The Battle Lord's Lady (15 page)

“What am I supposed to believe?”

He could tell she sensed his irritation, and
it seemed to give her hope. Maybe she was hoping his anger wasn’t
sparked from guilt.

“Why can’t I stay with you tonight?” Atty
insisted.

Awkwardly, Yulen got to his feet. His muscles
protested from sitting prone too long. In fact, his whole body
ached. “I think we’re through talking for tonight,” he snapped,
keeping his voice low as he tossed the bloody rag at her. “As for
my life’s history, and what you can expect when we get to my
compound, why don’t you ask Liam? He won’t lie to you, any more
than I would. No, I have no wife, because I’ve never cared for that
kind of relationship. Yes, I have a mistress. In fact, I’ve had
several mistresses. Now, those are uncomplicated, yet satisfying
relationships. Is that what you wanted to know?”

He watched as she lowered her face in her
hands, but she never made a sound. Irritated, the Battle Lord left
the fire and returned to his own bedroll a few yards down the road.
He knew he’d have to face MaGrath in the morning, but right now he
didn’t care.

The warrior girl was getting under his skin,
and it was a feeling he didn’t particularly like at the moment.
What difference did it make if he had a mistress?

It had been a trying day for all of them.
Thank heavens Foster City was just another half-day’s ride. Perhaps
there he would be able to get a clearer grasp on things in order to
sketch out a more definite plan of action for when they arrived
home.

And maybe by then, Yulen realized to himself,
he would be able to face the truth about Atty.

Atty.

Atrilan.

“Damn.”

Chapter Sixteen

Gone

He sensed the person behind him before he
opened his eyes. Training and reflexes took over, and he had his
short dagger at the man’s throat before he’d drawn a second breath.
In the dim morning light, Yulen stared at the brown eyes giving him
a definitely dirty look.

“You know, you take asshole to a whole new
level,” MaGrath said scathingly. “You wanna get that thing away
from my neck?”

Yulen glanced around. It was barely daylight.
The men were beginning to stir, readying themselves for when the
Battle Lord would order them back on the road.

“What the hell are you talking about?” he
asked, not bothering to mask his irritation. This was not a good
way to get on his good side, and MaGrath knew it. No one snuck up
on a trained soldier when he slept, especially when they were still
outside the safety of a compound. Yulen re-sheathed his dagger and
sat up.

“I leave you two alone together for, what? No
more than an hour. And when I get back she’s huddled up in a little
ball with her back turned to me. She won’t say anything. Won’t tell
me what’s eating at her. Won’t tell me if she needs medication. And
things were just fine when I went to go check on the men. Which
leaves only one logical conclusion. You said something to her, and
you didn’t care what the consequences would be.”

Yulen rolled to his feet and grabbed his
bedroll, shaking it out before folding it to pack. MaGrath knew the
silent treatment all too well. Whenever the man was confronted with
the truth, he wouldn’t deny it. But neither would he own up to it.
It was like prying out teeth to get the Battle Lord to admit to
being wrong.

“Since when am I supposed to be careful what
I say around a prisoner?” Yulen finally commented.

MaGrath crossed his arms over his chest
before he used a fist to knock some sense into the younger man’s
head. “Oh, so she’s a
prisoner
again? Well, here’s a news flash for you, oh great and
powerful Battle Lord. She’s gone.”

“Gone?” Yulen froze.

“Which would mean you have an
escaped
prisoner now.”

“What do you mean she’s gone?”

“Since when haven’t you understood the
concept? Gone. Vanished. Ran away.”

“When?”

“Last night or early this morning. How
the hell can
I
tell?”

Yulen stepped over to the physician. Suddenly
his anger and irritation were melted away with the knowledge the
warrior girl had fled the protection of the caravan. “Did she take
the horse?”

MaGrath shook his head. “Nope, but she took
her bow and quiver. She’s on foot. Oh, sure, go ahead and try to
look for her,” he commented, his voice dripping with sarcasm as he
watched the Battle Lord preparing his mount.

