Shoka wiped his nose and drank the pleasantly steaming willow-tea with his supper—old mother willow and her sisters gave them a shelter, a canopy of ground-reaching branches that enveloped them, the horses, a level, tolerably dry bank, and a little of the river edge. Sometimes barges and boats passed, bound from Ygotai onward to trifold Mandi, which sat astride the Chaighin where it and the Hoi became the Great River, and flowed on to distant reaches of Sengu and Mendang, and remote outposts where barbarian traders came. And sometimes those boats came back upriver bearing, one supposed, goods from Mandi's bazaars. A rough place, Mandi, a country place, lacking the graces of the imperial city—but prosperous with the trade from the joining rivers and from the outside.
Strange to think that that large city was not so far away, when they sat in their willow-tent sneezing and coughing and warm, thank the gods, the willow tending to confine the smoke so they dared a tiny fire now and again, and shielding them from the wind and the misting rain.
"On the whole," he had said to Taizu, that first morning, "we're quite well situated. Let the furor die down. Let them wonder where we are. We don't seem in any danger of being discovered, no one walks this shore, they go by boat—so I can't think of a better place for the moment."
And Taizu: "I hope the north river isn't this wide, without going back—"
"It's not." He sneezed, and wiped his nose, and seeing how low Taizu's spirits were, got himself a willow-wand and sketched her the wedge shape of Hoishi, with its two main rivers, the Hoi and the Chisei. And Taiyi, the other side. "The Chisei never is much. A soldier knows these things. His supply depends on them. I've neglected your education in maps, girl; maps are the essentials of any campaign—"
His voice was going. They had rubbed the horses down when they had first made their camp, they had cut grass on the dike-side, numb with cold and staggering with exhaustion, and seen that Jiro and the mare had a breakfast. Then they had stopped, tucked up in the quilts their mats had managed to keep dry, both of them cold as corpses and holding onto each other. Warmth came, warmed bodies, warmed limbs, enough to shiver a while, enough for Shoka's leg to start hurting again, an agony that would have kept him awake if he were not so mortally exhausted. As it was he simply clamped his jaws and tried to think of something else, waiting for exhaustion to win out, determined not to give way to the pain in Taizu's hearing. But she made a sound, a kind of steady, hurt whimper with every breath, until he stroked her wet hair and hugged her and she stopped, evidently realizing only then that she was doing it.
Poor girl. There was no strength, he thought, could have carried her; it was the simple, stupid vitality of the young, who had no experience to tell them what was possible.
And seeing her moving around, with the afternoon, a man had to move again, and see to his gear. It was her job, washing their clothes. But it was not the cabin on the mountain, it was the field again; a man took care of his own things if he had no servant. And he did not.
There was no way all the dirt would ever come out of the cloth or the leather. "We'll look like mercenaries for certain," he said, while she used a pot of oil soap to try to restore their tack and the leather of their clothing.
"It's a mess," she said.
"It's always a mess." The leg hurt enough to distract him from the rest of his stiff muscles. "I think I tore something in the knee. I'm not sure whether it's good or bad."
"We haven't got the rags. Except these."
He looked at the oily rags she was using, heating them over a tiny fire in a tin pan; and the ache was enough to blur his vision, the thought of warmth on the joint enough to make his speech thick. "We can try it."
It did help. It helped so much he lay back on the ground beneath the willows and shut his eyes and opened them to find the whole world gone dim.
Twilight.
Taizu sitting by him, waiting.
That was how the willow-tea.
And the map-drawing in the fading daylight, Taizu watching the lines he drew with that thinking-frown on her face and her lip caught in her teeth in that way she had when she was desperate and worried.
Terrified.
"We can go two ways from here," he said. "Back along the Hoi till we can cross; or up to the Chisei. West or east. Your choice."
"If I wasn't with you," she said, fists clenched, "master Shoka, I'd be on into Taiyi."
He shook his head. "You'd be dead back on the riverside. With a good number of bandits to your credit. But you'd be dead." He saw her chin trembled. He thought of home again, on the mountain. He thought of the assassins and the armies, thought of sleepy lord Reidi in Keido, who might be forced, finally—to do something about the exiled lord Saukendar, if only to loose messages north.
Thought of the villagers of Mon, who had fed him all these years, lying dead for no fault but relying on him.
Thought of a young fool who tried too much and did too much and who, damn her, had cleaned their tack and their armor and washed their clothes and made him tea and now had the gall to call him useless and an encumbrance.
