The Paladin

Chapter Fifteen

"Lord Saukendar," Reidi said, his wrinkled face—not so much changed, after all these years—showing the worry natural to a man at such a meeting. But the old lord came forward in person, once his retainer had told him who it was—came forward himself with no guard, elderly as he was, while his retainers drew his troops up at rest on the hill.

"Lord Reidi," Shoka said, and bowed in the saddle. "I appreciate your courtesy."

"You're after more than courtesies, m'lord."

"A free road. Your leave to pass. Perhaps your advice."

"What advice is that?"

"What's happening in Hoishi?" Shoka nodded his head back toward Ygotai. "What kind of craziness is loose in Chiyaden these days?"

Reidi stared at him as if he had lost his wits.

"So I see I've asked a foolish question," Shoka said. "Am I at fault?"

"I had a report from Mon. Another from a judge—regarding a horse. Unfortunately—I'm not the only one who'll have heard. The word's out. It's going north of here. The Regent's men have been scouring all along your track. And evidently they've attacked me as your ally."

Shoka let go his breath. "You've been a good neighbor, m'lord. I'd never wanted to cause you grief. Now it seems I've caused more than my company may be worth to you. What about the other lords? What about Hainan and Taiyi?"

"What about my town, m'lord? What happened at Ygotai?"

"Someone set fires. Someone killed a great number of people. The ones who escaped have taken to the roads. I don't know who fired the town. I rode through when I saw the fires—my wife and I—"

"Wife!" Lord Reidi looked past his shoulder, his jaw clamped like an old turtle, his eyes glittering sharply. "What are you doing to us?"

"My wife has a grievance with lord Gitu. From Hua. Relatives. I thought to have a quieter ride than this, by night, by the back roads—take care of the matter and out again, with no grief to Hoishi. It seems I'm sadly mistaken. So I ask you for your advice now—and I offer you my help—if there were anything I can do to make amends."

"You don't know," Reidi said with a shake of his head.

"My lord, no, I don't." Softly, quietly. Reasonably, while his heart was hammering away and he was poised to move. "Would you explain?"

Reidi leaned his hands on the saddle and heaved a sigh. "The Emperor, lord Saukendar. The Emperor—and the Regent. Does it seem reasonable to you that a Regency continues—into an Emperor's thirtieth year?"

"No, m'lord."

"Not to us, either. Not to many of us. We were ready to make that objection—when lord Gitu overran Yijang and Hua. Both likely to support us. Your—wife—has told you nothing about that matter."

"Tell me."

Lord Reidi's brow arched, rearrangement of a myriad wrinkles. "I ask your honesty, m'lord,"

"You have it, my lord. I believe I have yours."

There was long silence. Reidi's horse shifted under him. That was all.

Then Reidi said: "Gitu has hired thousands of mercenaries in the last two years—with the imperial treasury. Fittha and Oghin, while we fight their like on the border. While they take our young men to fight in the Imperial army. And there is no Emperor to rally to. Ghita's sapped the wit he did have. Ghita's assassins have taken Meigin...."

"Damn."

Reidi gave him that one-sided stare again. "Why did you come back?"

"A man can be a fool at any age."

"In what respect, m'lord Saukendar?"

"Perhaps—to hope there was something changed here."

"There is no Emperor."

"Dead?"

"Effectively. There was a chance. There were those of us who would have brought him to the throne—His thirtieth birthday seemed the propitious day—"

"Hua. Two years ago."

"Hua and Yijang. Which fell to Gitu's mercenaries in the same month. Assassinations, elsewhere. Hired killers. Bands of mercenaries traveling under imperial orders. The Emperor's seal, and the Regent's orders. How do we stop such a thing? How do we prevent it—when every lord able to lead is apprehended, assassinated, when they strip us of men, even boys out of the fields—go to Saukendar, some said. Go to Saukendar. They urged me to send to you. This time he has to listen, they said. But if I had sent—and Ghita had known—you understand—" Reidi gave an uncomfortable twitch of the shoulders. His horse shifted again. "I had no true hope that you'd come. You'd indicated to the villagers—that you had no wish to hear from anyone. That you would refuse any such petitions—"

"You were watching me."

