"Damn you to hell!" he yelled at her. And then caught his breath and his wits and decided on another tactic. "Truce. Do you hear me, girl? Truce for a bit. Listen to me."
"Will you not send me to Muigan?"
"Listen, girl. You're very clever. Someone has taught you, haven't they?"
"We did it for traps. When the soldiers would come."
"The hell."
"It's true. We did them. You aren't hurt, are you?"
"No."
"It wasn't a big tree."
"Listen girl..." He got another breath and calmed his temper. "It was a damned fine set. I'll give you that. You want me to give you a trial, do you?"
"You'll teach me."
"I'll give you a chance. With an understanding between us."
"What?"
"That you come into the house. That you do what you're told. That any time you want to quit, you tell me and I'll take you to Muigan."
"Do I have your word, master Saukendar? You'll take me for a student."
Another deep breath. "Yes. You have my word."
"Does that mean sharing your bed?"
He straightened back, feeling the ache in his bones. He had, gods witness, not thought of that in the bargain. Yet. "What if it did?" he shouted at the woods.
"Then we'll go on with this. I've gotten one promise from you."
"Damn your impudence!"
"I'm not a whore, master Saukendar. I'll cook your food and clean, but I won't do anything else for my keep."
He wiped the hair out of his eyes and, the sweat from off his face. He was offended. He also, no matter that she was a scrawny, scarred urchin, wished she had less virtue.
But she was not staying on the mountain, so it made no difference. She was still going to the nuns or to the village, and he had no mind to deliver her pregnant.
"All right," he said. "Those are the terms. You cook and you clean, and I'll teach you. And when you've had enough, you can tell me. I give you my solemn word. Is that enough?"
There was a moving in the brush further down the trail. In a few moments she came around the bend of the path, sweaty and scratched and filthy, her shorn hair standing on end and matted with twigs and leaves; but her eyes were shining.
He scowled at her, and slung his bow to his shoulder and waved a hand down the trail.
"You walk in front," he said.
Chapter Three
They were back at the cabin by noon—the girl had shown him where she had hidden her pack, which was one of half a hundred places he might have guessed if he had wanted to risk taking an arrow in the back, or risk her raiding him while he was raiding her hiding-place. Her basket rested in a tight little nook under one of the rock ledges frequent on his mountain, and where—he saw by the lack of sign on the ground around about—she had been canny enough to go on the rock if she had come and gone much there at all.
She had retrieved the ungainly basket, hauled it up onto the ledge where he waited, and taken it onto her back, walking ahead of him into the clearing much as she had walked into it the first time, a load of wicker borne by two skinny bare legs.
She shed the basket on his porch, and looked at him, the sweat running on her face.
"What have you got in that?" he asked, pointing at it with his unstrung bow.
"My blanket, my clothes, some food."
"Show me."
She unpacked there on the boards, rummaged out the hat, a pile of dirty clothes and blankets, the rag-wrapped shape of a sword; a few clay bowls, a tin pot, several small packets neatly done up with braided straw cord.
"What are those?" he asked.
"Brown beans," she said of one. "Mushrooms. Ginger root. Berries."
"Show me," he said. It seemed only prudent.
She frowned and untied the cords to show him, indeed, it was only what she had said. He went through the dried mushrooms, and they all seemed wholesome.
He took up the rag-wrapped sword, unfolded the filthy cloth from a plain, serviceable bull's-hide grip, and pulled the blade from the sheath.
"Not bad," he said, trying the balance of it. He put it back in the sheath. "But you're a long way from needing it."
She looked at him anxiously, and at the sword which he kept in his hand—which he fully intended to keep.
"First," he said, lifting the corner of a once-yellow quilt with the tip of the sword, "these need washing." He touched her arm with it, plucked at the browned-blue coat. "I trust you've found the spring."
A nod.
"Fine." He stirred the heap of clothes lying on the porch. The aroma was that of sweat, old laundry and mildew. He wrinkled his nose and went inside, leaned the sword against the wall, took a generous lump of soap in a leather wrapping, threw it into the washing-pail, and took a clean change of breeches and a shirt from the peg. He gave both to the girl, who watched from the doorway. "All your clothes, all your blankets, and your person, before you cross this threshold. Understood?"
"I'm very clean."
One hoped.
One hoped that scrubbing would work a miracle, but the figure that came trudging back from the woods had breeches knotted up with plaited reed about the calves to keep the hems out of the dirt; the shirt hung loose almost to the knees. She carried the huge basket, heavy, one supposed, with wet laundry; and the hair was still a mop, the skin was sun-browned now that the spots and crusts of dirt were gone—one had not expected the old-ivory and cinnabar-rose of the courtesans, but one still cherished a little expectation.
Decidedly not; and the scar, more the pity, was uglier and more inflamed after the scrubbing. Shoka felt a sympathetic twinge for that, in his own left leg.
He had not been completely sure she would come back from the spring. If she were in fact mad, she might start the whole business over again; and in that thought, he had not let Jiro out. But he had hung a cord from post to post of the wooden porch, and when she came up with her basket, he showed her that to dry the clothes and blankets on, while he went down to the stable and let Jiro out.
The old warhorse snorted and did a little flip of the tail as he skipped out into the afternoon sunlight, in much better humor. Jiro ran for a bit and finally lay down and rolled on his back as if he had just come in after a long day's ride.
So Jiro's world was back in order, with a stretch and a roll in the warm dust, and a good shaking afterward.
By that time, the girl had the laundry hung, and sat on the porch waiting for Shoka as he came up the hill to the house.
He shed the armor and changed to a light shirt and cloth breeches, gave a sigh of relief, and settled down on the porch while he set the girl to weed the garden—it was something she well knew how to do, he reckoned, and he was due a little work for his trouble, none of which he had asked for, especially considering he would be paying a year's wages for her sake to the nunnery at Muigan.
She did not object. In fact she worked very diligently at her weeding, a fetching perspective, while he drowsed somewhat at his ease and thought over such weighty matters as how much work he ought by rights to ask of her in return for his instruction; and whether she might be a decent cook; and, truth be told, what chance there was she might settle down and become a tolerably decent servant—as well she should serve him, he thought, as some cabbage-farmer down in the village, if she had no disposition to be a nun.
She was clever: she had proved that. A lady could never survive the mountain, but a peasant girl certainly could; and warm the winters and cook his food and weed the garden....
He and Jiro could hunt and laze about the pasture, and he could build the cabin a little larger, working in wood being by much his favorite occupation....