The Battle Lord's Lady (21 page)

Yulen quickly shushed him. “Not too loud. I
haven’t asked her yet.”

“So you’re assuming she’ll say ‘yes’?” he
half-laughed. “I have another one for you, then. Are you going to
be able to hold out until then?”

“Do I have a choice?”

MaGrath let out a hearty laugh. Behind them,
Atty glanced up and smiled, then went back to her work.

Feeling lighter in heart than he had in a
long, long time, Yulen nudged his horse into a lope and headed for
the rise at the end of the road where it curved to the right. The
territory was revealing familiar landmarks now, and he knew around
the next two or three bends he should see in the distance the twin
of the pennant he carried flying from the pole mounted on the roof
of the main lodge.

Another curve, another rise, and Yulen pulled
up, stopping in the middle of the road. Something was wrong. Very,
very wrong. A sentry should have challenged him by now. The fact
that someone hadn’t made him leery. Wheeling around, he galloped
back to the caravan and held up an arm for an immediate halt.
Quickly, he motioned for Verris.

“Sir?”

“We should have been challenged by now, but
I’ve seen no sentry posted.”

“What do you think’s happened?” MaGrath
asked, joining them. Behind him, Atty had pulled up her mount.

“I don’t know, but I don’t like this feeling
it’s giving me in the pit of my stomach. Atty, how many of those
arrows have you finished?”

“Not enough.”

“It’ll have to be enough. Verris, you
accompany me and Atty.” He motioned over Verris’s lieutenant, a man
named Corinth.

“Sir?”

“Have the men ready for my signal. Drop all
provisions and leave the dead. Check your weapons. If there’s
something wrong, Verris, I’m sending you back to retrieve the
troops.”

“Sir, your armor!”

“No time for that,” he barked.

“And Atty?” MaGrath asked.

Yulen’s face turned as hard as his voice.
“She’ll watch my back.” Giving Atty a nod, he turned the stallion
around and the three of them galloped away from the caravan.

Once they reached the curve in the road where
Yulen had previously stopped, he came again to a halt. “From here
we advance quickly but cautiously.” Atty and his Second nodded,
keeping to the rear.

They continued toward the compound, keeping
their eyes opened for any possible danger. Yulen glanced at Atty,
who scanned the edges of the forest lining the road. He trusted her
eyes and her instincts now above all others, even his own.

They reached another rise when she stopped
suddenly. “Yulen.” It was the softest of whispers. “Listen.”

The men halted. Yulen strained to hear what
her superior ears had caught. A confused look crossed Verris’s
face. “I don’t—”

“
Shh!
” she hissed.

Closing his eyes, Yulen concentrated. It was
a muffled sound. Low. Bell-like tones. A high-pitched scream. His
head jerked up. “The compound is under attack! Verris, the
troops!”

Without waiting for acknowledgment, he dug
his heels into the horse’s ribs, and the giant stallion surged
forward, toward the fortress. Atty charged after him as Verris
raced back to the caravan.

Reaching the last bend before the road dipped
into the small valley sheltering Alta Novis, Yulen pulled up and
unsheathed his sword. Below he could see the enemy advancing from
the west, crossing the road as they attacked the main gates of the
compound. Atty pulled up beside him, her longbow ready.

“I can’t tell from here who is leading the
attack,” he told her.

“Who? Don’t you mean what?”

He glanced over to see her eyes narrowing.
“What do you see, Atty?”

She started. “Oh, no...”

“Atty?”

“It’s...it’s Bloods.”

“Bloods?” He looked back at the attacking
force. “You mean Mutah?”

“No. They’re
not
like my kind,” she fairly spat back at him.
“Bloods are the worse of the genetically deviant. Their kind lack
everything that would make them remotely human. My people have
battled them for generations.”

“Can you kill them like humans?”

“Yes, but be careful, Yul. Sometimes their
blood can be their most dangerous weapon.”

Yulen raised his sword and kicked his horse.
The animal launched down the road and into the thick of the battle,
with Atty right behind him, carefully picking off the terrifying,
deformed creatures.

