The Paladin

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,"

Another little dark space. "Lord Saukendar?" the voice said, persisting.

Saukendar would have been awake the first time. Saukendar would not be caught that deeply asleep. Shoka dragged his weary limbs up to a sitting position, raked his hair out of his eyes and rubbed his eyes at the firelight glare and the sting of smoke.

He coughed; it was the cold ground; and blinked again, finding Taizu no quicker at least—finding the very ground unsteady under him until he had had a moment to collect himself.

He should be scared, he thought. He had been fretting over their situation when he had fallen asleep and he should be worried now, except he could not remember the details of matters and he found himself lost in a kind of haze in which everything had equal importance—Ghita, their numbers, the horses' condition, the season of the year, his memory of the way ahead, that led to Lungan and the great bridge—

His own calmness amazed him. He sat a moment letting his vision sort itself clear and he still could not muster any emotion about the chance of attack. Nothing was clear yet. Nothing made sense. Nothing was urgent, and it might have been ten years ago, himself suspecting nothing of the stirrings in the capital—

—Meiya, perhaps, taking account of things that night and realizing, because Meiya had always been alert to such things, that his absence and Ghita's shifting this and that man's duty in the palace might mean harm—

Meiya had sent for Heisu in the night. That much he knew—

On that thin charge they had had Heisu's life; and she had had recourse to the cup—

"M'lord." Taizu's voice, Taizu's hand on his. He had no more interest in remembering Meiya. It was the hall he saw around her that he tried to bring into focus, the exact recollection of the palace in a detail that he had not had in memory for all these years. He was there, and all Cheng'di was outside, the land beyond that, every detail of the road. . . .

"Don't," he said to her. It was very close, all the recollection, Cheng'di to Lungan, and the bridge there. . . .

That.

He sat there a moment. He built the entire waterfront at Lungan in his mind, the great bridge—the walled garrison beside it on the esplanade, the street beyond, where it went through a town of red tile roofs and buff walls, of prosperous shops. Trinket-sellers and vendors who cajoled the travelers bound for the Gate of Heaven, in Cheng'di. The road outbound, across rolling land and rich pasture. . . .

"M'lord," he heard someone say, but it was not Taizu. "Let him alone," her voice said fiercely. "He's heard you."

And closer, working backward from the great bridge over the Hisei, nothing more than the shallow, slow-moving Paigji, crossable at virtually any point until it joined the Tei, well past Botai. . . .

"The Paigji ford will be open on our side," lord Kegi said, by the firelight, over a plentiful supper of pork and rice and honey-cakes, and Shoka listened, between mouthfuls. "I thought—" Kegi was a soft-spoken, nervous man, and the scroll, gods help them, was the works of general Bogi'in, six hundred years ago. Kegi had made a study of that book: the old lord had died, cousin Kegi had succeeded to the seat at Choedri, and while his overlord had not yet responded to Reidi's bird-sent messages—nor would respond, Kegi said, until he was sure others were moving—Kegi had taken the field with nothing but that damn musty scroll for advice, that and his priest, his cook, his horse-doctor, and the men of his personal guard. It was Bogi'in this and Bogi'in that—"I thought, by what I read—it seemed good sense—lord Bogi'in said roads were the thing, Roads and Rice—"

Shoka regarded the man with dismay. A classroom came back to him, master Tagyan—roads and rice, and the lazy song of cicadas; the council-rooms, the late Emperor's voice stern and incisive, regarding the incursions of the Fittha raiders and the security of remotest Feiyan—

"Open—on your side of the ford. How many of the Regent's men on the other?"

"Constantly four or five, on both sides."

A cold chill ran through him, imagining the five from the other side, alarmed, taking flight and alarming the countryside all the way to Cheng'di. No damn use except intimidating the peasants, and counting the traffic. Not a way in hell the mercenaries could hold that border. The Paigji was too shallow, the crossings too numerous to guard.

"You've ordered attack," Shoka said.

"Discreetly," Kegi said.

"My gods," Reidi said.

"My lord," Kegi said to Shoka, nettled, "your arrival in Chiyaden is already a matter of rumor. And speed down that road is surely worth the risk of an alarm—The lords will rally to you. The Appearance of Strength and Confidence—"

Shoka looked at Reidi and saw a face set like a statue's. Not panic. The old man was too disciplined and too politic, considering the men not far out of hearing; but his lieutenant was in the circle, and that man was frowning.

"When will they make this attack?"

"It should have been made by now. At dusk. The Advantage of Superior Numbers—"

One breathed very carefully. One nodded quietly and said, quoting Bogi'in, "Speed and Stealth, m'lord Kegi. How many men do you have?"

"The Regent's policy—" Kegi said, "of taking levies from the provinces—I'm sure lord Reidi has told you—"

Men conscripted and sent to the border wars, to provinces remotest from home, notably to the frontier up in Kiang—lords stripped of all but their personal retainers, even young men essential to the field work and young merchants from the towns, completely untrained for combat. For the defense of the Empire, the young Emperor had said. While Gitu hired a private army with funds far above what any lord of Angen ought to have; and the Emperor, with Ghita's hand firmly guiding his, hired more mercenaries—to maintain the strength of the army at home, with so many men away at war—

"How many men have you got, m'lord?"

