"Um," he said after a moment, clearing his throat, and got up and walked away, wishing then he had not said anything. It was a trap. They had no reason to be impressed with him. He had no right to use them. He forgot, forgot, dammit, the sense he had gotten to, to keep himself away from people, not to attract their attention, not—with the little virtue he had attained—to make them into instruments. Not to be used, himself; and not to use others. And not to make them love him.
Dammit.
Why can't I learn? What makes me do such things?
Taizu stood by him. Taizu touched his sleeve. "Master Shoka."
It stung. He took his arm away.
"Master Shoka." Again the touch at his arm, urging him toward the shadows of the hedge.
He drifted that way with her, into the dark, and stopped there, with no present inclination to talk, even to look at her. But he put his hand on hers where it touched his arm.
"Is everything all right?"
"Of course it's all right." He kept his voice down. I have no idea what I'm doing. I have no plan. I have no idea where our enemy is. I've led you all into a damn mess I can't see out of. Of course things are fine. But that would scare Taizu, and scared, she might make a mistake, and making a mistake, die for it. There was no sanity anywhere.
She put her arm around his. She rested her head against his shoulder. That was all. And he thought about the bridge, sorting through images and memories, every crossing he had made of the Lungan bridge, every detail he could recall of its construction, whether Ghita would go so far as to dismantle it—at least the center. Or how many Imperial troops Ghita had at his disposal, and how far down the ranks he had replaced officers with his own men. . . .
"Can we sleep together?" she asked.
He drew a ragged breath, thinking about the men back there, about people too close to him, people tearing him apart. Taizu hugged his arm.
Never since the willows. Not a single chance. They had been sleeping together, right enough—stinking of blood and dirt and horse and smoke, so exhausted they fell unconscious two breaths after they lay down and waked stiff with whatever position they had fallen into; and he had felt apt to the same kind of collapse tonight, until she said it and he reacted—to a woman muffled to the nose in blood-caked bandages and sweaty armor.
He hugged her against him, same as hugging a rock. And said, fingering dust-rough, tangled hair and a bandaged cheek—"We can't unwrap this. We'd never get the dirt back right."
"Just let's do it."
"Scared?"
"No." Short and sharp. She shivered in his arms. Hard. "Dammit."
He knew that reaction. He held her a moment. He walked her along by the hedge, into the deeper shadow of a mulberry and the old wall. He set her down and they started undoing ties. "We can't undo all of it."
"That's all right," she said; and: "Oh, damn," she said, when sleeves and armor got in the way.
"Simple tactical problem. Patience. Patience always wins, that's what my master used to tell me. ..."
There was no finesse in either of them: short, fast; and afterward, he felt his heart fluttering, the whisper of the leaves a thin, surreal sound over Taizu's hard breathing. He felt her touch on his cheek.
In case there was no more time. Because it warmed the body, occupied the mind, blotted everything out. And she was too smart to cozen with assurances. Or to come to him with any. She was just there, and he could think again, if he were not too far gone with exhaustion.
He shut his eyes. He was home again. The leaves whispered overhead like rain on the cabin roof. "Remember the winter," he murmured into her ear. "The monkey and the daughter."
"I remember." Muffled through the bandages and thick with sleep.
"I wish I could tell you I've got a plan. I haven't. We're going in to figure one out. That's what you're along for."
She said nothing for a while. Then: "We can get Ghita."
Straight and simple, putting it together the same way he had. Nine men whose lives were expendable—hands and backs and swords when they were needed. Themselves—minimal force, straight to the balance-point.
That was granting they got through the gates.
Chapter Nineteen
The gates at Lungan were the narrow spot, Shoka had figured all the way. In the long peace, towns had spilled past their gates if they had them at all; but Lungan with its bridge was the gateway to Pan'tei and to Cheng'di, the very heart of the Empire, and the old Emperor, acting as chief of engineers in his father's time, had ordered the gates refurbished and thickened, the walls heightened, built the walled market that was also the bridge garrison at need, built the gatehouse on the Anogi road in case it ever needed to be manned.
It was now. Absolutely.
They adjusted their pace and picked their company going in the narrow gate—a pig-seller with two animals done up in slings and a returning slops cart all in the same general area, and Shoka reined around the slops cart, hoping to clear the questions of the gate-guards.
But a guard shoved a spear in his horse's path and shied him up. "Where?" the man asked. Fittha, taking them for Oghin, likely, and willing to give them grief.
Shoka had the courier chit. He stopped his little column in the gateway, creating a deliberate roadblock, with a flock of goats not far behind them. "Captain's business, coming up from Anogi."
The man examined the chit. Damned if he could read it, Shoka thought. He took it over to his officer, as bleating goats began to leak around the nervous horses. The officer came back, and the company, on previous orders, backed and shifted in what could be restlessness on the horses' part, but contrived to block the gate. Goats bleated, dogs barked, and the slops cart was probably in it somewhere.
"Clear the gate!" the officer yelled. And a stream of something foreign.
"Aghi!" Shoka yelled back and pointed at the chit, maintaining his company right where it was.
"Pig!" the Fittha yelled at him. "Report to the camp, second on your left, straight on, move your ass, pig!"
And shoved the chit at him.
Shoka took it and sent his horse off fast. His company followed. Stay to the background, he had warned Taizu. You're too much question as it is.
But she came up beside him as they clattered along the street and around the second corner, by a tea-shop with shattered screens and a crowd of customers that got hastily back to the walls and out of their way.
Used to dodging soldiers, apparently. A squad was coming from the other direction, and they went single-file for a moment.
Get in, he had listed the points for Taizu and all the others, find out whether soldiers come and go on the street, see if there's a way to sink into the city without reporting through Ghita's command or getting shut into that camp.
So when they got further down the street that led to the bridge and found soldiers no uncommon sight anywhere along the way, Shoka slowed the pace and finally took them around a corner, on a row of cheap restaurants. The air stank of cheap beer, overloaded sewers and the wind off the stockyards.
"Good as anywhere," Shoka said, and stopped and got down. Taizu dropped to her feet beside him, a spatter of something noxious, as the rest dismounted and gathered around. "Food and drink, someplace for the horses—" He looked up at the advertisement of lodgings and looked further up at a rickety stairs.
Not the most prosperous place in town. Officers would lodge in finer places. Common soldiers would set up in tents, off in the camp they were supposed to go to. But mercenaries being mercenaries, they came and they went, and officers counted on payday to get them on the rolls where they could be accounted for and assigned: that had been the system ten years ago, not the official procedure, but the actual one.