Several soldiers recognized their defender
and raised a cry of triumph. From the battlements and catwalks at
the top of the compound wall, a cheer arose at the same time they
noticed the woman warrior with the deep blue hair as she fired into
the melee, dropping the enemy with each precisely placed arrow.

It soon became evident to the Battle Lord
what Atty had meant by calling these inhuman monstrosities
“Bloods”. Instead of a river of red running through their veins,
some yielded a yellow or blackish liquid. Another had green,
pus-like matter oozing from the stump where its head had been a
moment before Yulen’s well-aimed swing.

He had no need to search her out. He
knew exactly where she was whenever the sound of
fffffff-thup!
arched through the air
and the arrow buried its head into a head, a chest, or a
weapon-wielding hand. For a second he began to believe they were
beginning to see the end of the battle, when a sudden shout and
unearthly yowl erupted from the forest on the other side of the
road. Yulen turned in time to see another mass of Bloods pouring
out of the bushes. From the corner of his eye he saw the flash of a
dagger a split second before its tip missed his fighting arm and
dug a shallow furrow down the side of his leg.

* * * *

Atty screamed as she saw him lean far over
his saddle. At first she thought he’d started to fall off his horse
until she saw him rear back up, a wide swatch of iridescent yellow
staining the front of his shirt.

Reaching behind her, she pulled the last two
arrows in her arsenal and made sure they counted. Two more Bloods
toppled, a shaft quivering in the hole that should have been a nose
on one, the other wood piercing a neck so deeply the barb emerged
on the other side.

Now she was out of ammunition, and there was
no chance of getting any more.

Another roar rose from the battlements. The
caravan rose over the last rise and began to engulf the rear of the
Blood’s forces, cutting them down with scythe-like movements.

Atty heard her name in a shout. She turned in
time to see a Blood, axe gripped in furred paws, bringing down the
blade, hoping to cleave her in two. Without thinking, she lifted
her bow to block the blow. She stared in stunned disbelief as the
Blood shifted his swing at the last second, and instead of haft
meeting limb, the blade cut cleanly through the wood. She could
only stare at the two pieces lying in her hands as the Blood lifted
the axe once more and prepared to finish what he’d meant to do the
first time.

She lifted her face, frozen by the enormity
of what had just occurred, and at the same moment her mind
registered the danger, the point of a sword emerged from the center
of the creature’s chest, as if he’d suddenly grown an extra nipple.
As quickly as it had appeared, the point vanished back into the
chest, and the Blood dropped where he’d been standing. Behind him,
Yulen stared at her, his face completely white. Reaching out his
hand, he snagged her arm and hoisted her from her horse onto the
back of his mount. Without a word he turned and began plowing
through the swarm, heading for the main gate.

When they reached the entrance, Yulen grabbed
a handful of her tunic and swung her to the ground where MaGrath
snatched her.

“No!
No!
” she cried out, reaching up to him, but he
vanished back into the battle without a backward glance.

“Atty!
Atty!
You don’t have a weapon!” MaGrath yelled,
trying to make her see the validity of what Yulen had
done.

She struggled again against his arms that
restrained her, but briefly. Her eyes flew to the top of the
compound walls, and he realized what she was thinking. He released
her and she hurried inside, finding the first ladder and climbing
to the catwalk overhead. He’d sworn to Yulen to protect her at all
cost. And even if he hadn’t, he was determined to do so anyway.
Despite the ache in his older muscles, he tried to keep up with
her.

As she swung onto the narrow ledge, a guard
stationed at the top caught sight of her. His eyes glued to her
hair, and he screamed “Mutah!”, swinging his bow in her direction.
Deftly, Atty snatched the weapon from his hands and gave him a hard
shove to the chest. The guard lost his balance and tumbled off the
ledge to land relatively unhurt on the pile of sandbags several
yards below.

