A Battle Lord’s Heart (11 page)

           
“Atrilan...” All of his anger washed
out of him, as surely as if he’d poured it out with his own two hands.

           
“I want...I want to spend...forever
with you.” She couldn’t speak anymore. The pressure in her chest was too great,
stealing what air she could breathe in, and her words hiccuped out of her as
she tried to tell him how much she loved him. How much she needed him, to be
with him, to have him with her. “You...
are
...my life...Yul...
Yul
...”

           
He held out his arms to her, and she
collapsed against his strong chest. Holding her, it took every ounce of
willpower not to break down with her as she trembled violently. Her arms
clutched him. Her fingers dug painfully into the burn on his back, but he could
accept it.

           
He closed his eyes and memorized how
she felt. The scent and texture of her dark blue hair. The silkiness of her
body. The beating of her heart. He bent his head and sought her mouth for a
goodbye kiss. Her lips tasted of salt.

           
“You know you are my very heart, my
very life,” he whispered in her mouth. “You’ve known it ever since that day I
took your hand and led you out of the forest on the outskirts of Foster City.
You’ve known it since the first time I kissed you after you saved me from the
bull ferret. You’ve known it since I removed the rope from your wrists in that
little shop in Wallis.”

           
He kissed her as his hand cupped her
neck and throat, and he could feel the wild pounding of her heart beneath the
thin, velvety skin. “I’m leaving here without my heart because you will be
holding it here, inside you, next to our son, until I return to claim it. Do
you hear me, my Atrilan? Keep my heart safe with you, within you, where I know
it will be warmed and loved and protected by your strength and courage.
Atrilan. My beautiful, passionate Atrilan. My only love. My wife.”
 
        

           
He kissed her again, and this time
she gave him her answer with her lips. Holding her tightly, he allowed himself
one last, slow taste of her incredible mouth, then gently released her. Turning
on his heel, and without another word or look back, Yulen walked out of the
main lodge to retrieve his horse.
 

           
Atty remained by the fire, shaking
with grief and fear, until she could hear the sound of the soldiers departing.
Breaking out of her numbness, she hurried to the front doors. Tory and Fortune
and Mastin bolted after her, not knowing what she would do, yet knowing she
would do something.

           
When they reached the outside, it
was Mastin who spotted her climbing up the ladder to reach the parapet where
she could watch Yulen’s departure. Once she reached the narrow ledge, she edged
over to the main gates and remained there until the last of the army had
disappeared over the ridge. After a few more minutes had passed, she slowly
climbed back down the ladder and began to walk back toward her new lodge. She
never made it, as she sank into an unconscious heap in the middle of the
roadway.

Chapter
Eight

In
Interim

           
Three days passed with excruciating
slowness. There were hours when Atty would stay in bed, drifting between sleep and
restlessness. Several times she would climb the ladders up to the parapet to
stare out over the compound walls, toward the direction where Bearinger lay.
The rest of the time she would prowl the perimeter of the compound, walking in
endless circles around and around the interior, sometimes for hours at a time.

           
Countless eyes watched her
guardedly, protectively, but only a small handful of people dared to approach
her. Talk with her. Try and coax her back into the warmth of the lodge. To many
she resembled a caged animal relentlessly pacing the limited confines of her
cell.

           
She ate alone, taking all her meals
in the new lodge. MaGrath checked on her every day to make sure at least her
physical health wasn’t suffering.

           
One afternoon he reentered his clinic,
bypassing a couple of waiting patients, and exited into the inner sanctum of
his own quarters. Madigan was seated before the fire, trying to relearn how to
knit, now that she had a grandson on the way. She looked up when he came in and
collapsed in the chair opposite, and remained silent, knowing he would speak
when he was ready.

           
“I should have gone with them,” he
finally remarked.

           
“You gave your word to Yulen.
Besides, MacIntyre’s more than capable. It was time he got his hands dirty.”
She swore softly to find she’d dropped a stitch and was forced to go back and
unravel what she’d done to pick it up.

           
As he rubbed his forehead, MaGrath
noticed her irritation. Her concentration brought a smile to his face. “You
haven’t touched a pair of needles in how long?”

           
“Let’s see...Yul’s thirty? Thirty
years.” She glanced up at him. “How’s she doing?”

           
His sigh was explosive. “I’m
reminded of Yulen when she was taken away to Wallis. Remember how he just
seemed to fold into himself and die bit by bit? She’s like that, only she’s
making sure the baby isn’t suffering because of her. So, on one hand, you have
a woman emotionally losing her sanity, and on the other you have an expectant
mother going through the motions to protect her unborn child. What’s today? The
ninth? They should’ve gotten there by now. Give or take another day, and the
trip back, we should be getting some sort of message by the middle of next
week.”

           
Madigan swore again under her
breath, and this time the physician chuckled. He got to his feet and crossed
the short distance to her chair, leaned over, and gave her a soft kiss. “I’m
going back to the clinic to see the two people still waiting, and then I’ll
hang up the ‘emergencies only’ sign. After that I’m coming back in here to take
my favorite girl out to eat.”

           
He got a sweet smile from her for
that remark. “And then what?” she coached.

           
“And then I thought we could see if
Berta has ready what I asked her to bake. We’re going to take them over to the
new lodge and try to blackmail Atty into spending an evening in conversation
with us. Her sweet tooth has grown enormously with her cravings. Let’s see if
our blue-haired wood sprite can resist hot apple dumplings.”