It must be the pain. His eyes stung, and he massaged the aching leg.
Her hand rested on his. She leaned forward and put her arm about his neck, her cheek against his. "Please let's go home. Let's go home. I'll marry you."
He put a hand up to push her back. "For what? To keep me from getting you killed?"
He saw the glistening on her cheeks in the last of the light. "It doesn't matter what happened," she said. "It doesn't matter anymore. I'll be your wife. Please let's go home."
Whatever she did—was always at the wrong time. He thought that again: that it was always the right promise at the wrong time.
Damn honor and damn the pride that made men fools. Take what she offered. Take her across the river to the wilds of Hoisan, find another mountain. Have sons and daughters.
Damn the things he had taught her, encouraging the woman he loved to put a premium on honor, and pride, and all the things that made men fools—
But, he had thought, she had come to him already equipped with that. And she had compelled him to teach her. And believed in him, beyond the point she knew him in his mornings and his out-of-sorts days, his worst days and his lameness and all his faults—
She was the invulnerable one. She was young. She was all those things.
And it took his weakness to stop her and make her plead with him, never saying it: Don't kill yourself. I can't stand to watch you. I'll marry you.
He touched her face. He said: "Did I teach you this? Pull yourself together. Plan your retreats. If you want to go back across the river and think a while—we can do that. But I don't say you should give up. I don't say you should ever give up. We can go back a while. That's another part of soldiering. You reconnoiter, you gather information. We've created a little stir, so now I'll tell you what we do, we go back into Hoisan, we wait for the rumor to get to the capital, if it will; we spread the word—like I said, remember?—that I'm at large. That the woman with me has a grudge with Gitu. Let our enemies lose sleep. Let them grow thin worrying. Let the time be ours. You and I—we can be with them—we can be with them closer than their wives of nights. That's what I'd do."
Like I've always done. And gods know if they even care.
Taizu rested her head on her arm, one hand at the back of her neck.
"All right," she said.
In that beaten, weary way that had never been Taizu.
The morning came with a gentle damp in the air, an autumnal chill next the water. A boat passed. The voices of the rivermen and the splash of oars pierced the stillness.
They lay close beneath the clammy quilts, for nothing other than warmth, and Shoka tried to keep his coughing still—wishing not to disturb Taizu and not to attract notice. But Taizu coughed too, and it was a long time before either of them stirred out, to make a breakfast their throats were too sore to enjoy, to cut grass for fodder and tend to the horses, and to huddle in damp quilts and reckon their situation—how much food they had, how long they could avoid discovery.
Jiro and the mare made acquaintance—too much noise and too much stubbornness for two fevered, exhausted human beings to trust; and the mare too close to her own home to trust she might not bolt—excepting the attraction of Jiro, who was less inclined to desert them and go kiting off to the dikes—excepting the horses were as sore and tired as their owners, willing to rest and fill their bellies while their owners huddled in a nest of blankets that would not quite dry and coughed and sneezed til their sides ached.
"It was like this in Shangei," Shoka said, in what of a voice he had left, "the year we had to ferret the rebels out. Never stopped raining."
"What rebels?" Taizu said, a croak of a voice that might have been a man's.
"Lord Mendi had a nephew," Shoka said, and tried to tell the story, except he took to coughing, and it never would stop until Taizu brewed up willow-tea and he got a little warmth on his throat.
He coughed when he talked, so did she, and mostly their noses ran. So they heated up the rags they had, turn and turn about put them on chests and backs and throats, drank willow-tea for the fever and the sore throats and mostly stayed under covers, while the boats passed, and the rains spattered on the willow-leaves, and winds swayed the trees and shook down water to keep the blankets damp and keep their clothes from drying.
The third day it was better. Taizu trapped some minnows on the riverside and made a hook and used some of their saddlery cording; that night they had their fill of fish and rice with wild herbs, risking a larger fire than usual. A man felt he might live after that supper; and he said:
"I think tomorrow night we might ride back to Ygotai."
She said nothing for a long moment. His heart began to beat faster, because he reckoned that she was not thinking about Ygotai and the south, but about slipping off north tonight, and leaving him and the horses and everything behind.
Except she no longer looked like a peasant. She had not her basket to hide her sword, her shirt was too fine, her shape was not a man's: she could look the peasant squatting on the riverside to fish, and wave at the boatmen and feel quite smug in her deception while he suffered in hiding—
But not on the road, not under close scrutiny.
