No complaint from her, not one objection.
Poor fool girl, he thought, sitting there sipping tea and watching Jiro cropping grass in his pasture down by the stable.
Not that she had run the damned hill to the top, he did not believe that for a moment; but at the least she had made a brave try at it. The stable was cleaned; the garden was weeded. He watched her this morning as she gave him his breakfast and carefully sat down on the rim of the porch with her own.
Poor fool indeed. Sore in every muscle. He rubbed the soreness in his own bad leg, and remembered the wound that had lamed him—the melee on the road, Jiro all but pulled down and trying to get up again under him, a blade coming from an angle where the breeches were not double-sewn, a blow that took his health and destroyed his belief in his own invulnerability.
He remembered another thing, when he thought of that; and while the girl was around back washing up the dishes, he went inside and rummaged among the pots by the cookpit, til he found the small clay jar with the beeswax stopper. It held an herbal grease he used nowadays for cooking-burns and sunburn. But it had other virtues. It was thanks to that salve he had healed as well as he had.
"Here," he said, when she came in, and he offered her the little pot. "For the wound." He indicated the line of it on his own face. "Morning and evening. It lets the skin stretch."
She looked at him with a little bewilderment, unstopped the jar and smelled it.
"Do it," he said. So she took some on her fingers and smeared it on the side of her face; and further down her neck where the wound was drawing. She gave one little sigh and a second, and turned a look of gratitude toward him—for what relief he very much remembered.
"That wasn't four weeks ago," he said, indicating her face, because that small discrepancy worried him.
"No," she said. "On the road."
Tight and clipped. She had no evident desire to talk about it; and did not complicate matters with confidences and tears.
Thank the gods. Sobbing women had always affected him; fools who expected rescue from their folly had always infuriated him; and considering that she was only a girl and a person of no high upbringing, she was remarkable, he thought, in many ways quite remarkable in her level-headedness.
One hoped to the gods she was not pregnant, that was all.
He waved a hand at her when she started to pass the jar back.
"Keep it. I get it from the village. Use it all if you need it. Meanwhile Jiro wants currying, the garden wants watering—we missed the rain; and when you're through with that, I'll show you how to deal with the tack."
"Slower!" he shouted after her, as she started her evening run up among the trees: day upon day of such running—and her time grew shorter, her wind grew better; but that headlong attack on the hill told him well enough how far she was going—about a third of the way up, he reckoned, maybe half. She had no idea how to pace herself. "Slower! You have to hold that pace!"
She slowed. He watched her from the porch until she disappeared among the trees, then turned his attention back to his leatherwork, using a hammer, block and punch, making holes for lacings in what would be, by a few hours work, a good pair of shoes.
He had been saving that hide. But the girl could not go barefoot, to the nunnery, to the village, or on the mountain in the winter.
He had gotten her pattern, traced it on with a piece of charcoal, and cut it in the afternoon. Now came the stitching.
The soles were done by the time she showed up again, sweated and coughing, and leaning with her elbows on the porch.
"Off," he said. "Go. Wash. You're a sight."
She caught a breath and got up and looked at what he was doing. The work was not at a stage that looked like anything.
It was the last time he let her see the boots until he had finished them, on the day after. They had started out practical, and plain, but he had thought that a bit of fox-fur about the calf was easy enough to do; and that a little extra stitching on the front would make the top resist stretching; and the pattern might as well go down around the instep while he was about it.
He had never bothered making decoration for his own: they were boots and the oiled-leather kept his feet dry, which was all he asked; more, he had never had the time. Now he took the time, now that the garden was weeded, the stable was strawed, Jiro was well content, and the cabin had become marvelously orderly in the time the girl had been here.
So he set the finished boots on her sleeping mat the evening they were done, while she was still out running the hill; and waited patiently for her to find them when she went in to cook.
She was very quiet inside when she had gone in, for a long time, when there was usually the clatter of pots and the making of dinner. She came out finally with the boots in her arms and bowed formally. "Thank you, master Saukendar," she said, in a meeker, more anxious voice than he had ever heard her use.
"Do they fit?"
"Yes, master Saukendar."
"Well?"
"Thank you, master Saukendar." She stroked the fox-fur.
Which was all the thanks he got, when he had hoped for maybe a little more, but it seemed she thought the gift was extravagant.
"Tomorrow," he said, "I'll show you the mountain."
She looked at him cautiously, with a dawning excitement in her eyes.
"I might do a little hunting," he said.
Taking her hunting with him was one way that he thought of not to leave her unwatched with Jiro and his belongings in the cabin: there were still times when he remembered, just as he was about to fall asleep of nights, that he knew nothing for certain about her, and that she might simply be a patient enemy, waiting her chance to do him harm.
He disbelieved that by broad daylight; but he did not disbelieve it enough to leave her in possession of the cabin for hours on end. In that consideration it seemed only prudent to find out what she did know about stalking—game or other quarry—and what kind of traps she might think of.
She would have taken her bow when he took up his from beside the door. "No," he said. "Not unless you need a walking-staff."
She gave him an offended look.
But she left the wretched bow and followed him into the woods.
He had piled up brush here and there about the mountain, and that was usually good for a rabbit now and again, just a matter of walking quietly and never touching the shelter itself, but setting snares here and there.
Taizu moved well enough keeping up with him, and she watched where she was putting her feet. She made little sound in the brush, evading the branches that might whisper against a passing arm or leg.
Not a farm-girl's skills, he thought. Not a farm-girl's way of moving.
He recollected the trap she had set for him, a damned skillfully set one.
That was another thing no farm-girl would know. Like we set for the soldiers, she had said.
He stopped finally to let the woods settle, moved up to a rocky slope and sat down; and in that idle time he thought to teach her a few simple hand-signs such as his father had taught him.
She repeated them for him, quickly, clearly, signs for actions and directions, and for the various animals that came and went on the hill.
Then he taught her the one for man.
"There are bandits yonder by Hoishi," he whispered. "And now and again a boy from the village comes up here with supplies. You've seen the village. The bandits—are different. I trust you'll know."
He caught a momentary expression as she nodded—something angry and hard and patient.
"If you see anyone that doesn't look like a villager, you don't lead them to the cabin; you don't get yourself caught; and you warn me as fast as you can. Understood?"