"It's my village, m'lord—as the Regent pointed out to me again and again, and threatened my life should you leave that mountain. Of course the word came to me. I tried to get a messenger down the road to you when I knew you'd left Mon. I take it that no one reached you."

"They were too late, if they got through at all. Regarding what, my lord?"

"Your intentions in leaving Mon. Did Kaijeng send a messenger?"

Did he? There was a sudden chill about his heart. Taizu?

Damn, no!

"His daughter?" Reidi asked.

"No. I've said. —What would you have expected me to do—leaving Mon?"

"I would say—lord Saukendar—we need you. We believed you knew that. We believed you'd come back to deal with Ghita and his partisans."

He felt cold, cold all the way to the bones.

"There are men ready to follow you, lord Saukendar. There are men who've committed their lives to this—We didn't know the hour. We only believed. Now you've come back, we have a leader the other lords will take the risk for—"

He rode quietly back to Taizu, whose face—

Gods, the things Reidi had surmised could not be true. Not with that look, that bewildered, worried look she gave him as he reined to a stop in front of her.

"What do they want, master Shoka?"

"They want me to help them," he said. "It seems—the moment we crossed the border—the rumor started north that I'd been called north by some conspiracy, to lead an attack against the capital. The local garrisons of Ghita's troops moved to try to prevent me; the rumor may have reached Ghita by now, by messenger bird—and if it has—" Blood flashed to mind, and poison: Ghita's assassins: the cup in Meiya's hand. Deaths far and wide across Chiyaden, the last possible friends. The numbness seemed all the way through him. "—if it has, then orders are coming back from Ghita by now, the Guard is moving against everyone who might be disposed against the government—Reidi, some of the other lords—they'll fight. They've had enough. They've committed themselves to this—too far to look innocent. That's the problem. They want me to go to Cheng'di; and I want you—please, please listen to me: I would much prefer you go to Keido and stay there—"

"No."

"Girl, we're not talking about bandits in Hoisan. We're talking about imperial troops, an entirely different kind of fighting. You'll have your chance at the end of this. But not now. Please, go to Keido. Lord Reidi's wife will—"

"No."

"I'm asking you. You can be useful there."

She shook her head. "No. You taught me." Her head came up, that chin set. He thought: If not with me, then behind me every step of the way. . . .

"What did I teach you?"

"Honor, master Shoka."

"Where did I teach you a fool idea like that?"

The chin trembled and steadied. "You wouldn't let me go alone. Now you won't go away from lord Reidi and let him go alone against the soldiers. That's what."

Memory painted him gruesome scenes, terrible ways to die. He tried to shove them out. But hell if he could hope she would be reasonable and go to Keido; at bottom, he was only grateful she was not talking about an independent assault on Gitu.

"Then I need you to listen to me," he said, to forestall that before she thought of it. "I ask you—don't surprise me, Taizu. Don't do things like going after Gitu. Later for him. I trust you. I can't say that about any of these people I'm fighting for."

She looked perplexed and worried. Well she might.

"They'll swallow me," he said. It was the only way he could think of it, the people like one vast dragon. They wanted Saukendar; Saukendar would save them; Saukendar owed them everything. Saukendar was whatever they decided him to be. He always had been. Shoka had lived in the belly of the dragon most of his life. Now the dragon wanted him back and all that could keep him out was a girl saying, "That's nonsense, master Shoka. You're a fool, master Shoka."

The body that was Saukendar could go on fighting long after Shoka was nowhere at all: he was confident of that; but Shoka would go with her, Shoka had no other reason to live; and Shoka was ready to hear her say no, and go away, not even knowing what she took with her—being a young girl, and not understanding a man who had never, but a few years of peace—existed.

"What are you talking about?" she asked him.

It was nothing that even sounded sane. So he said: "Just stay with me."

"Is that—marry you, again?"

"No," he said. "It's something different. —Besides, I thought you had."

She bit her lip. "I did, and I'm going with you. You can divorce me if we get to Cheng'di. Meanwhile there's none of the ladies in Chiyaden who'll be any help to you along the way."

"Who said divorce you? I worked hard enough getting you to agree!"