"Mounted, a hundred," lord Kegi said. "Myself, my personal guard. Lord Jendei is with us—I had a message from him, and m'lord Reidi—"

With all the lords that have joined us, with all the rest—at best, less than two thousand men. Where are your allies, man, where are the rebels and what do they know, against the mercenaries? Where are all these conscripted soldiers in the Guard that ought to join us—if things are what you say?

People will save their lives, that's the sum of it. Did Bogi'in write that, fool?

"Weapons," Shoka said. "Nature and number. What do you have?"

"Bows," Kegi said. "Spears. —They took most of our horses, m'lord Saukendar. The mercenaries were down here four days ago, they marched away every man between sixteen and forty, except those I could plead were my guard and my servants; even boys out of the fields, and they—"

"There's a long ride between us and Lungan," Shoka said quietly. "And one can cross the Paigji virtually anywhere. But the bridge at Lungan—"

There was profound silence at the fireside, quiet enough that the snap and spit of the fire wore at the nerves. Kegi was sweating. He had that much sense.

"I couldn't prevent them," Kegi said. "I sent a message—to Hoishi and to Feiyan—"

"It didn't catch up with us," Reidi said.

Moving too damn fast. The statement hung there, for anyone to understand. Ghita knows. He's moving to strip us of support. Does he know yet how close we are?

And how few we are?

"The Hisei and the Chaighin," Shoka said. "The two dragons about the walls of Cheng'di, my lords. A barrier and a trap. If they bar that bridge, as well they can, then we're put to swimming the Hisei—or ferrying an army across, an army we haven't got, my lords, so we can't rely on it."

He could see Taizu's hands, that worried a twig to death, white-knuckled. He imagined the thundercloud look on her face, imagined the biting of the lip.

Damn right, girl. Damn right we're in a mess. And this—scholar—attacks the guard at the ford, to help us on our way—

"Keep your guard, m'lord. I'd rather a change of horses."

"M'lord?"

"Jiro's a conspicuous color. He stops here. I can use about ten men, bay horses, mismatched armor, nothing conspicuously good."

"Nine," Taizu said under her breath.

A sensible man would have his wife carried down to Choedri. But small luck for Choedri, he thought, holding onto her.

"Nine men," he said, and looked at Reidi and at Kegi. "I'll want my horse back. I value him. The mare too. Bring them to Lungan."

"Nine men—" Reidi possibly understood what was toward. Perhaps even Kegi did.

"And I want a bird, m'lord Kegi. One of the Emperor's birds ..."

The dovecote, the aviary, the gawky young Emperor tending his birds every morning . . . personally.

"M'lord?"

"Have you one of the Emperor's birds, lord Kegi?"

"Yes, my lord," Kegi said.

"And a writing-kit?"

That, of course Kegi had. The Necessity of Records. Bogi'in had devoted an entire section of his book to that matter.

Shoka rubbed Jiro's bowed nose and got a butt in the ribs for his sentiment; but it was hard to walk away, imagining—he told himself he was a fool—that the horse knew desertion when he saw it, that the old lad could smell it in the air, hear it in his voice.

He moved fast when he took up a remount's reins and stepped up into the saddle—last of all their small company. He bade a quick good luck to the men he was leaving and put himself out in front of his company, in the dark of the woods and the night.

Fool, he told himself a second time, because he felt himself that much further from things he knew, too far away now to get back again—too lost to think of home, too much changed, except that rider that came up beside him—

Fool for taking her along in a business like this, fool not to send her back, lie to her, give her some charge that would keep her busy long enough—but of the ten he had, she was the one he wanted by him, she was the one who would never cross his moves, never misstep, never leave anything to chance—

So they were mercenaries, that was all, dirty and haggard and riding away from the disaster to the south.

And it was not the Choedri ford of the Paigji they headed for, it was the one east of there, off the road—no road for wagons or traders, but the sandy Paigji had such places up and down its course, it always had had, and the whole border between Taiyi and Tengu was a sieve as passable for Ghita's men to launch an attack south as for them to slip north.

If Ghita did attack—there was no holding Choedri. But what Ghita would come seeking would not be there.

Reidi understood. He had made Reidi understand. Seven days, he had said.

He hoped Reidi understood.

"Ghita?" was all Taizu had asked, before he had explained a thing, by which he knew she guessed what he was doing.

"No basket," he had said. "Mercenaries. We need the horses."

Taizu had nodded soberly and said: "No ribbons either."

And, "No ribbons," he had agreed, amused despite himself.

Listening to which conversation, any third person had to know they were both crazed.