He had time to think of that. He almost said it out loud, but she sighed and said:
"Yes. We could."
It was not the absolute affirmative he hoped for. He thought of saying: Well, will you? But that would start her arguing, and arguing could send her off to Hua. So he nodded placidly, as if he had never had such a thought. "After moonset. We might have trouble at Ygotai. But once across the bridge—there's no worry."
"Where will we go?"
He shrugged. "Wherever we find pleasant. It's what I say: let our enemies worry." He coughed. That was still with them. "Wherever it is, high ground and drier."
There was fish for the next day. They were almost out of rice, so they saved that. And come dusk of that sunny, warmer day, they saddled up and put on their armor and tied up their hair—"No need to look like brigands," Shoka said.
"It's dark," Taizu said. "We're hiding. I thought no one was supposed to see us."
"No need to act like brigands, then," Shoka said; and made her stand still, sulking as she was, until he had arranged her hair. Then he turned her around aad made her lift her chin. There was a furious scowl on her face. And her eyes glistened.
"Where's your center?" he asked her quietly.
She gave him no answer for a moment. It was a dangerous moment. Everything could break.
But she said: "Next year. Next year, master Shoka."
Not husband. "Am I divorced, then?"
A long, deep breath. "No." Her voice still broke into hoarseness. "I don't break my promises. Any of them."
And she walked off to sit on the riverside and wait for full dark.
So he came and sat by her on the rocks. Cranes were flying in the dusk. From somewhere there was the smell of smoke. But they had had that before. Perhaps it was all the way from Ygotai, perhaps from some farmhouse they had never found.
"We'll find a place in Hoisan," he said, "set up a camp just like the bandits. We'll set ourselves for winter. We won't plan to stay there. Let them send after us. —I'll tell you: you're better than most. And you're getting smarter."
She said nothing. She only stared at the darkening water, dusky profile against that shimmer. He saw her look toward him, and expected her to say something—but her head lifted subtly, her shadowy face showing dismay at something behind him.
His muscles tensed. He did not turn at once, thinking someone might be there. He waited for her to cue him, and she said:
"Master Shoka, the sky. ..."
He did turn. The sky beyond the willows, above the dikes, held a red taint like a beginning dawn. And the smoke had been there all along.
Fire. A huge one.
"That's toward Ygotai," he said, getting to his feet. The ache in his knee bothered him still, but it was inconsequence of a sudden, against the cold suspicion of disaster.
Taizu headed down the shore, around the willows, up the slope of the dike. He followed, slower, feeling the climb in his knee, slipping on the grass, seeing the glow brighter and brighter until he reached the crest and saw the red with no bright rim of near fire.
Not toward Ygotai. At Ygotai. Not some burning straw-stack. Much, ominously much more than that.
"It's in the town," Taizu said.
"Come on," he said. "If we're going to get through, let's make a try at it."
She followed him down the slope and down beneath the willows where the horses waited. They led the horses up again, a slanting course up the tall face of the dike, and mounted up, feeing toward that glow.
Taizu did not speculate aloud. He did not. But he put them to a faster pace than he would have, thinking that if the fire was accidental, some cooking-pit blazing up to catch a house—it might still draw the soldiers the judge had talked about; and if they came there early enough in the commotion they might pass, two shadowy figures on horseback, along the fringes of calamity, to the bridge and across, while the town was still occupied.
It might be, aside from the calamity of the property-holder, a piece of luck too good to let pass.
But he feared otherwise. He feared shapeless things—like rumor and birds. . . .
The further they rode, the brighter the glow, the more pungent the smoke, until there appeared a seam of yellow fire along the horizon, and it was abundantly clear it was more than one house or one barn.
"It must be the whole town," Taizu said at that sight. "The whole town's burning."
He thought of accident. He thought of their transit through the place.
And the bridge, which was one narrow bridge, and the way anyone who wanted to escape the province south would have to go—if they had no boat.
They might perhaps give up the horses, and hope to steal a boat at Ygotai's riverside. They might cross the Hoi, and be afoot in Hoisan with only their armor and their weapons. —Give up Jiro and the mare, in the hope that they could get away and escape the traps laid for two riders....
If it had to be, it had to be, dammit. The old lad would find his way, he hoped, to the judge's mares, and not to the hands of mercenaries. He was only a horse. Dammit.