"You just remember I said that." Her jaw clenched. Muscles bunched, making her chin look uncommonly fragile. "You remember that in Cheng'di."

"Then you think damn little of me," he said.

"I'm no lady!"

"The hell with them!" he hissed, smothering it. "The hell with Saukendar, wife. Don't you do it to me! For gods' sake, don't you do it to me!"

She stared at him with wide, offended eyes.

Kaijeng's messenger, lord Reidi had surmised. A scheme to get me back across the border, involved with their plots again?

The very thought left him cold.

But the wound that scarred her was real. Her anger was real. Everything she knew and all she did was real. He wavered on the edge of a vast dark and Taizu with that shocked, hurt stare—was the only thread that saved him.

Right now she thought he had lost his mind, and was no little angry at him. Good, he thought. Good for you, girl.

They came among the first of the refugees from Ygotai by full daylight, and it was very different when the people saw their own lord's banner; and when they understood that the tired, travel-stained riders with him were Saukendar and his wife.

Shoka heard the murmurings, saw the change in the people's eyes, saw the respect they gave him. Poor fools, he thought. Your houses are burned; your neighbors are murdered for me. Damn you for looking at me like that—

But if one tried very hard one could ignore the stares, one could blur the faces at the edge of one's vision, one could tolerate the old woman who came and scared hell out of Jiro trying to touch him, babbling something about the old Emperor, and the way things used to be, and how she knew Saukendar would set things right.

One could blur one's vision and make one's heart cold and tolerate it, even if it rubbed the soul raw.

They got some satisfaction for it at Ygotai, among the burned sticks and rubble that had been a prosperous town. They found a small band of mercenaries, which Shoka expected: and he had already sent thirty of Reidi's men wide around the town to lay an ambush while he and Taizu rode with Reidi and the other hundred of Reidi's men down past the town and onto the dike road where the garrison had put the barricade across the bridge.

It was appallingly easy. They gave the mercenaries the way out down the main street of the town and chased them all the way to the ambush out on the road, in which they had one minor wound; and the one of the mercenaries that looked apt to escape, went tumbling off into the ditch with an arrow in him.

"Good," Shoka said coldly, calmly. "That'll let us gain a little ground before the word spreads. M'lord, you say you'll go north: are you ready to go now, this hour?"

Reidi looked gray. His white hair flew in wisps. He looked as if the affair around him was more than he had bargained for. But he got his breath and nodded. "Yes. My wife—the system we have—We can get word to the others. The birds—we breed them, you know. Exchange them. That's how we've planned it. When the day came—we'd loose the birds ... to every one of us."

They had the mercenaries' few horses for remounts—a good chestnut gelding to give Jiro relief and a bay to change off with Taizu's white-legged mare.

It was the ferry on the Chisei that Shoka figured for trouble. So it was more than the horses they borrowed: it was the armor and gear off the dead mercenaries, and when they got as far up the road as the Chisei it was not lord Reidi's men in view, it was himself and five of lord Reidi's best on the mercenaries' horses, in the mercenaries' gear—fifteen more on foot. "You're not going," he told Taizu flatly when she stuck her lip out at him and glared. "You're too damn short, girl, you don't look like anybody they know, so shut up and take orders like anybody else in this company."

She mended her manner then.

And he led the chestnut gelding down to the river where lord Reidi's men were hauling the rope-drawn ferry back across the river.

Small guess why there were no ferrymen. If they had had sense they had run; if they had had no luck they were dead; and if there was not a band of mercenaries on that other shore the enemy were fools.

Slow going: the men playing infantry hauled on the rope, Shoka and the two with horses in charge had the horses to keep steady.

Easy to figure why the ferry was lodged on the far side of the river, and what might have been the fate of the farmers who had tried to flee to Taiyi.

It was a low shore, a dirt road going up from the ferry-landing; bushes beyond, a little stand of saplings—yellow earth, pale grasses, the haze that was not autumn.

Beyond the Chisei, the heartland, of which Hoishi and Hoisan and Mendang were only the outliers. Pan'yei. The lap of Heaven. And the air stank of burning.

