She would have to come their way soon, come down through the bottom of the stand – or stay among the trees to lick mist from hemlock fronds for water, chew hemlock bark for food. She wouldn't even have sad Lou to eat. Gerald had brought out body and head last evening, both now safe under stacked stone.
Pete found a place, set his legs apart, tucked his kilt well up, and squatted. Paused, peed a little, then the first of healthy poop – a must, according to Charlotte-doctor. "Bad poop, bad health." She claimed that was Copybook, though what copybook she wouldn't say.
Pete took a breath, strained for the rest – and felt the lightest thread of coolness lie across the back of his neck. He thought it some dawn spider-web strand… then the coolness cut him, just a little.
Squatting, Pete turned his head, and saw a curving length of steel shining along his nape… Above it, a small, trembling, white-haired woman stood in a dirty blue coat.
He tensed to move – dive left to his hatchet, resting so casual on the forest floor. But the sword above him, as if eager on its own, slid deeper across the back of his neck, so he felt blood begin to run.
"Do I hold your life at my sword's edge, or do I not?" Her voice shook as she shook, and Pete didn't answer
Drawn very slightly across… the steel's edge sliced deeper.
"Is your life in my gift, or is it not?… I won't ask again."
Pete, who hadn't intended to answer an old woman who'd taken unfair advantage, surprised himself by saying, "Yes."
"Yes…?"
"My life… a gift." And having said so, regretted saying it – and wouldn't have, except for being caught like some child, shitting. Squatting for this Boston thing to creep up, lay her sword across his neck… He wouldn't have said it, but for that.
Cold steel lifted from him, left his nape warm with trickling blood.
"Wipe your bottom," the woman said – and Pete Aiken-Robin, tears of rage gathered in his eyes, took a handful of foliage to use, then threw that aside, stood up, stepped away and straightened his kilt's leather.
The woman, her left arm slung across her breast, was pale as cracked quartz, and swayed as she stood. She wiped her sword's curved edge on her coat, and managed at a second try to sheath it. "I've taken the life of one Robin," she said, "and given yours in return, so no debt remains. By that exchange… I claim a trader's hospitality."
Pete heard Gerald coming through the trees.
"Now," the woman said, her eyes black as blindness, "- now we will see if honor roosts with the Robins." And she staggered and fell into the hemlocks as if she were struck and dying.
CHAPTER 10
After days of hard travel, and chess-and-fencing evenings, their camp was made back of a ridge overlooking a stretch of low country at last – New River's Valley, Richard had called it. Baj was happy enough to lie resting after eating most of a partridge, the birds taken by Errol's thrown sticks one by one, as they strutted a long hollow, furiously drumming for mates.
The successful hunter, pinched face so dirty no freckles showed, lay with his head on Baj's lap, making faint clicking noises. The boy seemed to have grown comfortable with him.
Baj was satisfied with ease, but Nancy apparently was not, came around the fire to poke and prod him with a makeshift wooden scimitar – the third of those, the first two having been beaten to flinders in attempts at murder.
"Nancy, another evening's rest might be a good idea."
"You said, 'When I can do to you.'"
"You can 'do to me' tomorrow."
No answer, then, but poke poke, prod prod.
"For the love of Mountain Jesus…" Baj shifted Errol, and got to his feet to get his spruce-stick rapier – worn and splintered, but usable a last time.
Richard, propped on one massive odd elbow, lay by the fire, smiling. "Lessons," he said, and Errol went to sit cross-legged near him, attentive.
Before this audience, Baj eased muscles stiffened by the day's mountainsides – and was attacked in mid-stretch. He brought his stick-sword up so nearly in time it seemed unfair that her whistling cut went over it and across his jaw hard as a whip's lash. Baj spun away in considerable numbing pain, and supposing he should be thankful she hadn't taken an eye out, set himself to fighting. The girl was… truly fast. There was no time – had been no time the last two lessons to wait to parry on the forte. The blows of her spruce scimitar – shorter, snappier strokes in direct attack, now, and delivered in series – needed to be caught early, near his stick's limber end, and allowed then in yielding parry to slide down to a firmer ward where the spruce was thicker… It required elegant fencing.
Required easy movement, too. Stance'y salle fencing with Person-Nancy was a losing notion; she circled and struck, circled and struck – and was pleased to close in corp a corp, where she seemed to want to bite as she slashed, then stepped away, leaving behind her faint vulpine scent.
"Timing," Baj said, as they fought. "Timing, speed," he beat in second, lunged to her outside low line and hit her, "- and distance."
"Shit." She tried to bind his spruce-blade, tried to kick him in the crotch. Baj found it… interesting. He was learning about Nancy – learning perhaps about other Persons, too, as he and the girl grunted and fought around the fire. Stop-thrusts no longer worked against her; she would attack swinging aside in quartata, lunging off the front foot. An absolutely awkward move that cost him braises until he learned to simply mirror her motion, so her cut passed him.
They were… it was very much like dancing together, but with steps swift, harsh, and unexpected. As the Master would have recommended, he watched those quick little moccasined feet shift and shift, watched for balance and rhythm change – and watched her yellow eyes for surprises, often betrayed by anticipatory glee.
They circled and battled in clattering noise and a haze of human sweat – and sweat slightly different – despite the chill of evening. Richard and Errol, an audience of two, sat entertained by thrusts, curses, slashes, bruises and occasional little stippled lines of blood.
Nancy caught Baj very nicely in the shoulder with her point – the scimitar's point apparently beginning to occur to her after previous evenings' furious cuts and slashes. He took the hit, said, "I'm hurt," spun into her, "- and you're dead."
"How?"
He prodded her lean belly with a short stick he'd stuck in his belt, awaiting the occasion. "Left-hand dagger. Always remember the left hand. Always remember knives. Don't be so fucking sword-proud." The Master would have been pleased to have his quote repeated – advice original with the dead and honored Butter-boy.
"Not fair!" Very angry, her crest of widow-peaked red hair risen like a cock's comb.
"All is fair," Baj said, "- in love, and war." It was the perfect Warm-time phrase, and Nancy Some-part-fox had no answer for it.
"How many years," Richard said, "- how many years to learn such nice use of points? My soldiers were rarely so elegant in sticking… chopping."
"Eleven… twelve years."
"I will not need twelve years." Nancy tossed her frayed stick-sword aside and sat by the fire on a folded blanket.
"No." Baj held his hands to the flames to warm them as the night's chill settled down. Bruised fingers, bruised hands from fencing with no cross-hilts or guards. No gloves, either. "No, you're very quick. But be warned; I haven't taught you nearly all I was taught, and there are men – women, too – who would find me easy to kill with a blade.".
"Perhaps dear Patience Riley," Richard said, "- who fought the fat man in the air."