were a weapon, he used even Taizu, he generated fear about him, he bullied the lords because they were wrong and he was right, and there was no other course but the one he took, Saukendar had no doubt at all, nor fear, nor pain for the things he did.
Except when he heard the girl by him say, meekly, "Master Shoka?"
He did not look at her. It hurt too much.
"M'lord? —What am I supposed to call you? Nothing feels right."
"Anything you like," he said, too harshly. His hoarseness tried to come back. He wondered, cooly, distantly, if he wept in front of Reidi and his men, if that would shake their confidence. But that coldness took hold, and would not let him go. Not now, it told him, not with lives at stake.
(Die in this, dammit, and they'll say how a demon led us—)
Taizu said nothing for a long, long time. Men came around them. There was no privacy for talking.
But when they changed horses again she came up beside him and touched his arm. "I'm sorry," she said.
"Sorry?" He was bewildered. "For what, for the gods' sake?"
He confused her too. He saw that.
We may be dead in the next hour. She's a kid. A girl. What in hell is she doing in this? Why didn't I stop her?
"Have I done anything you said not?" Men were mounting up all around them. "Have I?"
Straight to the heart. "You ought to be out of here," he said. And remembered that there was no safety for Saukendar's wife. Anywhere. Ever. "Damn."
"What did I do wrong?"
"It's my fault."
"It's not your fault." She was trying to whisper and her voice kept cracking up a notch. "Dammit, I'm not your fault, I'm nobody's fault but mine, don't you tell me anything different! What did I do?"
He looked at her, sorting through that step by step. They might have been back on their own front porch. The cabin. A year ago. For some reason he felt his balance settle, dead center.
"Nothing," he said, taking Jiro's reins from her. "Not a damn thing. I've seen far worse." Damn, why can't I say it straight? "Few better. I just like your neck that length. Take care of it for me. Listen. If this goes wrong—if I'm killed—"
"Don't say—"
"Go to the country. Get Gitu. Pay the bastards for this. Does that appeal to you?"
A dark fire came into Taizu's eyes. Her head came up a bit. She nodded, very faintly, very surely.
Not crazy. No. It was as if a wall had come down that had been there for days, and they were looking each other in the eye again, without needing to dissemble or look away.
A horse snorted. Men were waiting all around them. They were standing there like fools.
"We've got to move," he said gruffly, and turned and climbed up to Jiro's back, while Taizu swung up onto the mare.
Saukendar and his demon wife, they would say. She has him enspelled. She came to him on the mountain, she bewitched him, she agreed to help him against his enemies, so long as he would keep her for his wife and make her a lady of Chiyaden; and she would never, ever take her real shape, except, perhaps, if he was unfaithful, if something broke the spell—
He saw how the men looked at her. He saw how they cleared Taizu's path, and some of them stared at her behind her back. Taizu had that to bear with—not malice, gods knew. No one had had experience dealing with a demon, but then—if a foxwife or a demon favored them, and was clearly bespelled to Saukendar and on her good behavior—then . . . there were good demons as well as bad, and a well-disposed one was an ally as valuable as Saukendar. She might take her demon-shape toward their enemies, gnash her teeth, turn their knees to water with the glance of her eyes, strike with twin swords of lightning and twin spears of fire, calling up wind and storm—
They expected things like that, the way they expected unicorns and gods in little-trafficked places; and burned their incense-sticks for the happiness of their dead; and wore their charms for luck and to keep their souls safe in crises. So why would their demon turn on them, how could things go amiss if there was Saukendar to wear like a talisman, no different than the luck-charms about their necks and ankles.
Damn them for too much faith, and for putting it on him.
And most of all for putting it on Taizu.
* * *
The fields around Choedri were tilled: the land showed order, the work of farmer folk not one of whom was in view. There was not an ox or a cow in sight—everything away from the highroad, Shoka figured, everything back in the hills, in the folds of the land, or shut away inside the walls of Choedri castle.
"Pray the message got through," Reidi said when he remarked on that eerie vacancy. "Lord Kegi is one we can rely on, if they haven't come down on him—"
"I'd think he'd have sent south," Shoka muttered, more and more uneasy. "Feiyan had time to get to us, for the gods' sake."
They had a couple of men riding point, about half an hour ahead, in the guise of ordinary travelers, unarmored and with nothing martial about themselves or their horses. Be respectful to whoever you meet, Shoka had advised them, mercenaries or Kegi's men. You're townsmen from Ygotai. You're on your way to ask help from the regional authorities.
He hoped the men could carry it off. He hoped the men were still alive up there, concealed in the folds of the land, the small woods. Now and again they would find a blot of flour in the road, which was the scouts' way of telling them it was clear as far as they could see.
But there were too damn many little hedges and hills.
"Another mark," Shoka said, more and more anxious; and almost wished, at the start of a wooded stretch, that the white blotch had not turned up in the road. If you hit a bad stretch, one of you lay back for safety and wait till your partner has it clear. Don't make a mark you're not sure of.
Damn, I don't like it.
"Split the column," he said to Reidi. "Lay back. We'll go through. Damn, doesn't Kegi believe in clearing back his right-of-ways?"