Sword, bow, and the plain, desperate look of-hired soldiers, Taizu's hair flying loose around her ears, a barbaric topknot tied atop, amulets about her neck, her face smudged with dirt and a mercenary's grimy sheepskin coat over her armor—part of the spoil of the lot at the ferry: no casual glance would find a woman under that mop, or expect more than a wiry, smallish youth in the company of men as disreputable.

The nine were a handful of lord Reidi's men, reliable and steady; and one Jian from Choedri, that Kegi had sent—He knows the roads, Kegi had said.

And thank the gods Jian, who had a girl the other side of the Paigji, knew the back trails and found them the shallows he had promised them, a solid bottom, an easy belly-deep wade for the horses at the worst, hock-deep in most of it, and a peaceful climb up a game-trail into Tengu province.

Not riding straight north, toward Lungan, in the line of march they had established, but to the ferry in Anogi, two days' ride down the Hisei.

"I'd ask," Shoka said to Taizu finally, when the morning was breaking, and they were well across the Paigji, "knowing you wouldn't go back to Choedri—there's a straight ride on west—"

"No," she said. He sighed. "Unless you do," she said after a while.

"No," he said, from the gut, and thought about it. Again. But there was no way out except a coward's way, for both of them—unacceptable. And he knew that. "Hell of a mess, wife."

"No worse than Hoisan," she said. His student. The girl with the basket, who had known traps before he taught her, a woman born to times when pig-girls learned ambushes and the bow. He saw what had become of Chiyaden: he imagined what growing up for a peasant girl might have been, in these years.

"You were fighting in Hua," he said, "—how long ago?"

"At least six years," she said after a moment. "Seven, I guess. Everyone hid out, every time the soldiers came over our border. There's a lot of hills in Hua. —Till the soldiers got to burning us out. Then lord Kaijeng—my brothers were with him, mostly—said fight any way we could. And my brothers when they were home, they taught us. When the castle fell, when lord Kaijeng died, my brothers came home then. But there wasn't much anyone could do then. Nobody was in charge. The soldiers ran right over us."

"They had to," Shoka said, thinking of how Hua sat, a hilly place apt for rebels, touching Angen's borders. "If they couldn't put you under, they couldn't hold Yijang or Sengu, Mendang or even Taiyi, and without Taiyi, no hope for Hoishi—everything's connected, all the way up to Yiungei, one great loop they couldn't hold, if little Hua embarrassed them. You were damned important."

This, for the girl who had never studied maps.

She might be thinking it through. Or she might be thinking about her home. Finally she said: "Gitu's not that important. What they were afraid of then, the reason they had to run us over—they've got to be afraid now, don't they, unless they can catch us? If they go attack the lords and their people back south—we're not there. But they'll know where we were. And not where we'll be. They'll try to kill you. They haven't won if they don't. So we lead them all over."

"Damned smart. Damned bloody. That's the trouble with young thinkers."

She looked at him. He could tell that much, with the sheen of starlight on her head, on her shoulders. She had not asked a question, had not challenged him once—in front of witnesses. By now she was likely choking on questions.

"How do we do it, then?"

"We embarrass Ghita," he said. "We make him retreat, we make him a fool. It's a damn dangerous game. Does it scare you?"

"People know you," she hissed. "They're talking, master Shoka, don't think they're not. Everywhere people have gotten to, everywhere those birds get to. Ghita's not sleeping tonight. Neither is Gitu—or the Emperor. We'll keep them awake at night, the way you said. And eventually they'll do something stupid. And people will stop being afraid of them."

"I'll tell you," he said, "there are too many of us to strike deep and too few of us to strike wide, that's what we're doing out here. They're too damn slow to organize and gods know—" Gods know what any of these men are worth in the field. But he did not say that, considering their companions on this trail. "Ghita's been ready for this for years. Maybe too ready. Maybe he'll jump too soon. Maybe he'll follow us, who knows? Or maybe he'll be smarter than that and do something we haven't figured. That's always the trouble with planning things."

Taizu was looking at him again, shadow-shape thinking thoughts he could not read.

She was not the crazy one. Perhaps she had only seemed to be, all along, and her craziness was simply a sane girl's dealing with a man who had gone a little mad in his solitude, or who had always been a little mad, serving one Emperor and the other. It had felt that way to him—that their whole course had felt increasingly wrong, and that Taizu had the same opinion, that she had been biting her tongue and watching, waiting for him to produce a miracle or come to his senses, and she had not really known which.

I've taught her—to be clever. I've chided her about foolishness and fools and taught her how to win a lop-sided fight. She was seeing it, dammit, while I let Reidi and Kegi plan my course, Kegi—of course the fool; but Reidi—

Reidi so damned competent, so much more plausible, with things done and the course laid—

But the flaws were in the very start of it, flaws in intelligence, flaws in assuming too much help from frightened people—

This isn't a time for Kegi's sort. Virtue's a damn poor substitute for battalions—

"Who knows?" he said. "The pigeon may get through."

Don't trust Ghita, he had written to the Emperor. Run for your life.

And signed it without flourish or titles:

Saukendar.