He took the first three in that many passes: missed the fourth, trying to keep him from getting past, took the fifth and heard Taizu yelclass="underline"
"Bastard!" —As something hit steel and flesh and a man yelped into silence; Shoka spun and struck and countered in what had started as fright and went to hot rage.
He heard the man charge down the hill-face, heard it coming and whirled and struck, whirled again with the sound of steel on his left, took another and launched himself for the pale figure enveloped in steel-shining shadows.
"Hyaaaa!" he yelled, drawing attention of his own, and cut his way through, heard a howl from Taizu, but not pain, a yell like an outraged devil's.
And the last few shadows took to their heels.
"Cowards!" she screamed after them.
Shoka let go his breath and felt himself shaking from head to foot, the old feeling that came with a fight, heart pounding, muscles charged to move. "Get a bow, darnmit!" He grabbed Taizu's arm and shoved her back to the hill where their gear was. He ran and got Jiro from tether and drew him back close against the hill, trampling a detritus on the ground that had not been there when the fight started.
Taizu had done what he had told her, gotten to cover against the hill and gotten the bows strung.
Naked as she was born. "Are you hurt?" he asked.
"No. You?"
"No." He felt after his clothes. "Get dressed. We sleep turn and turn about. Damn them!" He found himself shaking for a different reason. For the memory of her out there surrounded. For what could have happened.
For what she had done, by the gods.
He hugged her against his side. "Scared?" he asked her.
"No." Her teeth were chattering. He felt her shivering. He held onto her, thinking . . .
Thinking that if she had made one mistake she would have died.
Thinking that then he would have fired the whole damn forest and gone for Gitu himself, and for Ghita and for the Emperor and his whole damn court.
He hugged her tight. "Want to go home?"
"Hua," she said.
Chapter Twelve
The sky cast a faint glow into the narrows, over a flat, rocky expanse littered with hewn bodies, bits and pieces. Not a wholesome place for the sun to come up on—the stink of death all around them and the day getting just enough to see what a longsword could do to a body, armor and all.
Not a good sight for a girl, Shoka thought, and then thought: but it's what she's chosen.
He rubbed dried blood from his hands, rubbed the stubble on his face and found the same. Saw Taizu waking, or never sleeping at all, her eyes dark, liquid slits in the shadow, her face dappled with filth like his own. Jiro stood still drowsing, close to them, in the same sheltering rocks.
They had not washed last night. They had armored up and stayed close to the rocks, and slept turn and turn about—if she had slept.
Scared, maybe. He hoped that she was. He hoped it was that simple, that natural a thing.
He reached out and tousled her bangs. "Better move," he said. "Early. Before our enemies want to get stirring."
He got up. She did, and looked around her, and got her sword and walked out among the dead, poked one body and walked on—stopped to pick up a dagger and sheath and thrust it through her own belt, simple, pragmatic looting of their enemies.
A grim face, stolid. It sent a chill through him.
But it was also practical, what she did. He shrugged and rubbed the blood off his fingers and walked through the bodies and pieces of bodies, looking for things of value.
A good dagger for her, a leather belt and silk cord—neither was to pass by: tack got worn and cords got cut. A couple of serviceable steel helmets. He had lost his in the fracas ten years ago and she had never had one. A gold locket. "Here," he said, tossing it at her. "But wear it inside. Stuff like this can get your throat cut—in more than one way."
She looked at what she had caught in her fist, open-mouthed in amazement. She did not put it on. She stuffed it in a bag she had taken from one of the dead.
A little silver. A little copper. A silver hair-clip. A silk scarf. That was the rest of their pilferage.
Nine bodies, in the faint light. He counted. Probably Taizu did.
"We've done no little service for travelers on this road," he said as he saddled Jiro and Taizu gathered up her load. "That's likely a good part of the bandits in Hoisan."
"Huh," she said.
At least she did not say—it was nothing. At least she did not say—she enjoyed what she did. He had seen both in boys in their first fight. But she was different. Like the wisest, maybe, who did what they did and kept their balance: that was what he had taught her—Your soul has a center, girl, the same as your body has. Let nothing you do take you from that center.
Where are you this morning, girl?
Or have you seen enough such sights in Hua?
Taizu walking among the dead. Taizu stripping weapons from corpses, coldly turning this and that bloody bit of a man to see if there was something to be scavenged—
Gods, what has Chiyaden come to, to breed a girl like this?
The road ahead by earliest dawn was an unpleasant ground of tumbled rocks, twisted pine, scrub and undergrowth giving way to tall trees as the gap widened.
A little forest, a little thicket, a great deal of rock, through which the road had to wind, taking much more time than Shoka liked, past rocks large enough to hide three and four men. "Don't talk," he said. "Jiro's ears and Jiro's nose is the best defense we have through this."
She nodded once. That was all, except when the road widened again and they went under daylight, beside the river.
Not the way Taizu had argued—with her out to the fore. The bandits knew there were two of them. They well knew it; and Shoka kept scanning the heights within bowcast of them, with his own bow strung, with an arrow held crook-fingered to the string and two more in his hand.
"I think they want easier pickings," he said finally.
"Maybe there never were that many of them," Taizu said.
He felt a prickle at his nape, strong enough that he turned in the saddle to look.
But there was nothing but trees and rock and the narrow clear area of the road.
He looked to the fore again, and wished with all his heart that he could put Jiro to a faster gait.
But there was no possibility of that. His weight, Taizu's, both in armor—their gear and the tack: Jiro could carry it, but no faster than he was walking; or run with it and kill himself.
So they walked, at a better pace than Taizu had yet managed. "Give me the pack," he said, and when she opened her mouth: "Hand it up."
She slipped her arm out of one rope, changed bow-hands, and freed the other, keeping only the quiver as she handed it up to him.
"Go," he said, then. "Move, girl. Run!"
She moved, took a steady jogging pace, and Jiro snorted and broke into a faster gait with never a touch of his heel—the old chase game.
That was the way they passed the heights, between rests in which they rested close against the rocks.
That was the way they came to the wider valley, by the waterside. Taizu came to a panting halt, the sweat and the dirt and the day-old blood streaked with runnels of sweat, her hair stuck about her face.
He felt as if they had passed a door—one without returning. And he gave a twitch of his shoulders.
"I'll carry the gear a while," he said. "We're not resting here. Keep going."
She looked at him open-mouthed, as if she thought this was some kind of revenge.
"Go!" he said.
She seemed to understand then. She gasped a breath and turned and ran.