C. J. Cherryh - The Paladin

The Paladin

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Maps

THE PALADIN

C. J. CHERRYH

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any

resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

260 Fifth Avenue

New York, N.Y. 10001

First printing, July 1988

ISBN: 0-671-65417-9

Cover art by Gary Ruddell

Printed in the United States of America

Distributed by

SIMON & SCHUSTER

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, N.Y. 10020

WE DIDN'T KNOW—

WE ONLY BELIEVED—

NOW YOU'VE COME BACK

"Does it seem reasonable to you that a Regency continues—into an Emperor's thirtieth year?"

"No, m'lord," Shoka said.

"Not to us, either. Not to many of us. We were ready to make that objection—when lord Gitu overran

Yijang and Hua.... Assassinations, elsewhere. Hired killers. Bands of mercenaries traveling under imperial

orders. TheEmperor's seal, and the Regent's orders. How do we stop such a thing? How do we prevent

it—when every lord able to lead is apprehended, assassinated, when they strip us of men, even boys out

of the fields—go to Saukendar, some said. Go to Saukendar. Theyurged me to send to you. This time

he has to listen, they said. But if I had sent—and Ghita had known—you understand—" Reidi gave an

uncomfortable twitch of the shoulders. His horse shifted again. "I had no true hope that you'd come.

You'd indicated to the villagers—that you had no wish to hear from anyone. That you would refuse any

such petitions—"

"Youwere watching me."

"It's my village, m'lord—as the Regent pointed out to me again and again, and threatened my life should

you leave that mountain. Of course the word came to me. I tried to get a messenger down the road to

you when I knew you'd left Mon.... We believed you'd come back to deal with Ghita and his partisans."

Shoka felt cold, cold all the way to the bones.

"There are men ready to follow you, lord Saukendar. There are men who've committed their lives to

this— We didn't know the hour. We only believed. Now you've come back ..."

"It's gripping drama, tightly focussed and inexorable as Taizu herself. ReadThe Paladin and you'll never

settle for another ordinary sword-wielding female."

—Faren MillerLOCUS

Prologue

They were haunted hills. The villagers of Mon said that, trying to warn the young traveler. They warned

of vengeful ghosts who would lead a boy astray, demons which could appear as foxes and owls, and

dragons which could take human form. Most persuasive in their estimation—the boy's quest was useless:

the master took no students. Rich men's sons had come to beg to be Saukendar's disciples, and come

down from Saukendar's mountain again, refusing to speak to the villagers or to linger there. Lords'

messengers had come to see Master Saukendar to plead causes with him, and returned unhappy and

unanswered. Monks had come to ask the swordmaster for his secrets, and left unenlightened, for the

master turned all inquiries away. Twice each year a boy from the village would go up to the cabin on the

mountain to bring the salt and the tea and the small things that the master needed and to take the master's

request for rice and straw which they would leave at the appointed place. The village gave those things,

with small gifts as well, fruit in season, a few good apples or pears, or fresh vegetables, because the fear

of the master drove away the bandits. This was the only converse the master allowed himself with the

world.

Emphatically, the master took no students... and certainly no students as ragged as this—so small and so

starved and so evidently some yeoman farmer's son, no different than any of their own.

The traveler wore a quilted coat that had been blue once; black rough-spun breeches flapped ragged

ends about his skinned knees; a red, healing scar ran from cheek to chin to neck and down beneath the

grimy collar. He carried a badly made longbow for a walking-staff, and had a quiver of white-feathered

arrows slung at his side, the kind of weapons a farmer might legally carry on the road against bandits and

brigands.

There were troubles in the east. In a hoarse, low voice the traveler told them news from the heart of the

Empire; told of farms burned in Hua province and Yijang; of livestock slaughtered; of whole families

murdered, his own among them.

But all that was far away, the village assured the boy. It was safe here. The bandits who lived over the

hills in Hoisan province stayed out of this valley safely within the borders of Hoishi, under the rule of good

lord Reidi; and the beneficent gods and fear of the master kept the troubles far from the village of Mon.

"I have a place on my floor for a pallet," widower Gori said wistfully. Gori had all daughters, six of them.

"I have a garden to keep. I could find a permanent place for an honest boy who'd work for his keep."

But the traveler—he could hardly have been sixteen—who squatted barefoot in the shade by the well

and drank an offered cup of water, thanked the widower in a low voice and gave back the cup, then tied

his reed hat under his chin, thrust his arms again through the woven-rush ropes that held the barrel-sized

basket, struggled up with the unstrung bow for a staff and walked away, ant-like under his ungainly

burden, virtually obscured by the hat, the towering basket. Only the legs showed beneath, ragged

breeches, skinny calves, dust-caked.

