The village never bargained. It got more in the way of furs than usual this year because he had had more time to hunt, and the good rains had meant an abundance of rabbits and foxes; if this year he wanted a load of straw, that should be no hardship, in the good harvest that it had been.
(Don't you let them tell you there's been bad harvest, Taizu had said fiercely. It's good this year, no way it's not. )
"Aye, lord," the boy said. "I tell 'em, m'lord. I bring it. Tomorrow, if you like."
"Good lad." So much for hard bargaining. He was grateful to the boy; and he saw the young face flush, the eyes dart toward his and lower again, shyly, as he began to unwrap the pack the boy had brought.
There was rice, there was salt, there were sausages, wonderful sausages, there were small pottery jars of preserves and other things lovingly made by the women of the village. He remembered other such gifts, small jars sitting on his shelves until the winter, when he allowed himself such luxuries. He knew this jar, for instance, that it was a ginger preserve: for years it had come in the same kind of small pot, with a wax seal; and it was as good as ever graced the Emperor's table. For years some woman had been sending him this, and he had never truly taken account of the gifts before, the fruit and ginger, the small pots of sauces and spices that relieved the sameness of his diet.
"This is very kind," he said, unaccountably moved. "This is wonderful. Tell them so."
"Yes, m'lord," the boy said.
Oh, gods, boy, he thought then, staring at the young face, I'm not a damn hero, I'm not worth all this, don't you see?
But that was not what the boy had come up the hill to find, so truth was not, finally, what he owed the boy.
"My mother sent you a shirt," the boy said, unrolling it from the pack.
"It's very fine," he said, fingering the embroidery. "Tell her I thank her." And, a little embarrassed, weighing the rice and remembering that there were two to feed: "I wonder—I could use a bit more rice—"
"I can bring that, m'lord Saukendar."
"I'd be grateful."
There were three more fox skins and a great number of rabbits and squirrels in what he gave them. He did not feel it was unjust.
Taizu had said it was not unjust.
And as the boy left, he clapped the youth on the shoulder like a comrade in arms, which the boy took well to.
He had never understood why the village worshipped him. He had never asked for it. It frightened him. And he remembered that peasants had tried to trap him and many villages had joined his hunters in Chiyaden.
For the bounty on his head, he had thought.
But not these folk.
Taizu was no different than any pig-girl he had ever seen.
And at the same time she was very different.
(Lithe body whirling with a flash of cane in hand, flash of bare legs, bare slim midriff and white shirt flying.... )
He had never understood the countryfolk. He had never understood the minds of people who worked the land and herded pigs and provided the things that turned up on the tables and in the granaries. He knew the importance of them in war. He knew the importance of supply and he understood the logistics of moving forces among such people, what force a band of spear-wielding peasants could contribute and what they were worth in a fight, with the bows they were entitled to, and what the laws were (when there had been laws) about what an officer could do and demand of the villages. But he had no notion why these folk down in the village of Mon should be faithful to him, except that they might assume more of him than he was and more than he could do. Which made him angry.
No, it troubled his sense of honor, because he had known in his heart it was going on all these years, and he had never let himself wonder about it or worry about the cost.
So he sat and stared at the boy's departing back as the boy went back down the hill, taking to the road; and he had not moved when Taizu came back to the edge of the porch.
"What did he say, master?"
"Nothing," Shoka said. "He said nothing. Except he'll bring the straw and a little more rice. So we won't run short. And we can patch the roof."
Taizu looked at him strangely, squatting down on her haunches there in front of the porch where he sat; but he got up off the edge and said that he had work to do.
He did not, in fact, know what that was, but he took the bucket of scraps and went and walked up into the woods and over toward the shoulder of the hill, where the smaller meadow was, and the thicket, where they put the bits and ends of squash and bean-pods. It made for more rabbits next spring.
Even a man from the court had not needed a pig-girl to tell him that; or what became of the rabbits that got to depend on them.
And on the next day he went down the hill as far as the appointed place, a narrow track on which Jiro could not help him; but Taizu went along.
There was a pile of straw bales, which the village had left on the last level ground; and there was a small cairn of stones, which protected the basket of rice.
He gave her the rice basket to carry; and he gathered up one of the huge straw bales and sent her up the hill first, because his lame leg gave him trouble on a climb like this, and he had no desire to have her behind him, waiting on his clumsy shiftings of balance and telling him: You're off your center, master Saukendar.
He made up his mind not to carry the load that way, in his slow campaign to correct his balance: he shifted the stress on muscles until he could feel the pain, and he was sweating, out of breath and feeling the pull in the old scar when he dumped the first load at the very edge of the clearing. "You can get that up the rest of the way," he said, and turned and went back down the track.
That gave him some breathing room, while she had to take the basket of rice as far as the cabin and then come back downhill and move the straw. It let him take the downward trail slower, limping all he liked now that he was carrying nothing, and swearing with every aching step.
He was a fool. He should have had the boy bring help and carry the damned straw as far as the stable. The boy would have done that. The boy would have been delighted to do that for the great lord Saukendar, who was too crippled to climb the damn mountain.
He cursed the assassins who had done it to him. He saw the dark, the melee, remembered the blow like it was yesterday and, worse, had himself to blame, for letting anger cloud his judgement and for letting a man come at him from the side.
One mistake in a lifetime. One mistake because he was more intent on killing than on surviving, because he was thinking of Meiya and Heisu and thinking that he would as soon die and be out of his pain.
One mistake because he was a man and not the paragon the legends said he was. And the man limped for the rest of his life and hurt like hell and was short of wind because he had survived that ambush, he had made it beyond the borders of the Empire, he had decided to live and he could no longer do the things that kept him in form. A little exercise helped. But it did not cure the lameness, did not cure the weakness.
Nothing could bring back Saukendar the way he had been. Nothing could make the years flow backward, bring the dead to life and make the pain go away.
And Taizu, damn her, overtook him before he even got down the hill, scampering down the root-laddered slot like a goat, cheerful as an otter.
She grinned at him as she took up a man-sized bundle.
That's too much for you, he started to say, because it was not the weight, it was the way the bundle caught on the trees along the trail and forced shifts in balance in the narrow track there was to walk on. It did that to him. It brought stabs of pain through his leg and a sick feeling when he took up the weight of another bale. Damn stubborn girl. Let her find out for herself. Do her good.