The Battle Lord's Lady (11 page)

By nightfall Tosh Karv had regained his
senses and his appetite. The Battle Lord had him over by his fire
to share in one of the rabbits a few of the men had captured along
the route. As the two men ate in silence, Yulen waited until the
Second was finished before speaking.

“I’ve tapped Mastin and Verris as your
replacements.”

The smaller man nodded. “I expected as such.
They’re good men.”

“You know I can’t forgive you for your attack
on the girl, but I understand it,” Yulen continued. “She was
unarmed.”

“She’s still Mutah,” Karv growled.

“Well, until I say differently, she’s under
my protection. Honor that, Karv.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, Karv? I want you back as my Second.
When you’re ready to return—”

“Not as long as the Mutah woman is allowed to
roam free.”

Yulen nodded. “I understand. You also realize
I won’t back down. She’s going to become very important in helping
us against Collaunt and his men. Every little bit of knowledge we
can gain that Collaunt doesn’t have tips the scale in our
direction.”

The smaller man answered with a shrug of his
shoulders. Once they’d finished eating, Karv excused himself to
brush down and feed his horse before turning in. Yulen watched him
go with a heavy heart. With his thoughts kept to himself, the
Battle Lord was unaware of MaGrath approaching until the man
cleared his throat.

“She’s awake and asking for you.”

Yulen got to his feet and followed the
physician back to where the man had made his fire. The warrior girl
was lying on her side on a pallet, facing the warmth. She never
moved, but her eyes remained riveted on the Battle Lord as he
approached and sat down on the other side of the pit.

“Are you in much pain?”

“The cats?” she asked instead. Her voice was
gravelly, hoarse.

“They found us, but thanks to your warning we
were able to beat them back. How’d you know?”

She sighed, rolling onto her back. In the
firelight the blood that had soaked through the bandages appeared
dark brown. “If I find out you’ve been lying to me...”

Yulen immediately knew what she was implying.
“In a month’s time I’ll be sending a squad to replace those men
I’ve left behind. At that time you can send a missive to anyone you
want. Then you’ll see I’ve been telling the truth.”

A long minute passed. MaGrath threw another
piece of deadwood in the fire pit to keep it hot.

“The man who hates me...”

“Tosh Karv.” He watched as she formed the
man’s name on her lips without repeating it aloud.

“He’ll hurt me again,” she predicted.

Yulen shook his head. “Not if I can help
it.”

“No.” She rolled back onto her side to face
him. “He’ll try and he’ll succeed if you don’t let me have my
weapons.”

Staring at his hands clasped over his knees,
Yulen mulled over his next decision. “Liam has your bow and quiver.
When he feels you’re well enough to wield them, he has my
permission to return them to you.”

He had no idea what kind of reaction he
expected from her, but the last thing he thought he’d hear from her
was his given name on her lips.

“Thank you, Yulen.”

“Your name,” he ventured, hoping to gain more
from her before she withdrew again into her own private
solitude.

“Atty.”

“Is that short for anything?”

“Atrilan. Atrilan Ferran.”

Atrilan.
For
some unexplainable reason, the exotic name seemed to fit her
perfectly.

“Mutahs have first and last names?” The
moment he asked, he realized he’d made a grievous error. Cursing
himself, he watched as the gates to her trust closed and locked, as
evident in her eyes. She rolled onto her other side, turning her
back to him, and huddled under the blanket for warmth before
slipping into a medicine-induced sleep.

Getting to his feet, he motioned for the
physician to join him as he turned and walked off toward the lake.
Once they were far enough away to where the girl couldn’t hear him,
the Battle Lord muttered an expletive under his breath. To his
surprise, MaGrath chuckled and patted him on the shoulder.

“A lifetime of conditioning can’t be
relearned in the span of a few hours, Yulen.”

“Of course she has two names. That’s what
she’s been trying to teach me all this time.”

“That Mutah may look different from us, but
initially we all came from the same gene pool?”