She hefted the new, shorter bow, judging its
feel and its weight, then glanced below to the fight. She easily
spotted the Battle Lord in the thick of the fray, his hair like
burnished copper in the failing sunlight. A small barrel of arrows
sat on the wooden platform next to her. Quickly she nocked the
first arrow, unused to the smaller ammunition, aimed, and let it
fly. Although the barb didn’t impact with the same deadly, powerful
results of her own longer arrows, she smiled to see they were just
as effective at causing irreparable harm at close range.

MaGrath reached the top of the catwalk just
as she began to fire, nocking one arrow after another so fast, the
string had no time to cease vibrating. The physician stared in awe
as the warrior girl no longer aimed for any particular organ or
limb. Now she concentrated on just hitting a body, hitting it
anywhere she could find an exposed spot, hoping to at least wound
the creatures enough to slow them down.

Another guard came running from the other
side of the parapet and skidded to a stop at MaGrath’s upraised
hand. His eyes were like saucers as he watched the girl launch
arrow after arrow as quickly as she was able with the unfamiliar
bow. Another glance below proved her effectiveness—and the fact
that she was one of the enemy supposedly killing those of her kind.
He opened his mouth to yell at her, when the physician got his
attention.

“
Feed her more
arrows!
” he screamed above the din.
“
And keep the arrows coming!
”
The guard nodded, swallowing hard, and raced off to get
more.

* * * *

Below, Yulen’s eyes darted to the battlement
as an arrow exploded a breath away from his shoulder. The creature
intent on climbing up into the saddle with him shrieked with pain
and fell away as it fought the shaft protruding from its ear. Atty
stood rooted to the platform like a vengeful spirit, firing
steadily at a rate he couldn’t begin to fathom. Another arrow flew
over his head, and as the tip met the hurled dagger, the sound of
metal meeting metal clanged like a bell.

It wasn’t long before the Blood horde began
to see it wasn’t going to succeed, and the battle began to taper
off as the creatures turned and fled back into the relative safety
of the forest to nurse their wounds.

Yulen stood in his stirrups and watched as
his men continued to cut down the stragglers with calm efficiency.
Once he was certain the fighting was finished, he rode over to
where Mastin and Karv were on the ground, cleaning their swords on
the bodies of the fallen enemy. Karv gave his leader a cursory
glance, but not before Yulen could see the expression in the man’s
eyes.

“Tosh Karv? Gather a dozen men and return to
where the caravan left the dead, and bring them home.”

The reinstated Second nodded once and hurried
off to his horse. Mastin waited to see what his new position would
be. The last thing he expected was for Yulen to tap him on the
shoulder with the tip of his sword.

“Co-captain of the Guard,” the Battle Lord
stated.

“But...Karv is your Second!”

“And where is it written I’m allowed just
one?” Yulen grinned. “You’ve proven yourself, Cole. I’d never
reduce you to a rank that wasn’t equal to your loyalty. Gather up
the men and have them strip the bodies. Send Verris to me when you
see him. Then I want to see all three of you in the main hall in an
hour.”

“Yes, sir.”

Having taken care of the essentials, Yulen
gave the stallion its head and let the animal happily trot back to
the compound. Overhead, he saw Atty leaning over the reinforced
wall. Once she noticed he was coming inside, she vanished back over
the side to descend the ladder.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Refusal

The inhabitants of the compound were jubilant
over their victory. Lights were lit and lanterns were hung to chase
away the darkness that was rapidly descending. Men cheered over
their victory and the return of their Battle Lord. Yulen searched
the yelling, exuberant crowd, trying to spot where Atty was
climbing down. Finding her, Yulen pulled his horse next to the
ladder, and she launched herself into the saddle in front of
him.

There was almost a minor incident when one of
the guards, who hadn’t seen Atty on the parapet, now caught sight
of the woman with the unusual hair, and he raised a cry, advancing
toward the couple in order to protect the Battle Lord. It was a
soldier from the caravan who blocked the man’s way and emphatically
shook his head. Everyone watched in silent disbelief as their
leader slowly rode toward the main lodge with the mutant woman in
his arms.