Hell of a homecoming, Shoka thought, and swung up to mount as the bow of the ferry bumped the shore. The gelding had no notion of going. Shoka kicked him hard in the flanks and the horse shied up and scrambled off in a scrape and thump of hooves on board and mud. Up the slope, no more than an energetic man might do. He saw the mercenaries break cover of the thicket and bar his path with bent bows and arrows they hesitated to fire.

That was their mistake.

It took some little time to ferry a hundred men and as many horses across the river. Shoka shed his borrowed armor and sat in the shade of a more substantial tree well up on shore while Jiro and the mare rested with eyes shut, not even interested to graze. Neither was he interested in the food Taizu pressed on him; but he swallowed it down, muttered, "I'm done, girl," and stretched himself out to rest on the cool ground, that was all he wanted.

Mostly his head was throbbing, his leg ached, and he saw blood when he shut his eyes, he saw terrible things. But he could trust where he was. She was there, she told him she would not sleep, and as long as she was awake in the daylight, then he was safe and he knew his way back to the world.

Taizu, nodding away with her sword between her knees, Taizu, in her strange leather armor, with the ribbons in her hair. As long as he saw that he did not see the blood, and the dark would stay away.

"Get away," she had screamed at some man of Reidi's, who had come up asking questions. "He hasn't slept since yesterday, let him alone!"

Whoever it was and whatever it was, waited, and would wait, he reckoned, wandering that dark place.

There were shadows there. He fought with them.

The old Emperor was there. My son is a fool, the old man said.

Everyone told you so, he said, out of patience and disrespectful of the old man.

He stalked out of the imperial hall without courtesies. The guards for some reason did not stand in his way.

It was his father he was looking for, it seemed it had been a long search, and fraught with more and more anxiety.

I have someone to show you, he would say.

But when he thought he had found his father, sitting in the courtyard at home, his father vanished, and there was a shadowy army on the field in front of him, and the sun in his eyes.

And Taizu squatting in front of him and saying: "M'lord. M'lord, you've got to wake up now. Please. Lord Reidi says."

He squinted at her and shaded his eyes with his arm, not sure for the moment whether he was awake or not, with a feeling of anxiety for the men—how many of them?—waiting for him—where? how long ago? or when? His heart hammered while he tried to sort then from now and recollect if there was something he had promised, something he was urgently supposed to recall.

But it was only Taizu moving between him and the sun, and holding out a steaming cup of tea.

He struggled up to put his back against the tree and took the cup in a shaking hand and drank. The shade had passed from where he had slept. He blinked and tried to take account of where he was, saw lord Reidi walking up on them, the men gathered a little distance away, seated, the horses at tether.

"M'lord Saukendar," Reidi said, standing at the edge of the sun, shadow against the blaze of light. "Forgive me, but we're in a precarious position here—a hundred men—here against the river—The mercenaries—"

His head ached. He squinted, trying to do Reidi the courtesy of looking at him. An anxious old man. An old man who risked everything being here, in the kind of situation Reidi had spent his whole life avoiding. Shoka felt no fear at all. He remotely wished he felt something, except exhaustion, or that something was as important to him as the wish for another hour to lie down and the wish Reidi would move a handspan over and block the sun from his eyes. He motioned with his hand. Reidi moved, flustered at the mundane request, and Shoka let his arm fall and leaned his head against the tree.

"We're all right," he said. "Rest here a while, go up to Choedri, hope lord Kegi's stayed at home—"

"We don't know where the mercenaries are," Reidi said. "M'lord Shoka, we haven't crossed the river to sit here with our backs to the water. ..."

Textbook soldiery. "Men and horses can do only so much, m'lord." His voice was hoarse, and it cracked, point proved, he thought, if the old man listened to anything but his own growing panic. "We have cover, they don't know we're here—we're just the guard they set here. Let them come. We'll move at dark."

It was not what Reidi wanted to hear. Reidi stood there and gnawed his lip and finally said: "We're a hundred men, m'lord Saukendar."

"You say we'll be more after Choedri."