"There's boats," Taizu said. There were, several of them, running dark on the water. Then more and more as they rode, until they reached level ground and trees came between them and the river.
People ahead, afoot, without armor, people with baskets and bundles, fleeing the nightmare of fire and stinging smoke. Shoka reined back, confronting that movement around a turning of the road, and the mare danced anxiously past and around again under Taizu's hand.
"It's townsfolk," Taizu said. "Running from the fires."
Worse and worse, Shoka thought. Much worse. The fires involved houses, barns. He had a surer and surer feeling of disaster. That damn horse of Taizu's.
It's our fault. It's our doing.
"Come on," he said, and rode forward, slowly. People scattered from them, through the trees, people shrieking and crying.
It's the soldiers, he heard.
It's the soldiers.
And when they had come closer to the town, they caught sight of riders passing against the light of burning houses; and saw people lying dead, pale blotches on the firelight ground. It's the soldiers.
"Damn them," Taizu said, in a hoarse, demon's voice. "Damn them!"
He reined in, caught up the helm that had rattled useless by his knee till now, and put it on, making the ties carefully, precisely, while Taizu put on her own.
"The bridge," he reminded her harshly. He drew his sword, and sent Jiro ambling forward, the mare beside him.
The steel of Taizu's sword rasped out of its sheath.
That damned white-legged horse . . .
"Let's go, girl."
Faster now, running flat-out, the whole night narrowed to what came through the face of the helm: fire, clouds of smoke, the bright fire of a burning barn, the black shape of an abandoned cart—He whipped a glance rightward as they bore left down the street, and saw it clear from that direction.
"Master Shoka!"
Riders in the way ahead of them. He went clear and cold, measuring the strides, their horses' and Jiro's. And hers. "Haii!" he yelled, and gave Jiro a kick that the old lad was well-trained to. Jiro surged forward and Shoka laid about him with a vengeance, one, two, three men out of their saddles before one got past him.
Not far. He heard Taizu yell.
Four, five, before Taizu caught up with him and they broke through to the riverside road—
There were no boats beside, except one burning, with the light flaring out on the waters: with the light showing the road ahead.
And a troop of foot guarding a barricade ahead.
He spun Jiro sharply to the right, hard about with a yell at Taizu: he had not seen the bows, but he knew—he swept Taizu up as she reined the mare around; and rode, down the rutted shanty street, past the burning wreckage of buildings.
Four riders ahead. He gave Jiro his heels again, and yelled at Taizu: "We're going through! Stay with me!"
He took two men out of the saddle and did not appreciably slow down. He wheeled about for a third and got him off Taizu's back. "Get the horses!" he yelled, and herded one riderless horse against the wall, but it and Jiro took exception to each other, a teeth-bared encounter that was going to cost dangerous time. He let it go. "Never mind!" he yelled at Taizu. "Get the hell out of here!"
She had snagged a horse. She nearly came out of the saddle trying to hang onto it, the animal backing wildly. It slipped free.
"Never mind!" he yelled at her, and the mare bolted into a run as Jiro came past her.
"Where are we going?" Taizu yelled. "Where are we going?"
"Hell if I know!" he yelled back. "We can't make the bridge. Out of here!"
There were carts on the road ahead, in the dark. People left them and ran when they came by. There were soldiers plundering one.
"Stay back with that damn horse," Shoka said to Taizu, and rode up on the soldiers alone.
"What are you doing?" he asked them.
And killed both of them.
When Taizu caught him up he was waiting quite calmly, quite numb, thinking over the archers on the bridge, the ruin of the town.
"We can go west," he said. "Down the Yan. Toward Dai, as far as Muigan, then cross south."
"All right," she said in a thread of a voice. And then, in a creaking squeak. "I'm sorry about the horse. I'm sorry. I couldn't hang onto it."
"It's not your fault," he said, very quietly, very reasoned. "It's mine. The best thing we can do for these people is get out of Hoishi, as far as we can. As loudly as we can."
She said nothing for a moment. Her face showed between the steel cheekplates of the helm, the metal shining with the distant glare of the fire.
No protests, no arguments. Just that grave, large-eyed stare. And a sniff and a discreet wipe at her nose.
"Probably it's a good thing you stay with that horse," he said. "Attract all the notice we can. We get out of this if we can. I'm not going back to Mon. We're not going anywhere but to the border, and over." He turned Jiro's head to the road, started them moving. "We save the horses for times we have to run. And we'll have to."