The villagers shook their heads, especially Gori.

"He'll be back," Gori's neighbor said.

* * *

The road that had been broad and friendly and sunlit down in the valley, dwindled to a track and finally to

a narrow slot among the rounded boulders and the tree-roots of the forest, and wound in steeper and

steeper climbs into the hills.

The ragged young traveler hitched the pack up against the rake of branches and the angle of the trail and

kept going, using the bowstaff for balance in the climb.

It would have been wiser, perhaps, to have slept in the hedgerows another night, and attempt the hill

path by morning; but Taizu was beyond fear of ghosts and demons, and the only dragons Taizu thought

worth fearing always walked in human form.

The sun sank below the hills now, throwing the path beneath the trees into deep shade. Not far, the

villagers had said; but if that estimation was wrong, then Taizu reckoned the villagers were right in at least

one thing, these woods were safe from bandits: the bandit was a fool, who would hunt on Saukendar's

mountain.

And that was greater safety than Taizu had known in weeks.

So Taizu climbed in the forest shadow, struggling with the basket-pack in the clutch of branches, until the

scent of smoke and horse came on the wind; until the shape of rustic buildings showed in the twilight: pen

and pasture and a sun-edged shape of a man carrying water to a bay horse whose coat shone brilliant

red in a sudden glimpse of sunset. There was a storm passing to the north, clouds like a slate-gray wall

above the hills. Red light from the waning sun edged everything in fire; the horse, the edges of the

buildings, the man.

Taizu did not breathe for a moment. Saukendar seemed less real in that moment than he had been all the

weeks since Hua province—less real and more godlike. But a man who had renounced the world could

not be reckoned like other men. Saukendar had turned his back on the court, his great wealth and high

station, and escaped the Regent and the Emperor who had betrayed him. He had come here, beyond the

limits of the kingdom, to perfect his art and to perfect his soul in the solitude of the mountains. Saukendar

had come close as any man to that perfection when he was in the world—the old Emperor's right hand,

the one honest man in a court increasingly corrupt and full of wicked men. Saukendar had defended the

law and the old Emperor, upheld the poor against the rich, and upheld the honest lords against the

flatterers while the old Emperor grew weaker and died.

But Saukendar had not been able to stand against the foolishness of the boy-heir Beijun, who had allied

himself with lord Ghita of Angen province and accused his father's appointed Regent lord Heisu of

conspiracy and adultery with his wife.

That was how lord Ghita of Angen came to stand behind the throne, and how lord Heisu and the

Empress Meiya both went under the axe, and how five hundred men of the Imperial Guard had hunted

Saukendar to kill him; but Saukendar had killed twenty of them on his way to the border, and, they said,

no few after, until he had gone into retirement in these hills just outside Hoishi province and lord Ghita

and his men had understood it was far wiser to let him stay there unmolested.

That was Saukendar. And if he had renounced the world and decided to seek his own perfection, then

perhaps he had succeeded in that too and the gods cast a special light about him.

But a second glance showed this man limped; and the light went out when he passed the barn and when

the horse moved toward the rail fence: it was not lord Saukendar himself, then—only some servant. Taizu

felt somewhat the fool: of course the weapons-master, the Emperor's bodyguard and champion, would

have had at least one menial to go with him, or he would have taken a servant from the village below...

someone to cook his meals and tend the ordinary things. Saukendar had been a great lord, with lands

and servants. Even as an ascetic he would not change that.

So Taizu walked out into the twilight, out into the open, disappointed, but braver in the failure of a

miracle.

Chapter One

Shoka was well on his way back to the porch when the apparition came out of the forest, a huge lump

moving on two thin legs, that proved only a basket and a skinny boy in a hat.

He had seen it first out of the tail of his eye; and mindful of bandits, he had poured the water for the old

horse, patted it on the neck and walked casually toward the house where his bow was, carrying an

empty bucket which itself could be a weapon, if there was nothing else to hand.

But he recognized the visitor now for solitary, likely another petitioner. He pretended not to notice him,

for safety's sake, all the same—the bandits could use a child—and because, to his annoyance, the

evening hour obliged him to some measure of hospitality, a cup of tea, a bowl of rice, a place to

sleep—he reckoned that he might as well go up to the house in the first place. By the size of the legs that

supported the monstrous basket, the waif was too young to turn away to walk the road again in the dark

of night.

