Not even when he began taking further chances, and doing the deep bends that he needed the stick to get up from.
But he could do them. It was more than he had done in nine years. It embarrassed hell out of him, to be doing simple exercises, with a stick for help, when the girl ran the hill like a deer, when she clambered up onto the rafters and onto the roof to patch the leaks, when she did his work and her own and took care of him, and still practiced her strokes, day after day, like a maddening, willful fool, accusing him daily without meaning to accuse, reminding him that with all his pain and all his effort, it was a peasant girl he had to surpass.
Damned if he would not.
He felt compelled to a kind of honor with her, that he had to do at least that much or there was no reasoning with her, no moral force to any argument he could use against her mad ideas.
Damned if he would ask her to stay with him out of his necessity.
Damned if he would ask a woman to live with him on his terms if he could not ask it like a man with a choice.
And however much the sight of her tempted the mind nowadays, the body hurt too much to make temptation more than theoretical.
Chapter Six
Shoka squatted down deep and straightened slowly, without the stick, with the sword in hand, this time.
It hurt like hell. He was not sure but what it would always hurt, until he put himself in action and the muscles warmed.
A man could live with that, if it set his body straight and gave him back the youth he thought he had lost for good and all.
He saw Taizu's eyes follow that move, saw more than respect: a certain apprehension, as she held her own plain sword in her hands and waited.
"Your guard," he said.
She lifted her sword.
She was no novice now. She knew the patterns. He saw the correctness in her stance and felt the settling in his own muscles as he faced an opponent who meant business.
Woman she might be, but she tried, gods, she had battered away at that tree through three renewals of the straw matting, whack-whack, whack, whack-whack, until he heard that sound in his sleep; and he discovered a strength behind her arm even on upward extension.
Not to take lightly now. A fool would do that. She was fast, and he was years out of practice.
"Take it slowly," he said, beginning the patterns in the slow way that tested balance as well as form. No relying on momentum and strength to recover a mistake when one floated through the moves light and easy as the falling leaves. One had to be right or look the fool.
Taizu did not look the fool. Nor did he. He forgot the pain, for the pleasure of free movement, for the pleasure of watching his opponent in motion and feeling the answering stretch of muscles that still remembered, after so many years. Breaths puffed and frosted on the wind, steel passed steel without a sound.
He passed from feint to guard to strike in the same slow fashion, and saw, in exactly the right point of balance, the reaction on her side, no panic, just the right reaction, a move just out of his reach.
"Close," he chided her, as the sweep of his blade passed close to her arm. "Did you know where that was?" —Never ceasing his motion.
"Yes," she breathed, and her next step brought her blade circling around again, easy to evade.
"I'll show you another," he said, as he slowly turned in beneath the line of her attack.
She did not defend: he stopped with no more than the line established from his edge to her side.
"Do you see?"
"Yes," she said, holding her position. He broke his and walked around behind her, took her by the shoulders and tested her balance, marked a place in the dust with his foot: "Here," he said, then walked around to the fore and took her point between his fingertips, drawing her to the turn. Again a footprint stamped in the dust for her second step, and he led her about to a further evolution, full about, blade lifting. It was the most complicated counter he had ever shown her.
Twice more, guiding the blade. The feet came down impeccably on the mark.
Damn, he thought, thinking of his fellow-students in his father's tutelage, remembering the lessons upon lessons which had taught even the scatter-witted to go with the master, to keep the balance enough to defend themselves—but there was nothing scatter-witted about the girl. Tell that fool Beijun anything and the instruction flowed off into void and I-don't-want. Don't think when I instruct you, he had said to Taizu, as he had said to the heir in his time. When I instruct you, I know, and you don't, so don't take your thoughts away from what I'm telling you. If there's a mistake at that point, it's my mistake, and I'll show you.
Don't improvise to cover an attack you don't understand, if we're going slowly: stop the moment you recognize it and I'll instruct you your next move. There's a time you have to improvise. You know when that is. Don't learn the stop. Don't learn the bad move. When I'm instructing you, wait for the instruction. You understand the difference.
"Again," he said, without guiding her.
One, two, and three.
"Beautiful."
He took up his own guard then, and made the pass with her, came in and recovered the moment she began that evolution, with a turn of his own, slowly, slowly done.
"The pool reflects," he said. "My move and yours."
She repeated and stopped.
He stopped.
"Why?" he asked. "Have I changed my pattern?"
"No, master Saukendar." Softly, precisely, neither blade nor eyes moving. "But you won't let me go on doing that. What do I do now?"
"You're very forward." As softly, his own eyes on hers. But she was absolutely correct. "The next move is like the first. Practice the first, again. Be my reflection till I tell you otherwise."
One, two, and three. One, two, and three.
"The next," she said.
"Again," he said. And:
"Impatience is a flaw," he murmured as they stopped. "There's always just enough time when you do something right, no more, no less. Your sword has no blade. It has only your intention. When that goes astray you have no weapon. Continue."
One, two, and three. As master Yenan had taught him.
While the leaves fell and the garden turned to brown in the first frost.
"Up!" Shoka said, and sent the blade sweeping under Taizu's feet, spun it around in a turn that brought it for her back, lifted it to strike as she brought the correct counter back and held, reaching the end of the pattern.
"Now what will be the next move?" he asked her.
"You'll go low-line," she said.
"I might not."
"Harder to go up from that line."
"That's why I might do it. You might not expect."
"Dangerous, though."
"I'm the best. What will I do?"
"Some third thing. Not something awkward."
He was amused, pleased, but he did not laugh. He did not go off his guard with her. Those were not the rules in the faster game.
"What will it be?"
"You could turn back again and make me follow."
"What's the advantage?"
"Following takes attention. It ends when the opponent intends. Intention is the blade."
The old catechism, whispered on a frosting breath, under a gray autumn sky.
"Again," he said, and took the pattern from the beginning.
They were down to shirts and breeches. Sweat shone on her face and throat despite the cold; the white shirt clung and flared as she turned and struck and turned. He let himself go with the sheer beauty of the moment, the intoxication of movement, his and hers.
That was what she gave back to him. Teaching her, he taught himself. It pleased her. In time, he told himself, he would please her.