"We planned these overgrowths," Reidi said. "To use."
"So can the enemy," he said curtly; and waved Reidi back. He thought about sending Taizu back, and reckoned, if something went wrong, she was better with him than with a confused and desperate remnant.
The column split, half hanging back.
He put Jiro to a quicker pace. His half of the company kept moving, a brisk pace under the forest shadow, a clean, well-kept road. Another flour splotch.
Then a bending of the road, and a hedge of sharpened stakes dead in their path.
Horses shied up, steel came out. "Dismount!" Shoka yelled, pulling Jiro close against the trees beside the road. He was out of his saddle when a handful of men in Taiyi colors appeared at the barricade.
"Stop!" lord Reidi's lieutenant yelled, still on his horse in the middle of the road. "Stop! This is lord Saukendar—"
It was about time, Shoka thought, to disentangle himself from the thicket and hope Reidi's man was not about to get an arrow through the gut. "Careful!" Taizu said, her voice shaking. She had slid off and ducked down beside him, bow strung and arrow ready. But Saukendar could hardly look the fool, hiding against a bush, so he acted one, and gave her Jiro's reins—no sense getting the old lad shot—and walked out to the middle of the road with the other fool.
They were lord Kegi's men. They had the scouts, credit to them and none to the em
barrassed scouts, who, ungagged and set at their liberty, went back with lord Reidi's lieutenant to explain matters; and Kegi's men were duty-bound to run ahead to the castle and advise lord Kegi it was all true, the lord Saukendar had come back, the provinces of Hainan and Feiyan and Hoishi had risen, their lords were out with their personal guards and their people were on the march. . . .
That was when Shoka heard about the dragon which had heralded his return, a huge beast which had appeared near Ygotai and left its tracks along the dikes, great scars of claws and its immense body dragged in a winding course across the paddies, marks anyone could see.
Shoka looked at Taizu and saw her standing there with her mouth open as if the next moment she was going to deny everything. But she just stood there, with Jiro's reins and the white-legged mare's, at the edge of the road; and he said:
"Taizu."
She brought him Jiro. He took the reins and she stood by him without a word.
There were mercenaries in Tengu, northward. Most were on the Hisei, at Lungan.
So lord Kegi's men warned them. Bad news, Shoka thought. He wanted to be pushing ahead. He wanted to make as much ground as he could, make it sound like a larger advance than it was—bluff and commotion being the best allies they had at the moment.
But fatigue had his vision blurring, and sense said stop, now: that there might be no more chance to stop past Choedri.
"Come to Choedri keep, lord," Kegi's guard urged him. "Our lord will be anxious to see you."
Shoka considered it, longed for a real bed and a hot meal; but prickles went up and down his back at the thought of entering into anyone's walls. Reidi had sworn to Kegi's good will. But Reidi had sworn to the scouts too.
"No," he said. "My apologies to your Idrd, but I've taken an oath—" Gods, what a pretentious lie! "—not to take any shelter before the Hisei. Ask your lord meet us by his gates this evening, if he'll be so kind. Myself—lord Reidi—we'll rest on his side of this woods till dark. We've had a damned long ride to get here."
"My lord," they said, "yes, my lord." And the captain in charge ordered the barricade moved, dispatched a messenger to his lord, and once Reidi and his men had caught up and come current of things, saw them to the far edge of the woods, a slope that overlooked the broad plain where Choedri sat.
More, he offered them what little food and water his company had, and half his men for a guard while they rested, seeing the road behind seemed secure enough.
"Can we trust it?" Taizu asked, quietly, aside, when it came to taking food of them. She was hoarse. He felt the same, as if, the imminent danger past, his wits wanted to scatter and raw suspicion wanted to take over, like something cornered.
He was being irrational, he told himself. It was the surest indication that he was not thinking clearly, when he began to doubt everything, every sound around him, and the pure water they were handed; and a sensible, well-prepared ally whose captain seemed more than competent.
"Hell if we've got a choice," he said.
Chapter Seventeen
It was not a lord's entourage that came up from the plain before dark, it was an expedition, banners, carts, rumbling along in a racket that more than woke Shoka an hour or so into his sleep: for a heart-stopped moment he imagined a whole battalion coming on them, but the banners were the personal banners of the lord of Choedri, vassal of Deigi of Taiyi. The guards stirred about to welcome their lord and lord Reidi roused his entourage—
"There aren't that many of them," Taizu said under her breath, disappointed at their numbers, and Shoka thought the same.
