"No."
He sheathed the sword and picked up the cane. "I'll give you one more advantage. Pick up the sword, or you've quit. Hear me?"
She bent and gathered it up again. The rain-spatter became a sudden downpour.
He came on guard. She did.
He let her worry; and let her settle. He gave her that grace, while the rain turned the ground treacherous. Her face was waxen-pale, her lips a set line.
"All right," he said, starting a slow movement.
"I can't hit you."
"You can try. You want to trade weapons?"
"No."
"So you know, girl. Just so you know. You want to get your own cane? You can. I'll let you."
She broke her guard and started to turn.
He attacked. She evaded him with a wild, off-balance spin and recovered her guard, wild-eyed and indignant.
"You believe your enemy?" he asked her. "That's damn foolish."
He attacked again, again, again, and brought the cane through her guard, clipped her leg, clipped her arm and evaded a desperate return attack, spun under and brought the cane around hard into her side.
She fell. She rolled half-up again and he hit her again, two-handed.
The sword left her hand.
He hit her again. And a fourth time. She made a try after the sword-hilt and he knocked it from her hand when she brought it up. She rolled after it and he let her get most of the way up before he knocked her flying, skidding facedown in the mud.
She did not move then. He stood there with his leg shooting fire from knee to spine and his heart hammering with apprehension until she stirred, moved her feet and got her arms under her.
"This is what you could look for," he said. "You'd be dead. No excuses. No allowances. The world won't pity you. Damned if I'll let you walk out of here thinking you can take a man in a fight. You're not strong enough. You never can be. That's the end of it."
He threw the cane down. He walked past her in the rain, left her there to cry it out and come to terms with matters on her own, walked up onto the porch and inside, feeling the ache in the leg, finding, as he had climbed the steps, that his whole boot was soaked with blood; finding as he walked inside and untied his breeches to bandage his leg, that he was shaking.
The girl was probably going to heave up her guts between crying and cursing him. But he had not broken any bones. He had hit her nowhere that could cripple her. He knew that he had not. And the kind of thinking she had to do took time. Alone.
So he got down the pot of ointment and bandaged his leg and started the fire up, figuring she was going to need the rags when she came in.
Thunder cracked. Rain hit the roof in a gust.
She'll freeze out there.
He limped to the door and opened it.
She was gone from where she had lain. She was out there in the rain, battering away at the tree with great clumsy strokes, left and right, thump-thump. Thump. Staggering as she swung.
Damn.
"Taizu!"
He was not sure she heard in the rain, in her state of mind. He swore and went out onto the porch. "Taizu!"
Thump-thump. Thump.
"Dammit, Taizu!"
He went out after her, in the sheeting rain, down the steps and across the yard. "Taizu, for the gods'—"
She turned about, cane sword in both hands. He stopped, seeing the anger and the shame in her; and the threat of violence.
"I could take you," he said, "even bare-handed. You'll never have the strength. It was a fool's choice. Do I have to prove that?"
She threw down the cane sword, there in the puddles and the mud, and with her hands and her teeth began to strip off the bindings of the armor as she stood, drowned in the rain. He did not help her. He only stood and watched as she flung it down in the mud. She looked to be crying, but the rain washed it away. She treated his armor like that. But he said nothing, just stood.
She took off the padding from her arms, the rain plastering her shirt against her, streaming down her face as she continued stripping the padding, down to her feet. Then he understood the move, the snatch after the cane sword, "Without the damn armor," she screamed at him, and he dodged back, to the side, back again, but she gave him no room, no second to regroup.
"Dammit!" he yelled, remembered his own sword lying in the mud and feinted to one side, threw himself into a slide and grabbed it.
He cut at her legs; she cleared that sweep and he got himself room, hurled himself up and launched back in an attack on her blade, trying not to hit her, which consideration she did not return. She clipped his arm as he skidded. She skidded on her turn and he brought up short, square with her, even.
"All right," he said between breaths, and invited her with a disdainful motion of his other hand.
Tentative then, the exchange, a trial of position and guard, then an attack that startled him into a defense and a turn, into a quick flurry of passes that continued soundless and without contact for a moment.
Fool! he said to himself, and ducked under her attack and shoved her with everything he had.
She hit the ground downslope and skidded in the mud. She was halfway up before he caught up with her and slammed her back again with a half-pulled kick.
Her head hit the ground this time. She sprawled on her back head-downward on the slope with the rain beating down on her and her eyes white-slitted in the lightning flashes.
"You damn fool!" he shouted at her. "It's raining!"
She fought for breath, mouth open, and writhed over and slithered toward her knees.
His hand was waiting when she got that far. She glared up at him and he did not wait then, he took her arm and pulled her up, pulled her to him. There was no chill. Her body burned like fever, her sides heaving in the effort to breathe. "Come on," he said, and pulled her toward the cabin, up the slope. She pushed herself away from him to be free, and kneed him hard: the knee missed. He let her go, since that was what she wanted, and she fell to her hands and knees in the mud of the hill.
"All right," he said. "Lie there."
He stalked off, gathered up his gear from beneath the tree and took it to the cabin, up the steps, onto the porch before he looked back in the gathering dark and the lightning flashes and saw her sitting where she had fallen, tucked up, a small lump beyond the gnarled old tree.
"Damn you," he muttered, and dumped the armor and staggered back, grabbed her by the arm and hauled her up again, feeling the chill in her limbs this time. He held her arms pinned and hauled her along till it was clear she was trying to walk. Then he picked her up and carried her, stumbling in the mud, slipping on the steps. A stabbing pain went through his leg. He almost lost her there. But he made it to the door and kicked it open, got her to the warmth and light inside and collapsed with her on the floor by the fire.
She was shivering. He held onto her, his arms wrapped around her until she pushed away from him. Then he let her go and stripped off his wet clothes, dried his hair with a quilt and wrapped it about himself until his own teeth stopped chattering before he went back to her.
The water had boiled. He poured it into a bucket of cold water and put the oil-and-rags on to heat, then knelt down and started drying her muddy hair on the corner of his quilt.
"Let me alone."
"The hell." He grabbed her wet shirt and hauled it up over her head while she fought to hold onto it, teeth chattering. "It's not a rape, you damn fool, you're soaked. Get it off yourself, then."
"Let me alone!"
He jerked the shirt the rest of the way off. Livid marks stood out on her back, on her arms, old bruises and bruises yet to come.
He touched her poor back gently. He squeezed out water from the cloth in the bucket and washed her shoulders, washed her neck, while the shivering doubled her into a knot and finally passed, leaving her limp in his arms, her own arms folded tight as a shield against intimacy, her knees tucked up in a shivering that racked her whole body.