So he walked up onto the low porch of weathered boards, beneath the small thatched roof, in easy

reach of the doorway and his weapons, just in case: then he set down the bucket, turned and looked

straight at the boy, who brought his ungainly burden as far as the steps.

The boy slipped the woven ropes and set the basket down, then made a polite little bow. "I've come to

see the master."

"You've found him," Shoka said; and saw, weary of seeing, the young face come up, the mouth open

and the eyes widen in dismay. "I'm Saukendar. What do you want?"

The boy took off the oversized hat and stared at him—a gaunt and exhausted boy with a scar that made

a man see that first and the desperation of the eyes second. That attraction to the scar embarrassed

Shoka, who found himself both rude and careless; and by that, discovered himself snared in an attention

to the whole face that he did not generally pay to his few visitors.

"I want justice," the boy said; and snared him twice over.

"Have I done you some wrong?" Shoka asked.

The boy shook his head; and looked close to tears for a second, his chin about to tremble. Then he

clamped his jaw and leaned his whole weight against the bowstaff he used for a walking-stick—a child's

bow, rough-hewn. "No, lord. I want you to teach me."

Shoka frowned and drew back then, angry at the approach and sorry for the boy, when for an instant he

had felt a little pang of interest, the prospect of a problem that might engage him. "Another one. Didn't

they tell you in the village? Or didn't you listen?"

"They said you were an honest man. People everywhere sing about you. They say if you were still in

Chiyaden you'd kill lord Ghita and all of the lords around him. Maybe you don't want to come back to

the world, master Saukendar, but you can teach me and I'll do it and you don't ever have to leave here.

I'll work for my keep. I'll cut your wood and feed your horse—"

"And I tell you, you should have listened to the advice you got in the village. I have nothing further to do

with Chiyaden. I'm not a teacher. I don't have any damn wisdom, I'm not a saint. I don't have anything to

give you and I cut my own wood. You've had a long walk for nothing. Off my porch! Go back to the

village! They'll take care of you!"

The youngster stared at him in dismay.

"Off!"

The boy backed up, turned in sudden retreat down the steps.

There was a cant to that movement, a little angle of a hip, a centering of balance that drew Shoka's eye

and jarred with his assumptions. Yes. No. As the youngster turned a defiant face on him from a safer

distance.

"Girl," Shoka said; and saw the little flicker of the eyes, alarm but not offense. He shook his head and

folded his arms, thinking again about the bandits and their tricks. "I'm a weapons-master. I'd be blind if I

couldn't tellthat . Did you think you could fool me? What are you doing up here on the mountain? Who

sent you? Who do you belong to?"

"My name is Taizu. From Hua province. I walked here to find you. They say you're the best there is,

they say you could come back to Chiyaden and set everything right, only you've decided to stay here and

have nothing to do with the world. But I will. I've got a reason to. I'll do the things you'd do if you came

back."

He laughed. It was not a usual thing for him. "Tell me another fable, girl. What do you really want?"

"I want you to teach me the sword."

"You're not from Hua. You're from Hoisan. You're a spy for the bandits."

"No!"

"They think I wouldn't hurt children?"

"I'm sixteen. And I'm not a bandit. I didn't mean to fool you, just until you'd take me and I could show

you I can learn. I have my own bow. I have a sword." She gestured at the basket. "I have my own

clothes, my own blankets, Imade my bow and my arrows."

Shoka came down to the bottom step, took the bow from her hand, gave the wretched thing a glance

and shoved it back at her. "It does better as a walking-stick."

She frowned up at him. "Then show me how to make better."

"I'm not showing you anything. Where did you come from?"

"From Hua province."

"That's four weeks' walk, girl! Don't tell me that."

"I don't know how long it is." The voice was low and hoarse. The chin trembled slightly. "But I walked

it."

"Alone."

"There's a lot of people on the roads into Yijang: they got burned out too. I walked with them; and then I

walked with some that were going on to relatives in Botai—"

"Where are you from? Who's your lord?"

"Kyutang village, in Hua. We belonged to lord Kaijeng. He's dead now. The whole family. Everyone.

Lord Gitu came over his border and burned Kaijeng castle and burned Kyutang and Jhi and all the

villages and killed everything, even the pigs." The girl's chin trembled and steadied. "Lord Ghita won't do

a thing. Everyone knows that. Lord Gitu can murder people and nobody will do anything about it. But I

will. I promised that. And I'll do it."

"You'll get your head cut off. That's what you'll get, girl. Leave the fighting to your menfolk."

