Eventually it was a three-year-old bay mare he rode back leading behind him, a creature with a white face, one hind foot white to the hock, one forefoot white to the knee, a broad, powerful rump and a good chest. Not precisely the most ordinary horse in the province. He would have preferred something less marked, but it was a good horse, the judge was anxious to sell her and he was anxious to get clear of the farm.
And Taizu, who came out from her ditch and her bushes to meet him—looked by her stance exactly the way he had expected, worried witless by now and thinking the worst; but it was a different look when he came closer and she had a look at the horse he had brought her.
"She's beautiful! But—"
"She's loud as a riverman's whore," he admitted. It had come down to two, one unremarkable in all points, including her bones. "I did what I could. This one's sound, she's strong and she's trained for a soldier. I'd rather you had her under you in a pinch." He gave her the reins. "Climb up on her. Try her out."
"Can we afford her?"
"Jiro clinched the bargain."
"Jiro! My gods—!"
"All our gold and Jiro's best try at the judge's bay mare." He patted Jiro's neck. "Poor old lad. Gave everything he had. Didn't you, son?"
Jiro was still unsettled. Jiro bounced and danced in place and worked to get the bit while Taizu made her acquaintance of the bow-nosed, white-legged mare. And the look in Taizu's eyes and the fever in her hands touched a horseman's heart.
"Up!" he said. "It'd be like the old skinflint to change his mind and send his house guard after us! Let's be out of here."
She put her foot in the stirrup, she got herself up, and the mare, skittish with Jiro and a strange rider, danced off sideways, but she steadied. Good hands. A good seat. Damn fine seat.
"I thought you could handle her," Shoka said. "After Jiro." He rode close and passed her the paper he had. "Bill of sale. Hang onto that. If we get separated I don't want them calling you a horsethief."
"Gods, she's beautiful."
"Damn, girl, I never get these compliments." He let Jiro move, down the dike road, and the mare caught up and paced neatly beside, an energetic clip, with a good deal of neck-stretching and eye-rolling and side-stepping between the stud and the mare. "Watch it, there!"
"Men," Taizu said. There was a tremor in her voice. A before-battle kind of shiver. Her eyes were bright. Her hands kept the reins under constant light tension, the mare trying every little shift, testing what was on her, flirting with the stud next to her, and finding out her rider was right with her every move.
Jiro for his part was a very happy fellow.
More than I can say, Shoka thought dourly, and thought back on the judge, damn him, who had flatly asked how he had turned to mercenary service, where he had served, whose hire he was in—
Sengi, m'lord, no, but my father was from Tengu, well, we lost our land, m'lord. No prospects. I'll be riding back to Choedri, north, hoping for hire. Maybe there. Clear to Cheng'di if I have to. You don't know what my prospects are there?
Damned spooky, he thought, damned spooky the way the old man kept looking at him, saying: I don't doubt you'd find employment there. Where are you coming from?
Caravan guard, m'lord. But I've had a belly full of foreign places. I'm coming home. I don't suppose—there's much change in the last couple of years. . . .
No. Again with that strange look. And: Let me show you a mare you haven't seen. . . .
Down the levies to the river again. The whole horse-bargaining had taken three times as much time as he had wanted and it was twilight by the time they came to the bridge. "I don't want to stop in Ygotai," Shoka had said before they had ever set about the matter of the horses, and now he cast a look over his shoulder, with more and more of a prickling at his nape. Thank gods, it was still clear back there.
"What's wrong?"
"A nosy old man."
"The judge? You think he knew you?"
"I don't know."
"Well, what did he do?"
"Questions. Too damn many questions. How are you doing? Can we keep going?"
"I can ride all night if we have to, it's not my legs. —What kind of questions?"
"Who I am, where from. My name is Sengi. I'm a caravan guard. A captain of caravan guards. I used to be a gentleman, you're my wife, the bill of sale is valid. We stay by that story."
"I told you we shouldn't deal with a judge! They always ask questions! He could have recognized you!"
"Village judges don't get to court. I never met this man!"
"Maybe he wasn't always a village judge."
"Maybe he wasn't."
"—Or, maybe—" The mare went dancing a few steps sideways and Taizu brought her back. "Maybe they've been watching for you to leave your mountain."
"All these years? That's crazy." He looked over his shoulder again, more and more regretting the strongly marked horse. "I'm a fool. I shouldn't have taken that damn horse."
Badly marked, the old man had said. But look at her lines, not the markings. I can't sell her for the price she ought to bring. No gentleman like yourself would ride a horse so—irregular, and I don't want those markings passed down. . . . But for your purposes ... to see her go to a gentleman's retainer. . .
"Don't get attached to that mare. We can trade her off up the road. In the meantime we use those good legs of hers to put distance behind us."
"All right," she said, looking back herself. "She's in no trouble. It's Jiro I worry for—"
"We old men can manage, girl." He touched Jiro with his heels and Jiro had no trouble deciding he was going if the mare was. And vice versa.
There was a twisting way around Ygotai, by levies and dike-roads, among a few shabby buildings on Ygotai's outer edge—a town of some ten thousand souls, as Shoka recalled it from the Emperor's census; but the extent of the ramshackle buildings that he did not recall seeing, and the poverty—disturbed his sense of what should be. "These people weren't here," he said to Taizu as they rode, two mercenaries through the town slums; and people huddled under woven-work porches around their cooking fires—stopped their suppers and stared with bleak, worried eyes. Children did not chase them, there were no children, except those sitting close and inconspicuous by their elders. There was only a single impudent pack of dogs, and those were starved-looking, yapping and chasing the horses, but not far.
Mostly the people looked beaten and afraid.
"They're scared of us," Taizu said in a quiet tone. "We look like soldiers."
The houses were so temporary a strong wind would demolish them. The street was rutted, dried mud in some places, a stinking morass in others where gods-knew-what habitually ran. And always the stares, the desperate, mistrusting stares.
What's wrong in this place? Where did these people come from?
What's happened here?
We look like soldiers. What in hell does that mean?
"There's not much place for a camp," he said, looking over the land of dikes and rice-fields beyond the town. Easy for a supposed boy afoot—all too conspicuous for a gentleman, his retainer, and two horses.
"We'd scare farmers," Taizu said, "Mercenaries."
"Like we scared the townsmen," Shoka said as they crossed another bridge in the dusk. "I'd as lief be through this, far out into the country again."
"The road's safer. Stay out of the dikes on a horse, if we're thinking about stopping."