More than a few, he thought. The more wood he could carry at one time, the fewer times he had to do this and take his eye off things. He gathered up a quick armful and headed back around the corner of the house and up onto the porch.
The unmistakable hiss of an arrow passed him at hip level.
He dropped the wood, dived for the doorway and rolled inside, grabbing up his bow and quiver from where he had left then leaning against the doorframe.
"Dammit," he yelled at the darkening woods, "you're asking for it, girl! That's enough. You listen to me! I don't want to hurt you. I've been patient, gods know. I've offered you a dowry. I offered you all the gold I've got, because I didn't want to see you come to harm. I think that deserves at least a little courtesy, don't you think?"
Silence.
"Look here, girl, I won't force you to anything. If you don't want to go to Muigan, that's your choice. If you don't want to stay in the village, that's your choice too. You can go back to Hua, you can go wherever you like. I promise you I won't lay a hand on you. Just come in and talk like a civilized person and stop this nonsense!"
Silence.
"Dammit, you're asking for trouble, girl! I'm not going to be a sitting target for a lunatic."
Silence still.
Should I really have said that last, he wondered uneasily, in dealing with a madwoman?
He had a good idea at least where she had been standing when she had taken that shot, and finding the arrow, he had a better one: a triple-split tree and a small thicket on the other side of the house.
So he put on his leather breeches, which he generally used for hunting, but which were double-sewn with pieces of horn, particularly the front of the thighs, covering what the armor-coat did not. He left only the shin-guards, which were miserable for a long walk, and he took his canteen and his bow with him as he walked to the edge of the woods. It was the full light of dawn; but the dew was still on the leaves, and it was no difficult thing to see that she had been where he had thought—that, in fact, she had spent some little time there, and come and gone.
And gone again.
It had been a foolish time, he thought, for her to have taken that shot, when there was the dew to help him. She had made a mistake, a simple, beginner's mistake—a little overconfidence, a little desire to stir things up when they had been too quiet for her taste.
That thought cheered him immensely.
He smiled to himself as he saw the track plain as could be through the brush.
Fighting himself, indeed. No girl, even if she knew the land, was going to pass through the woods without a trail on a morning like this, and by the state of the dew on the leaves he could judge well enough how long ago she had passed.
The trail took him away from the house and deeper into the woods: he did not like that. She had enough time to double back if he did not move faster and, surer; and he ignored his aching leg and trotted along the clear spots. The rising sun was beginning to burn the mist away, the clouds were breaking; and the advantage a fugitive might have had in the hills was much less by daylight.
It was no difficult thing once he saw the tracks, to sort out the pattern she had been following—he could see other evidences, a regular trail worn on a slope, the plants broken down, stones dislodged—clear as a highway in the brush once he was onto it.
But it was not a place or a moment to be careless.
"Master Saukendar!" a voice drifted down to him, from out of the hills. "You don't have to track me. I'll come down. All you have to do is promise to teach me. You don't have to worry about me."
He was not fool enough to answer her.
Let her worry now, he thought, and quickened his pace along the trail she had left, not cutting across toward the voice, even though it came from across a ravine and off another hill in a place where he could guess very likely where she might go. If she were clever she might do that to find out where he was, or to lure him off the trail and then, hiding hers very well, make him waste time retracing to find the track again.
If she were skilled. Likely she was a very anxious girl just now; and there were trails around that hilclass="underline" he had worn them and he knew them much better than she did. If he could find out which one she was on, then he could indeed take a short-cut.
"Master Saukendar!" Very high up the mountain and far away now. "Haven't I proved myself? That's all I'm after. That's all I was ever after. I never meant to hit you. I could have. I'm not a bad shot with the bow."
He kept going. He had an idea now that she knew where she was going. He found the same kind of trail, stones disturbed, plants flattened and some of the stems browned: not only this morning, her passage in this direction.
Why?
"Master Saukendar?"
He did not answer. She was leading him off from home, he thought; then she would take the trail downhill and try to double back to the cabin ahead of him.
But there was a way across and up to that trail she was on now.
He took the downhill slope off the side of the trail, going from tree to tree to stop himself gathering too much momentum. The climb up the other side was a quick scramble up among the pines, because her trail descended to that point.
Only one way down her side of the hill, unless she went down the slope or doubled back again; and if she did that, there was still another place he could catch her.
But there, dammit, she did head down the other slope, further up the bend of the two hills: he heard the crashing in the brush; and then thought: no. Not.
He simply sat down where he was, figuring he could take the down-course and match her if he was wrong, but he figured it was a tree or a large rock that had just rolled down that hill.
And if he was wrong he happened to have a vantage that would show her quite plainly when she crossed a certain point below, or tried to climb the slope to reach the trail he had left.
But reckoning that he was not wrong and that the unaccustomed racket was a diversion, he sat, and he waited, and reckoned when she came past him on her way down the trail he could lay hands on her and teach her quite well how she would fare in a real fight.
But there was no sound, no sound for a very long while; and he grew uneasy, thinking that she might in fact have taken some route completely off the trails—a climb up and over the hill, slower, but entirely possible to young legs and light, quick feet. She this moment could be doubling back to the cabin.
Or she had realized where he was now; and was lying quiet; and it was a matter of outwaiting her.
Damn.
He heard a noise then, a stirring of brush coming his direction.
He crouched in his concealment beside the trail.
"Master Saukendar?" The voice came from quite close now, just beyond the trees, tremulous and out of breath.
Damn, damn, and damn. He said nothing. He held his breath and waited, and heard brush break going right back down the trail away from him.
He broke from cover and plunged onto the trail in pursuit, having a brief sight of a ragged blue coat among the leaves. He doubled his speed, and she ran all-out ahead of him, dodging along the twists of the trail, her light-shod feet flying, up and over an outcropping of rock and around a turn as he came close behind.
He felt the trip-rope against his foot, he heard the sprung limb release. He saw the tree coming at him, did a turn and roll his muscles knew and his mind had outright forgotten; and a forty-year old body hit the rocky trail with a force that nearly knocked the wind out of him.
He rolled and got up again, bruised and outraged, shoved the quiver back on his shoulder and picked up the bow he had dropped.
"Dammit, girl!"
"I didn't catch you, did I?" the worried voice drifted down the trail.