"There aren't any. There isn't anybody left."

Shoka looked at her, at the ragged coat, the scar, the burning eyes, and felt something stir inside him that

he had felt for none of the other petitioners who had come to him, even the earnest and honest ones. He

mistrusted that impulse. She might still be a bandit, come to find out if he was truly alone; or even to kill

him in his sleep, if he was a fool. Maybe they thought he was that desperate for a woman. But her accent

was genuine: it clipped and shorted ends of words in the pattern of the eastern reaches of Chiyaden,

which could well be Hua province, and in that consideration she might be even a spy brought safely along

the roads and sent up here on orders of lord Ghita himself. For a moment that seemed far more likely

than bandits: but Ghita had not bothered with him in years and he saw no reason the Regent should begin

now. Or she might in fact be a demon, which was also possible, but her feet were bare human feet and

her thumbs were on the right way around; and he had been nine years in these hills without seeing any

evidence of one. "Come in," he said, grudging the impulse that made him hospitable, and motioned

toward the door. "I'll feed you, at least."

"Will you teach me?"

He scowled. "Teach you. I've turned away a score of young men, bright young men, serious and able

students—and now I'm to take on a girl? What would I tell the ones I've turned down? That I'm a

weapons-master for women? Gods. Come on inside. —You don't have to worry. I won't lay a hand on

you. I've never yet assaulted children."

She stood fast.

"Damn." He came down the steps and she backed up again, snatching up her basket as she went. "Fool

girl. A sword, for gods' sakes. Do you know if the magistrates found you with that you could lose your

right hand, at the least."

"There's no law here."

"The law here is mine," he said. And as she backed further he waved a hand at her. "If you're going, then

get out and don't stop on the road. If I find you skulking about here after, you'll find out what the law is

on this mountain."

"I want you to teach me."

"I told you: I've turned down better boys than you. Get out."

"Not without what I came for."

"Dammit," he said, thinking of her hanging about—gods knew with what intention. "If you steal anything

around here, or if you lay a hand on my horse, I'll show you what that's worth with me."

Then, on the second, self-chastising thought that she was not the boy she looked to be, and that a girl

alone had every reason to be wary of shut doors and a strange man at night, "Look here, if you don't

want to go inside, I'll bring you a bowl and a cup of tea onto the porch. I'll give you that much hospitality.

You can sleep out here and nothing will bother you. But you'll be out of here and down the road in the

morning."

"I'll take the food," she said.

* * *

He brought tea and rice out onto the porch, and set it down on the far side of the steps. He took his own

supper to the other end and sat down as the girl came up by the steps and took the bowl and the

chopsticks. She sat down and began to eat without seeming to stop for breath. He had cooked twice and

half again his ordinary supper, and given her a heaping bowl, which he saw diminishing with amazing

speed. They sat on the porch, cross-legged, in the deep twilight. He ate his own without attention to

manners, throwing looks her direction. She sat like a lump in the tattered coat, her bare head bowed over

her dinner—black, thick hair bobbed off like a farmer-lad's, hands so thin the sinews stood up and made

shadows when the fingers moved, eyes twice dark with the shadows around them when she looked up at

him over the rim of the bowl.

"I could have cooked for us," she said with her mouth full. "See, you need some help up here. The rice is

overcooked."

"It hasn't killed your appetite."

"Still could be better. Tomorrow I'll show you."

"And I'm telling you there's no bargain. You sleep on this porch tonight. In the morning I'll take you

down to the village. I'll arrange for someone to take you in."

She shook her head; a slow, definite move.

He scowled at her, thinking of his solitude and his peace of mind; and thinking of the nights. Sometimes

he damned the loneliness; but he had his ways: he got up each morning and he tended his horse and his

garden; or he hunted or he mended whatever time and the weather had broken, and took no thought for

the world at all. He refused to regret the court or Chiyaden or the fine clothes or the praise of men who

had done nothing, when the need came, but save themselves.

Til this fool girl came talking about justice, disturbing his peace and, staring at him with her dark, mad

eyes, making him think of other advantages of human company he had forsworn nine years ago, scrawny

unwashed waif that she was. He was already promising her things he would never promise, to come

down into the village and deal with the people; but she had walked a long and dangerous way on her

foolish notion—a very long way from Hua province, and she had been appealingly clever about it. No

eye would expect the girl bent under the peasant basket-pack, the oversized coat, the reed hat.

The basket changed the balance center, changed the walk, made the bearer neuter and neutral. It had

fooled even his eye until he saw her walk without it.