“What do you expect me to do?” Yulen shot
back.

“Do you honestly think you’ll find her? Use
your head, Yulen. She could survive in these woods for the rest of
her life if she needed to. This is her world. Her element. Hell,
she could be hours away by now, heading back to her compound.”

Yulen emphatically shook his head. “No. She’d
never make that mistake. She knows if she returns my men will know
she’s broken the treaty.”

MaGrath couldn’t help but laugh—a
short, humorless bark. “Oh, this gets better by the minute. A great
and powerful Battle Lord who can no longer think for himself, who
has severely underestimated the enemy, and a
girl
for that matter! Yulen, she killed sixteen
of our best men! She faced down a bull ferret and lived! Not to
mention pulled
your
fat out
the fire. Do you honestly think she’s going to let a handful of our
representatives stop her from returning to the only home she’s ever
known? For once, get that sense of self-righteousness out of your
butt where you’ve shoved it and start listening to your advisors.
Screw them, listen to
me!
”

He walked over to where Yulen continued to
buckle the saddle around his horse’s girth. Slamming a hand down on
the pommel, he stared over the animal at the man. “Okay, say you
find her by some miracle. What do you plan to say to her that you
haven’t already said? How much more damage do you think you can do
that you haven’t already done? What did you say to her, Yulen? Why
did you drive her away?”

“
Me?
” A dark cloud descended on Yulen’s face,
turning his mood black. “I have to find her, Liam. She has to
listen to me.”

“Why? So you can have her teach the
troops all her marvelous tricks with a bow? Hey, it was a good plan
in the beginning, Yulen, but it can’t be your only excuse anymore.
Not anymore. I know you too well, and I’ve known you too long. You
can fool a lot of people, but I know better. And when we get to
Alta Novis, so will Madigan. She’ll see right through you.
You
were
going to tell her,
weren’t you?”

The dark cloud didn’t disperse, but Yulen’s
tone of voice became guarded. “She wouldn’t approve.”

“Oh, yeah? Since when did you become such an
expert mind reader?”

“She’s
my
mother.”

“Yeah, and she’s
my
closest friend, next to you,” MaGrath shot
back. “Dearest
God
in heaven,
Yulen. Admit to yourself how you feel about her! It’s okay to be
terrified over the fact that she’s a mutant. Are you thinking the
men are going to mutiny when they learn?”

“Learn what, Liam? Tell me, since you think
you know everything,” the Battle Lord snapped.

MaGrath refused to back down. “Learn that
you’ve finally found the one woman you can’t beat. The one who is
your equal. The one who haunts your sleep. The one you can’t stop
thinking of when she’s not with you, and can’t stop looking at when
she is.”

Yulen slapped the reins over his horse’s neck
so hard the animal jerked and nearly reared in fright. Realizing he
was taking out his anger on the poor beast, he murmured a few
soothing words to the stallion and petted it on the neck. MaGrath
watched as the Battle Lord calmed the animal, and waited for him to
make the next move.

“When did you know?” Yulen finally asked him
in the same tone of voice he was using on the horse.

“Since that night when you went alone into
the shop and cut the ropes from her wrists.”

The physician didn’t flinch under the
returning glare. “You were watching?”

“I didn’t get much sleep that night, not that
you ever noticed. I couldn’t take the chance of another soldier
taking his anger out on her.”

Another full minute of silence passed between
them. Mastin approached and informed the Battle Lord the men would
be ready to travel in five minutes, to which Yulen nodded his
approval. Once the Second had left, he turned back to MaGrath.

“What do you suggest I do, then? Just leave
her here?”

“We’re only a few miles from Foster City. She
knows that. Give her some time to decide if she wants to tag along,
remain here, or go back to her home. It gives you two out of three
chances to see her again. And if my hunch is correct, you’ll get at
least one last try to make amends.”