"Supplies," he said. "Likely the rest are back at the town. It wouldn't make sense to march them up here and back again." But he felt the ache in his bones worse than when he had lain down to rest, and he felt a moment of despair for reasons he could not name—except there was so damned much fuss about the approach. Fool, he kept telling himself, fool to be here, fool to take on all this commotion—and not enough men in this place to take the field, not unless this is a damn sight better organized than seems likely—
Go alone, get close to the enemy, get through the defenses—
He had called Taizu a fool for headlong notions like that. Look at me, he thought, and imagined her thinking those thoughts and chiding herself for them and imagining master Saukendar must have some secret plan for going along with these lords, these keep-bound lords all but Reidi and Maijun successors to the ones he knew—and all the while master Saukendar's mind was so muddled with exhaustion and dealing with others' plans and plots that he could not see the chance to do anything but rush ahead of the tide till bone gave and wits went scattered on the winds—
Plan your retreat—
Minimal force—
Superior position—
The lords of ten years ago had given way to new lords, untried in the field, and gods knew what had changed or what survived along the track to Cheng'di—
Or where Ghita was, holding what; or how many mercenaries the imperial treasury could buy—
The lord and his baggage train rattled up-—decidedly not the portly lord of Choedri he had known—a thin, bookish sort climbing off his horse, who—gods!—dropped a scroll from his sleeve and nearly collided with the servant who dived to retrieve it—
Scroll clutched to him then, handed him by the same servant—"My lord Reidi! My lord Saukendar!" the presumable lord Kegi said, and, brow wrinkled anxiously: "It is lord Saukendar—"
"Yes," Shoka said, and taking a deep, resolute breath: "M'lord, I hoped you'd come."
—with ten times the men. . . . Which I hope are down there, m'lord.
You could have spared the books.
"I've brought food, spare horses, all we have—Rest, please! We'll see to things, we'll have you a good supper, have the horses rubbed down—my doctor has a salve—"
While the servants were noisily pulling things off the wagons, hauling out firepots and cooking-pots and bundles and jars of food, confusion like an upset in an anthill. Shoka stood blinking as a meal began to happen, and the doctor and a small clutch of servants took immediately to the horses—a whirl of servants and cooks: Gods save us, food and efficiency—There is hope of this man. . . .
Which was enough to loosen his knees and blur his eyes and remind him he was exhausted and at wit's end. "M'lord," he said by way of courtesy, "forgive me. I'll leave things in your hands." That with his last sane breath; and he dragged himself and Taizu back to their blankets at the roadside.
Kegi might murder the lot of them, he thought. Kegi, so convincing to Reidi for years, might be a spy. He was new in his office. The Regent had to have acquiesced in his accession to his post. Anything could be a trick, nothing could be trusted, but they had gone as far as flesh and bone could go without rest and sleep.
If we eat his food, as well sleep in his keeping. Reidi trusts him. Taizu doesn't object. If there're no honest men left in Chiyaden—what are we here for at all, and what chance have we in the first place?
Upon which thought he sank toward dark, grateful to let go for a while more.
But he saw through slitted, hazing eyes the motion of lord Kegi's men about them, saw them stop and saw them stare and whisper together—
What are you looking at? he wondered. Stares he had had all his life; and whispers behind hands—
But he heard the word woman, and then he knew the gist of it, and what they whispered, and why.
The demon-wife, the ensorceller: the rumor still spread, Kegi's messengers, this time. They saw a man snared, they whispered together, they wove details to suit their fancy—and Taizu if she did hear made no sound and no complaint.
He hated it. He had always hated it. Damn his moment's whimsy, damn the whole madness they were involved in—
Gods knew how much she heard: whispers wondering at the scar on her face, about where he had come by her, at how much wife meant—the story growing by the hour and the day, people whispering about her—who had so much expected of her and so little resources left
; and no forty years' experience to armor her.
"I know," he whispered into her ear, wrapping her in his arms, the hell with the curious and the gawkers. "Rest. Hell with them. They're crazed."
"They'll get us killed," she said, the first objection she had raised.
They. These people. And us.
No one achieves perfection, master Yenan had said—how many times?
But on the mountain they had touched it. Everything on the mountain had been better than this. It always would be. And it seemed more and more remote from the place they had gotten to.
"Go down to Choedri," he said. "Wait this out. This isn't your kind of fight. I didn't teach you this."
"No," she murmured, working closer to bury her head against his shoulder, and he pulled the blanket over her to give her the dark she was hunting for. "Not Choedri."
She was close to sleep. He was. They had had the argument again and again. He knew the steps, one after another. "Where, then?"
"Sleep." Patiently, wearily, with a sigh against him, a tightening of her arms.
Horses can't take much more, he thought. Too little resources. Too few men. Should have gotten Reidi and his men back across the river, into Hoisan. I should have done everything from there. . . .
If I had the strength—if the horses did—
She knows. I taught her better than this. . . .
She hasn't said a word since we took up with Reidi. Since I asked her—stay with me. . . .
Fool, girl, say it! Damned fool!
I've known—I've known it. Too many well-intentioned, too many brave, without sense—
Too late to turn this around. Too many committed, too many in too far—
There's no damn help in good intentions—
—should have learned that, dammit, should have learned that, ten years and the land's not the same, the land's bled too long, the fighters are dead. This is becoming a disaster.
No hope when we count our numbers in the hundreds and we're this close to Cheng'di—
He slept, while he was trying to work that out . . . sleep like a roll off a cliff, just enough time to know he was going, thump! and gone, until he smelled cooking and woke by firelight, with Taizu's armored body up against his, and Reidi's lieutenant saying, close by them, "Lord Saukendar, please, there's dinner. My master thinks you might want to wake now,"
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