Yulen shot him a guilty look. “How can I gain
her trust if I keep shooting my mouth off?”

“You have bigger worries facing you,
Yulen.”

“I have a hundred decisions facing me this
very moment, Liam. Try to be more specific.”

“What are you going to do with her once she’s
taught our men all her tricks?”

“Haven’t you asked me that before?”

“Yeah, and I’m gonna keep asking you until I
get a straight answer.”

“Why? What does it matter to you?”

“Because I can read you like a book, Yulen
D’Jacques, and I’ve been doing so since I came back from Far Troit
to become your father’s physician twenty-seven, no, twenty-eight
years ago. I can read you like no one else can, and I know when
you’re hiding something. You can fool everyone else with your
bluster and your orders and that deadly right hook you have, but
spare me the half-truths. You want her to stay.”

“Say what you want,” Yulen muttered.

“I am,” MaGrath countered. “But I sense
from you something I don’t think even
you’ve
acknowledged. You want her to stay, and
you want her to do it on her own accord. Without anyone ordering
her or threatening her or coercing her in any form or
fashion.”

“Perhaps.”

“
Perhaps?
” He chuckled again. “Have you had the
chance to look at her? I mean,
really
look at her? Do you even know what her
difference is?”

“She told me her hair was her mark.”

“And?”

“That its color was different.” Yulen threw a
rock across the water and watched as it skipped twice under the
light of the broken moon.

“Yeah. It is.”

He turned to the physician. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“What color is it?”

MaGrath paused long enough for a slow smile
to spread over his face. “That’s something you’ll have to discover
on your own,” he finally said, turning on his heel and walking
away. “G’night, Yulen. See you in the morning.”

Chapter Twelve

Crows

“How’d he get that wound?”

MaGrath smiled. Peering over his shoulder at
the warrior girl who lay strapped across his back, he was met by a
pair of blue-gray eyes, and realized it was the first time he’d
noticed their color.

“Good morning, sunshine. How do you
feel?”

“Like crap,” she moaned softly, keeping her
chin propped against his right shoulder. The horse was moving at a
casual gait over the level terrain. “I’ve been trying to find some
identifying landmarks, but I can’t. I guess we’ve traveled too far
south for me to spot anything familiar.”

“It’s good to know you haven’t suffered any
permanent brain damage,” the physician commented. “You’re getting
better, but you still have a long way to go. Are you in any pain at
the moment? I unpacked a tin this morning, just in case.” He patted
his right coat pocket for emphasis.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she reminded
him.

“Well, do you want the heroic version? Or the
plain version?”

“I want the truthful version.”

“He was attacked by crows.”

She shuddered against his back. “Ugh. I hate
crows. They’re hard to hit.”

“You mean you’ve killed crows with a
bow?”

“Of course. How else would you do it? You
can’t kill them that easily with a sword,” she replied
matter-of-factly. She adjusted her position slightly. Instead of
being draped across his lap as she had been yesterday, she sat
spread-legged across the back of his horse, her arms carefully tied
around his waist to prevent her from falling off. MaGrath looked
down to see her stretch and wriggle her fingers to get the feeling
back in her hands.

“Why did the crows attack him?”

“Because one of the men inadvertently
stumbled across a group of them finishing off a carcass. When they
attacked the man, Yulen went in to get him.”

He felt her start. “Just him? Alone?”

“He wasn’t going to risk losing another man.
Of course he went in alone.” MaGrath glanced back at her again.
“There’s a lot about our Battle Lord you don’t know.”

“Like I’d want to?” she snipped, then
instantly regretted it. How could she learn to hate a man who had
saved her life and the lives of those in her village? He should
have destroyed the compound and everyone in it, regardless of her
skill with a bow. In fact, knowing she was the one who’d killed
those men normally would have been enough to have her slaughtered
on sight.

She sighed loudly, getting the physician’s
attention once more. “Are you hungry?” he inquired.

“Kinda.”