“Amends?”

“Yeah. And try not to screw it up this next
time, would you? You may not get another chance, even though she’s
willing to do the unforgivable.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Yulen accused
him.

“Hey, well, consider it a perk of the
profession. Whenever I find something I want answers to, I can
always use my soothing bedside manner to find out. Besides, she
asked me a thousand and one questions about us...about Alta
Novis...about you. I felt it only fair I asked a few in
return.”

“You’re an extremely obnoxious man when you
want to be,” Yulen growled.

This time MaGrath’s responsive laughter was
genuine. “You sound just like your father when you talk that way.
Okay, bluntly? I asked her why she was still a virgin. Want to hear
her reason?”

MaGrath was right, and Yulen knew it. There
wasn’t anything the young man could hide from the physician. “Tell
me.”

“She’s considered by her people to be
unobtainable. She’s hands-off material. They firmly believe that if
she gives herself to a man, that her skills, her ability to find
game when no one else can, her extraordinary sight, her uncanny
hearing, her unerring accuracy, her...uniqueness...will
disappear.”

Yulen hesitated. “Would it?” he asked.

MaGrath shrugged. “If she were a
Normal, I’d say hogwash. But she’s not a Normal, so who’s to say?
Maybe they know something we don’t. After all, how many women in
your lifetime have you known who can do what she does? Who else
would’ve face down a bull ferret with one arrow?” He leaned over
the saddle and dropped his voice. “How many
men
could have done that?”

“So why are we having this conversation?”
Yulen asked, sounding completely exhausted. To make matters worse,
a cloud had settled overhead and was beginning to drop thick
droplets of rain on them. “Why go after her when...when there’s not
a chance to ever have her?”

“What did you say to her, Yulen? What
triggered her to give up?”

The Battle Lord leaned against his horse and
pressed his forehead against his hands wrapped in the reins. “She
wanted to stay with me last night but I turned her away.” Lifting
his face, he told him, “That’s when she wanted to know if I already
had a wife or a mistress in Alta Novis.”

“I can already guess what you told her,”
MaGrath grimaced. “No to a wife, and yes to a mistress,
correct?”

“Liam...”

“You stupid cretin,” the physician whispered
heatedly. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll ride somewhere in the
middle of the line today until we reach Foster City. I need some
space and fresh air to get rid of this rather sick lump in the pit
of my stomach.”

Yulen watched his dearest friend walk
slowly away, head bent against the coming storm. As the wind picked
up, he threw himself into the saddle and went out to signal the
caravan to begin down the road. As they passed by where he remained
on alert, he couldn’t help himself from scanning the roadside,
hoping to catch some sign, some
thing
that would tell him she was there watching as
well.

Could he apologize if he saw her again? Could
he accept her for what she was? Could he accept what she was
offering?

What if she did lose her “special gift” by
giving herself to him? Would he still care about her? Would he
still think of her in the same way?

Gritting his teeth, Yulen pulled his horse
around and galloped to the front of the line. They would reach
Foster City by afternoon at the earliest. Maybe by then he’d have
sorted things out.

Then again, maybe things wouldn’t get any
better until she came back.

You know, you take asshole to a whole new
level.

Like always, the physician was right on the
money.

Chapter Seventeen

Tins

They didn’t stop for noon meal, but instead
went straight into Foster City, passing through the huge double
oaken gates at little after two in the middle of a brutally cold
downpour. Zane Batuset, the compound’s Battle Lord and ally to Alta
Novis, welcomed Yulen and his men with open arms, warm blankets,
and a table already set with enough food to feed thirty men.

For the next few hours Yulen fielded
questions over their late lunch about the mysterious Mutah woman
who had slain so many of his men, and the reason why D’Jacques had
decided to spare her life and bring her to Alta Novis. When it was
made known the girl had escaped just before morning, Batuset
offered to send a platoon of men with Yulen to help search for her,
but Yulen declined.