"I don't know. If we'd gone back to Keido, if we'd occupied Ygotai—"

—my lands and my family would be safer, I'd be on familiar ground—

"—the others would rally to us—"

"Making the Chisei a battleline." His voice cracked again. "I'd rather one closer to Cheng'di. Or will the other lords join us? Will the officers of the army? Or will the levies fight for us—or for the Regent? If you have any doubts of that, m'lord Reidi, best we all go south and keep going."

"To the ruin of our lands."

Shoka closed his eyes. "We'll move, m'lord, but with our numbers, dark is better. If anyone wants the ferry, a few of your men can help them, and get among them. No need for a lot of noise. If someone's due to report, they may come to investigate. Put a man up that tree over there. Wrap him up in a cloak, let him look like a lump, and let him watch the road. I'm going to sleep a while. So's my wife. I'd advise you and your men do the same, by turns. Pick the scared ones for sentries. They won't sleep anyway."

Lord Reidi was one of the latter, Shoka reckoned by the look Reidi gave him.

"Dark," Shoka said, and Reidi gave him a curt bow and went away.

"You'd better sleep," Shoka said to Taizu then; and Taizu came and sat down by him and snuggled down without a word.

Poor girl, he thought. He reached up to his shoulder and touched her cheek. It was the scarred side. He rested his cheek against the top of her head, felt her arm go over him. He saw the cabin then, when he shut his eyes. Saw her in the morning, in that damned over-sized shirt, with the water-bucket, trudging up the hill. . . .

"M'lord!" someone hissed, and Shoka came out of sleep toward twilight, Taizu waking, the man saying something about riders coming.

"How many?" he snapped back.

"Five, six—"

"Then take care of it, dammit!" He rubbed his eyes and got to one knee in the dusk. "Dammit, where's my armor!" Petulantly, because his throat had made it come out that way.

"It's over here, master Shoka." Taizu, on her hands and knees. As horses came nearer and men rode into their midst.

And bowstrings sang, one, two, a dozen.

Bodies hitting the ground. Shoka groped after his sword. But it was over. Lord Reidi's men caught the horses. Shoka stumbled to his feet and walked over to the scattering of bodies, kicked at one. Through the neck. That man was not talking.

Nor were the others. Lord Reidi's men were elated, having proven themselves formidable, he reckoned. At least none of them had gotten away.

Sometimes he was sick at his stomach at something like this. At the moment he was still muzzy with sleep and wishing he had not gotten up so quickly and wishing it were not indecent to ask for a cup of something hot at such a juncture. "It's all right, it's all right," he said to a nervous lord Reidi. "None of them raised a fuss."

Raised a fuss, my gods. I want to go home, that's all. I want the mountain, I want Taizu and me and Jiro, there, safe, tomorrow morning.

The sun and the moon and the stars while I'm at it.

Damn, I want my own porch and my spring and the view out the front door. . . .

He walked back and sat down to put on his shin-guards, his own armor this time, fitted to him, not the mercenary's rig—while lord Reidi followed him up chattering about the necessity of getting underway, of his fears of discovery, about the risk they were running.

Yes, m'lord, no, m'lord, hell if you don't know your choices by now, my lord. . . .

"Send some of your younger men out," Shoka said, "if there's any reasonable chance of them making it. Hell with the pigeons. Have them spread the word where it counts most, in person, where they can answer questions and give assurances, and hope your allies are committed to this."

Lord Reidi went to do that.

He tied the cords about and put on the armor-sleeves. Taizu was there to help him with the body-armor. Not a word from her, not a complaint, only a grim, jaw-clenched calm.

He took her by the arm, said, close to her ear: "Are you all right, girl?"

"I'm fine." Tight, between the teeth.

He put the arm about her, held onto her a moment, scared for her, scared for himself.

"Plan your retreat," she said into his ear. "Plan your retreat, isn't that right?"

"Damn good advice. I couldn't think of better. Wish to hell we had the men to leave for a garrison."

Then speed . . . speed and silence, in lieu of numbers. . . .

They were on the road by dark, and with a good string of remounts, thanks to the mercenaries on this side and that of the river. No stopping, Shoka had decreed. The handful of lads Reidi had picked had gone out, with Shoka's instructions in their ears, a good half hour in front of them, but none of them to Choedri.

"We'll deliver that message ourselves," Shoka said.