There were no more soldiers on the road, just peasants, farmers out of Ygotai and gods knew where—folk who abandoned their belongings as riders came by, threw them on the roadside or left handcarts standing and fled, dragging children or carrying them. In some cases they hid very near the road, old folk, perhaps, desperately afraid.
But before long they passed beyond all such refugees, onto a clear road, across a flat, wild land,
They were on the Keido road, Shoka reckoned. There were hills westward, that would make pursuit harder and give them a chance—as long as they could keep the horses sound: that was his greatest concern, and for that reason he wanted to keep to the good road as long as they dared, as long as it tended generally toward the hills. They kept an easy pace, rested the horses when they tired, keeping, Shoka figured, only a minimal distance between themselves and the trouble flowing outward from Ygotai toward Keido.
"It's going to be hard tomorrow," he said when Taizu protested they were stopping too often. "Get your breath now." He sank down by her, Jiro's reins in hand, and found his own stomach empty and aching. "We're doing all right. Don't worry."
She was scared, he thought, sitting by her in the dark. It took a great deal to frighten Taizu, but she was living a great deal with memories tonight. He longed for daylight, and dreaded it; and saw it coming in the dimming of the stars.
"Sleep," he said. "Can you?"
A sigh beside him in the dark. She leaned against him, a grating of armor-plates, hers and his, and she put her arm around him. In a little time she went limp that way, and he lay back on the embankment, in the grass, trying not to fall asleep himself, or lose track of the horses that grazed on their leads, the leads wrapped about his left hand. It would be so damned easy. And he was being a fool, he thought: the young could go so much longer.
But he knew how to sleep in the saddle. If she was rested she could shepherd him while he caught a nap. They could go off the road in the morning, cut across the rocky highland fields—leave tracks, gods knew, thanks to the recent rains, but he wanted to be tracked, if not closely; he trusted that the peasants who had hidden from them would describe them to anyone who asked.
And draw their pursuers away from Mon. Gods hoped.
He moved finally, pushed at Taizu. "Sorry. We can't stay longer."
Dawn was coming—a gray definition of trees and rocks, a seam of red along the east that was not burning Ygotai.
Taizu moved, and looked around her. "How long?" she asked. "How long?"
"It's all right. We're still ahead."
He said.
But when he checked Jiro's girth and climbed into the saddle:
"Oh, damn."
"What?" Taizu asked.
"Riders," he said. There were, three of them visible on the crest of the hill ahead. Taizu climbed hastily up to the mare's back and had a look for herself.
"What do we do?"
He was not himself sure. He looked at the land ahead, the rough land to either side. He started Jiro moving, in that strange nowhere calm of hours like this before hostilities, two forces camped close to each other.
He wished Taizu were not with him. He wished—
He was not sure.
More of them came over the rise.
Twenty, thirty now.
"Gods," Taizu breathed. But he kept riding and she did, calmly, slowly.
The road out of Keido, he thought. Lord Reidi's home. A Hoishi town burned at the hands of mercenaries and an army came down the road from Keido. Perfectly reasonable: the lord wanted to know the reason. But not reasonable that the town burned at all. It was a good part of lord Reidi's income.
"I don't know what we're into," he said. In the dim gray light he could see banners. The white showed most. If it were indeed lord Reidi's men, it would be a black lily on a white banner; and there was white enough.
"Taizu."
"I'm not going anywhere you don't!"
"Easy. Easy. Whose are the mercenaries back there? Who do you think?"
A pause. "I don't know." There was an edge of panic in Taizu's voice. "They could be from Keido. I don't know whose they are."
"Taiyi?"
"I don't know."
"The peasants are going toward Keido."
Taizu was silent a moment. "Likely they're going everywhere. But where they thought it was safe...."
"I want you to do something for me. Just stop on the road. Let's give them a parley signal—"
"No."
"Shut up and do what I tell you. One of us. One of them. If they do something else, I'll be coming back in a hurry. Just stop in the middle of the road and wait. Hear me?"
"I don't like this. Let's get off the road. Gods, there's more of them. ..."
There were ranks behind the ones in the lead. It was a cavalry on the move.
"Stay here," he said, "Do it, girl. You might string your bow—in case. But don't be obvious."
She reined back. He tapped Jiro with his heel and Jiro took a breath and collected himself. He held that in, took his sword and laid it crosswise of the saddle.
Slow advance then. He reached a point outside bowcast from both sides and stopped, and waited.