           
A little more than an hour later,
MaGrath rapped on the front door of the new lodge. Tory answered the door. A
look of surprise came over her when she saw the doctor and his wife standing
outside in the cold and dark. “Come in! Come in, before you catch your death.”
She ushered them into the living area and took their coats. Madigan held out
the tray of wrapped dumplings she’d brought with them, straight from the
kitchen oven.

           
“We brought apple dumplings,” she
explained. “Watch it. They’re still hot.”

           
Tory gestured for her to place the
tray on the small table by the door.

           
“I don’t think you’ve met my wife,”
MaGrath did the introductions. “This is Madigan. Maddy, this is Tory Kalich.
And this gentleman finally getting out his chair and coming over to meet us is
her husband, Fortune.”

           
They shook hands politely as they
exchanged greetings. Atty’s non-presence was very noticeable, and Madigan
looked up at the loft-style bedroom in expectation.

           
Like a good hostess, Tory led them
over to the fire where two more comfortable and identically padded chairs had
been added since Yulen and Atty had moved in.
 
This was Madigan’s first time to be in the new lodge, and her mother’s
eye saw all the touches that spoke of her son, but the absence of any woman’s
touch was glaring.

           
“Maddy, remember me telling you that
Tory and Fortune are Atty’s guardians?” her husband commented. MaGrath turned
to the Mutah couple. “Madigan is Yulen’s mother.”

           
“Oh!” Tory’s gaze riveted on the
woman sitting opposite of her. “I didn’t know.” Immediately her brows bunched
together, and Madigan laughed softly. She’d seen that expression too many
times.

           
“I know, I know. He looks nothing
like me. But, trust me, he’s almost the spitting image of his father except for
his coloring.”

           
“His coloring?” Tory repeated.

           
“Rory was dark-haired. Dark, dark
brown.”

           
“Then where...”

           
MaGrath grinned. “Maddy’s mother was
a redhead. We figure he got it somewhere down the line on that side.”

           
“When did Yulen’s father die?”
Fortune spoke up.

           
“Two, no, three years ago. He was
killed in a Mu—” Madigan caught herself. A hand flew up to cover her mouth.
Taking a couple of steadying breaths, she lowered her hand to continue.
“Forgive me. He was killed in a Blood ambush. I would have lost Yulen, too,
except he’d been injured in an earlier raid and was recovering when they
attacked again.”

           
“Oh? How was he injured?” Tory
inquired.

           
“He took a short dagger in the
back,” MaGrath told her.

           
“The scar on his lower back!
That’s
how he got it!” a voice from upstairs exclaimed softly.

           
The two couples glanced up at the
balcony to see a pale face staring down at them. MaGrath smiled to himself.
Silently they watched as Atty carefully descended down the spiral staircase.
She was warmly dressed in her favorite cream-colored gown. From the slightly
tousled hair flowing loosely over her shoulders, they could tell she had been
lying awake in bed, listening to them talk.

           
She approached them hesitantly, as
if she was unsure she could join in on their conversation. Locking onto the
physician, she told him, “He wouldn’t tell me how he got that scar. Just said
it was a battle wound.”

           
MaGrath nodded. “It was a bad knife
wound. Barely missed his kidney, but it put him down for the count.
 
A group of four of them swarmed his horse
and cut its hind tendons, bringing it down. The second the horse began to
falter and drop, they jumped him. We had two things to be grateful for that
day. The first being that Bloods will strike and move on, without checking to
see if the enemy is dead or incapacitated. The second being that right after
they got to Yulen, they retreated, which gave us the chance to get out in the
field and bring him in to tend to him.” He looked over at Madigan to see how
she was coping with the memory. “Yulen’s always blamed himself for being partly
responsible for his father’s death. He still believes that if he hadn’t gone
down, Rory would still be alive today.” He reached over and patted his wife’s
hand where it rested on the arm of her chair. She flashed him a smile that let
him know she would be all right.

           
Tory scooted over in her chair and
patted the seat. Atty accepted her invitation and joined her, curling one foot
beneath the other leg.

           
Madigan studied the paleness in the
woman’s face and the shadows that haunted her eyes. Yulen wasn’t the only one
fighting the Blood army. Atty was fighting demons as well. Getting up from her
chair, she went over to fetch the tray of apple dumplings and proceeded to pass
them around.

           
Tory excused herself and disappeared
through the second downstairs door on the other side of the staircase, emerging
a minute later with plates, forks, and cloth napkins. Atty stared in disbelief
at the utensils. “Where did these come from?” she asked.

           
“From the kitchen.”

           
“What kitchen?”

           
Tory burst into gentle laughter.
“Goodness, Atty! Haven’t you checked out any of the lower section of your new
home yet?” At the young woman’s stunned expression, she informed her, “There’s
three bedrooms, a bath, and a kitchen area with a really nice brick oven. I
guess Yulen had it built in case you ever wanted to have just a private dinner
between the two of you. Or the three of you.”

           
“Is it stocked?”

           
“There’s some pots and pans, plus
dishes and utensils, but no food. I guess you’ll have to get someone from the
main lodge to bring it over.”

           
“Atty, mind if I take Maddy upstairs
to see the baby’s room?” MaGrath asked.

           
She shook her head to give
permission, but continued to dive into her apple dumpling as the physician took
his wife upstairs to look around.

           
Once they were in the loft, Madigan
paused to study the elaborately-carved headboard with its intimate design. She
also noticed the fact that only Yulen’s side of the bed was mussed. MaGrath
observed her scrutiny. “What’s the matter, honey?” he inquired in a soft voice.

           
“He built all of this for her.”

           
“Yeah. He did.”

           
She was silent for another moment,
then said, “They love each other so much, don’t they?”