Clever, he thought—if she had in fact thought at all about that part of it.

But even aman with a tatty basket could draw bandits and trouble somewhere along that road. Four

weeks. He could not reckon how she had gotten as far as she had.

Except she was uncommonly lucky.

Or shewas someone's spy, and she had had abundant help getting this far.

"I know livestock," she said. "Have you got pigs?"

"No. I hunt."

"I can take care of the horse. And I know lots of ways to cook rabbits."

"That's fine. Your new master down in the village will like to know that. And they keep pigs."

"I want you to teach me."

"To do what?" he asked. "To be a fool? You couldn't even make it back again to Hua. You're lucky to

have gotten this far."

"I'll make it. And I'll get my revenge. Nobody will stop me."

Hua province. Gitu. The names conjured images of the court and Ghita and his hangers-on. The old

anger stirred in him, outrage for old insults; he shook it off like unwelcome rain and said around a

mouthful of rice: "Carrying a sword. You're justdamned lucky the magistrates didn't lay hands on you.

Don't you know the law?"

"That's why it's in the basket."

"You'd lose your right hand, girl. Do you understand that?"

"That's after they catch me," she said. "No one caught me. No one caught you. You rode right out, with

the soldiers all hunting you."

"I ran for my life, girl. That's the plain truth of it."

"You killed the men they sent after you."

"I was lucky. It was a bad day for them. A better one for me. But I'll limp for the rest of my life. I don't

know any damn secrets. I'm not a teaching master. I just live up here in peace, thank you, and I don't

need a cook and I don't need a pig-keeper."

"You'll change your mind."

"Listen to me, girl. I'm not going to change my mind on this, no more than on anything else in the last nine

years. That's one of the privileges of living alone, you know. I do what I want; and what I want is my

mountain, alone; and my quiet; and no damn chattering girl to complicate my life. You talk too much.

You're going down into the village where there's someone to take care of you, get you a husband and a

roof over your head."

"No."

"The road down there is the border of the Empire. If I have to go all the way to the village I'm violating

the terms of my exile. But I'll take you as far as the bottom of the mountain. I'll take you right into the

village."

"No."

"That's all I can do. Forget about Gitu. Forget about Hua province. You're safe. You're out of reach of

Gituand Ghita, and you'll do well to stay that way."

"All you have to do is teach me. Then you don't have to worry about taking me anywhere, do you? I can

go anywhere; and they won't catch me."

"Fool," he said. And he thought, looking at her in the soft twilight, that there might have been a

handsomeness about the girl before she was hurt: and more than likely reckoning what could happen to a

girl on the roads and in a raid—hurt in more ways than that wound down her cheek....

She was old not to be married. She was very young to be a widow. But that was entirely possible. That

she had been raped was altogether likely, somewhere along her journey. He did not want to set off a

flood of tears, but as he thought about it, the more it was likely that the girl, scarred and foreign and

surely no virgin, would find no husband in the village, that she would spend her days as some family's

nurse, someone's drudge or some farmer's untitled concubine. He thought of the damnable nuisance she

posed to him; thought finally with a sense of comfortable moral sacrifice he had not felt in years, that there

was a nunnery in Muigan, a few days north, inside Hoishi province, and there was a chance to do

something charitable and maybe win a little virtue in the gods' record-keeping, if the gods in fact cared for

anything lately. The little gold he had would have been a small thing to him, in his days in Chiyaden, but it

was a great deal to border folk, in these uncertain times; and if he could give the girl dowry enough to

buy her into Muigan nunnery, she would not be so ungracious as to forget her benefactor: she would

make prayers for his well-being and his father's. That way he could do his father a service, discharging an

obligation that had worried him, do himself one, if it mattered, and a girl with no prospects would find a

decent life and a respectable old age, much more than she would ever find as a farm-wife in Hua

province.

There was risk in that plan. Certainly he thought he should not entrust her or the money to some boy

from the village. He had to go to Muigan himself and conspicuously violate his exile to do it. But probably

the Regent would not notice it, or the Regent would hear the whole of the business and, understanding it

for what it was, be sensible enough to let the matter lie and not stir up a long-settled problem. It had been

a long time since someone had presented him a problem that had a clean, easy solution. He felt quite

magnanimous then, congratulated himself on his good sense and his exemplary behavior, and gestured at

her with the chopsticks. "I'll tell you what I'll do. You stay here and rest a day or two, then I'll take you a

way through the mountains to Muigan up in Hoishi. There's a nunnery there—"

C. J. Cherryh - The Paladin

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