She saw him nod, then look down. A stale hunk
of bread and a piece of cheese was handed to her, wrapped inside a
piece of fabric. “It’s the best I can do at the moment. We’ll be
stopping in another two or three hours for a short rest.”

Before she could mention the fact that her
hands were still tied around his waist, she felt them being
released. Grateful, she took the food and began to eat as she
rubbed the bandages around her wrists. The physician noticed.

“Careful of the bandages. They need to stay
wrapped another day to make sure there’s no chance of
infection.”

The caravan continued in a mostly
southeasterly direction. Atty’s sharp eyes noted the various prints
and spore from the animals living in the area. Some dotted the
dusty road, but most lined the edges of the trail before
disappearing into the brush. Fortunately, as far as she could tell,
none of them were from dangerous or predatory wildlife that she was
familiar with.

“Did I dream it last night, or did he call
you Liam?”

“That’s my given name.”

“Can I call you Liam?”

“Can I call you Atty?”

He was happy to see the small smile that
crossed her still-swollen lips, knowing it would cause her some
pain. “There’s a bag of water tied behind you on your left.”

Atty found it and drank deeply. It was still
cool. Lake water. The bread went down softer with it.

“Crows, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Our teachers said that before the Great
Concussion they used to be a lot smaller, almost the size of a
newborn babe.”

MaGrath caught himself before making a fool
of himself. “Yeah. I heard that, too.”

“Hard to believe they could’ve ever been that
small,” the girl continued. “Did he kill any?”

“Three.”

“Including the one that clawed him?”

MaGrath nodded.

“How about the soldier? The one he was trying
to rescue?”

This time the physician turned around almost
halfway, using his right hand to balance himself on the saddle. “He
got me out without a scratch on me.”

It was a joy to see the look of utter
surprise come over her battered face. Giving her a wink, he turned
back around and pretended to study the landscape. Several minutes
went by. He’d begun to think she’d fallen back asleep when a soft
voice asked, “Did I dream it last night, or did he also give me
back my weapons?”

“It was no dream. He gave them back.”

“Then where are they?”

“He has them tied to his saddle for
safekeeping. You might want to look into getting some more arrows.
There’s only a couple left in the quiver.”

That’s right, she reminded herself. She’d
used most of them when the soldiers had first entered the compound.
At first she’d thought she’d used all of them, until a couple were
found on the roof where they’d fallen out of her quiver. Almost as
second-nature, her eyes skimmed the edges of the forest to see if
she could spot any young saplings that would provide strong
shafts.

“Liam? Where are we?”

“In the northern provinces. Or, what we refer
to as the northern provinces. We’re still a goodly ways from Alta
Novis. Why?” He glanced back at her. “See anything unusual?”

“Unusual, yes, but nothing that I would
think of as dangerous. How big
do
the squirrels get here?”

Now it was MaGrath’s turn to be surprised.
“How’d you know?” From the corner of his eye he could see her
slowly shake her head.

“You are soldiers. I’m a hunter. Your job is
to kill and maim and be assholes of the first degree. Meanwhile,
it’s people like me who keep food on your tables and warn you if
nature is about to dump a wagon load of manure on your
doorstep.”

The physician chuckled. Her language may be
colorful, but her tone of voice was nothing but serious. “He didn’t
mean what he said,” he added in a softer voice. He expected her
silence, but not her response.

“Does he really believe we’re nothing but
inferior to even the mutant animals?”

“I’m telling you exactly what I said to him
last night. It’s going to take a while to overcome a lifetime of
conditioning. Atty, you have to remember, all we’ve ever known
about Mutah is what we’ve been told by people we trusted were
telling us the truth. Our parents. Our teachers. Our elders. You’re
intelligent. I’ll bet the same was said about us among your
people.”

There was a moment’s pause before she
responded. “You fight dirty, you know that?” It was followed by a
loud yawn.

“You need sleep,” he half-ordered.

“I’m not tired.”

“Maybe not, but you’ll heal faster if you get
your rest,” he argued gently.

“Can’t. This horse has a hitchy gait.”