"You're not ready. You fell. Don't clown when you fall." He began a slow evolution, the beginning-moves again. "Teaches you bad habits."
"I wasn't—wasn't clowning. What am I going to do—when something happens—you didn't teach me?"
Then he thought about the spring; and the thaw: and thought in a flash of cold: She's talking about leaving.
"You're not ready yet. You're not near ready."
He saw the frown. He felt colder.
Show her otherwise, he thought; and watched her face, watched the smothered anger in the set of her mouth.
Pattern after pattern after pattern. While the impatience smouldered. He saw it in her. "Haste—kills, girl. —Remember that. —You have—a great deal too much of it—for your own good."
"What do I do—about a fall—master Saukendar?"
"Break," he said, finishing the patterned move. He was minded to quit. There was still a chill in the air. He had not been moving hard. His bad leg ached miserably. But: Show her, he thought. Show the damn girl something she won't learn so fast.
He threw his practice cane over to the porch, walked over and picked up his sword. She came and retrieved hers.
"Are you going to show me?"
"I'll show you," he said calmly. He walked back out to the tree and squared off against her, waiting. "Choose your attack."
She lifted her blade, careful movements now, bare steel. "Don't be cutting my feet off."
"I wouldn't think of it. Choose your speed."
She began, a careful, sedate pace, strike and turn.
He evaded, struck, evaded, struck, fall about again. Damn, it was going to hurt. He chose his moment, chose his spot, shifted his weight to his good leg and went down hard, took the impact and used the force to rock himself up to a knee and to his feet with all his old speed.
She jumped back, spun and came in again, and he pulled his blow short, slowly, slower.
"All right," he said, panting. "You."
She looked at him. There was a frown of desperation on her face.
"Long winter?" he taunted her.
"I'll try." She lifted the sword again.
He lifted his and began the slow dance. "Use the force of your fall. If you fall, don't waste yourself fighting it. Fall. Curl up onto the right shoulder. Come up fast onto the right knee."
She took the fall. She came most of the way up and cut at him.
He stepped back, the knee caught, but he cleared the reach of her sword.
"You missed."
As she scrambled up.
She went down again. And lay there panting under the weight of the body armor.
"That's enough," he said.
"I can do it."
"That's enough, I said." He walked over and picked up his sword-sheath, sheathed the steel and picked up the cane. "Go take your bath."
It was a quiet supper, a deathly quiet supper.
And he wanted like hell to put a compress on his aching leg, but he had no wish to let her know that move cost him anything. So he drank a bit, measuring the amount of the wine left against the time till the villager came back. He went to bed without a word, and worked to find a position in which the leg did not ache.
It was worth it, if it put a healthy fear into the little fool.
Let her go on trying it. Let her bruise her backside and strain her gut and her knees.
He could do it with the armor, still. If the knee held.
Damned if he wanted to demonstrate the fact.
"On your guard," he said.
Her sword came up. He kept the exercises slow, balance and precision. The wind had been warmer today, until evening. The sky above the mountain was gray and pregnant with rain. There was no twilight, only murk, and an occasional spattering of rain onto the well-trampled dirt.
She kept hurrying the patterns. He resisted. The knee ached. It always would when the weather turned like this. He might have known it was more than strain. And he had no wish to rehearse the pattern from yesterday.
"No," he said. "Patience. Patience."
She nodded. She kept the pace he set for at least three passes; and then he took it faster. And faster. Pattern and pattern and pattern and variation.
She threw herself suddenly into a fall then, and came up with a different line.
"Dammit!" He skipped back and swung the sword in temper and checked it.
As she did, her sword arm back, out of line, shock on her face.
He felt the sting of a cut on his leg, across the side of the thigh.
"Dammit!" he yelled at her as she got up. He looked at the wound: one had better, when one used the long-swords. One could be missing a limb and not feel it—yet.
Shallow, thank the gods.
"I'm sorry."
"So you drew blood. Congratulations. I'd have cut your head off. Hear me?"
She said nothing.
"You don't believe me, girl?"
"I believe you," she echoed back faintly.
He fingered the cut, which was running blood. And glared at her. Damned if she believed it. Damned if she did.
He walked over and picked up his sword sheath.
"I'll get something for it," she said.
"It's nothing."
"It's bleeding...."
"Let it be, dammit." He rammed the sword home with shaking hands and gave her a direct look. Rain was spattering about them again, dark pocks on the dirt. "I gave you an order. You defied me. Now you're damned proud of yourself. Pulled a surprise. Now you think you're ready for your enemies."
"I didn't mean to."
"You're a damned arrogant little bitch, girl. I don't cry foul. I still have my leg under me. Better assassins have tried. I've pulled everything I've ever done with you. I pulled it then, which is why you still have your head, girl, and why I'm the one bleeding. It takes something to think through what I know and what you don't, and to keep on pulling back. I can see I was wrong. I enjoyed teaching you. I told you: you're good for a woman. But the first man you go up against is going to take your head off. I told you that from the start. You didn't want to listen. And I made a mistake. I made a grievous mistake when I thought that you'd come to your senses. I made another when I paced the teaching to what you could do. Now you think you're damned good. Now you think you're a match for men who've studied the sword for all their adult lives. Well, you're not. You go out of here the way you are and you're dead, for nothing, dead, the first time you try yourself against a common bandit."
"That's not what you said."
"I'm telling you quit, girl. I'm telling you use good sense and give up this whole crazed idea of yours. There's nothing to be gained back there. Kill the whole damned lot of them and there's more maggots to take their place. There's nothing you can do. You'll only come to a bad end and an early one and to no good whatsoever."
"You gave your word."
"I gave my word. I also put a condition on it. When you've failed, girl, you've failed, and all the bargains are done."
"I haven't failed."
He drew a deep breath, looking at her, looking at his own creation staring back at him.
"Girl," he said, and drew the sword from the sheath again, "I wasn't fighting. I was teaching. You're about to learn the difference. On your guard."
She shook her head. "No."
"On your guard, dammit!"
"I can't hit you! You haven't got any armor!"
"You think that'll protect you. Hell if it will, girl. Hell if it will, from a proper strike. And I don't need it against a beginner."
She threw the sword away.
"Are you quitting?" he asked her. "Is the bargain off?"