A Battle Lord’s Heart (18 page)
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Authors: A Battle Lord's Heart
“It’s all right, my love. My deepest
love. Lose yourself in me. Yes. Yes, beloved. Let me fill you with my love when
you fill me with you. Touch me. Sense me. Can you sense me, Yul? It’s going to
be all right. Trust me, beloved. Shhhhhh.”
She continued to stroke the unseen
figure who covered her, taking her sexually as she soothed his broken mind.
With her hands she outlined his shape, his contours, his very skin, as if he
were actually lying in her embrace. Her hips moved with a rhythm as old as
creation, and MaGrath could see her slowly ascending her peak of ecstasy as the
rhythm steadily increased.
Now her hands were crossed above her
head, as if they were being pinned by a strong hand. Sweat freely poured over
her face from her exertions. Her skin was flushed. She radiated heat from her
inner fires.
Before he was aware of it, her body
convulsed. Atty threw back her head and started to cry out, but MaGrath managed
to clap a hand over her mouth, muffling the sound of her climactic release.
Slowly, gradually, Atty lowered her
arms back to her stomach before she rolled onto her side, drawing up her knees
until she was a small ball.
Within
moments she was sound asleep.
Chapter
Thirteen
The
Rescue
They rose before dawn to resume
their tracking of the Blood army and its prisoners. MaGrath opted to drive the
little wagon. Atty sat next to him, lost within herself but not sensing
anything since the incident last night. By tacit, mutual agreement, neither one
brought up the details, except for the one time when the physician leaned over
and asked, “How is Yulen doing?” She answered him with a silent shake of her
head.
Around noontime Mastin came to see
if the men should stop to eat. “The horses need watering,” he told her.
“There’s a small creek running
parallel to us,” Fortune volunteered. “About twenty or so yards in that
direction,” he added, pointing.
“Make it brief,” Atty said in a low
voice.
The men quickly dismounted. MaGrath
climbed down from the seat with the excuse “I need to get the kinks out of my
back.”
The wind was blowing colder. Already
tiny flakes of snow sifted through the bare limbs of the trees. By the evening
they would be in the middle of a full-fledged storm.
“You’ve been staring at me all
morning,” Atty said loudly, never lifting her face from her hands lying in her
lap.
Renken started. He hadn’t spoken to her,
nor drawn any kind of attention to himself the entire time they had been
traveling that morning. “Forgive me,” he offered, wondering why he was
apologizing. It wasn’t as if he’d done anything wrong.
“Aren’t you going to water your
horse?”
“I’ll fill my bag after the men
return. Someone has to remain with you until then.”
“So you appointed yourself to be my
guardian?”
Dark brows lowered over darker eyes.
“Why are you mad at me, Atty? What did I do?”
“You were watching.”
Almost immediately a deep red heat
reached his face, covering it with a crimson stain. Renken had no idea when was
the last time he’d blushed. Heaven knew it hadn’t been because of a remark a
woman had made to him. “I was concerned,” he defended himself.
She sniffed loudly. He could see her
nose was turning pink from the cold. A miniature snowflake landed on a wing of
morning glory hair beside her cheek, and he had the irresistible urge to reach
over and brush it away. So intent was he on the flake, he didn’t expect her to
turn around and lock gazes with him. Something inside himself told him not to
flinch, not to break away, nor to challenge her steady blue-gray investigation.
“Who are you, Garet Renken?” she
calmly asked.
“I’m an ex-missionary. I’m a bastard
in every sense of the word. I’m considered by many to be the scum of the earth
because of my ex-profession.”
“Then why do I see a man burning
with ambition and the desire to acquire greatness? Why do I see a man who’s
yearning for adventure, yet tired of the journey?”
God, she’s magnificent,
he
realized to himself. And discovered too late that he was in love with the
woman.
Would he willingly give his life
for this fierce, passionate person? Was there any reason on this earth why he
wouldn’t?
He had pressed himself against the
wall of the cave, watching in disbelief as she tried to assuage her husband’s
grief and agony through their tenuous connection. Giving him life and love with
her own. Keeping his sanity intact as she helped him fight his demons.
Afraid to breathe for fear of being
heard, unable to move for fear of being seen, he had remained like a shadow
against the freezing rock and hard-packed earth, and he’d known without any
further doubt that no story or tale about these two people would ever match
what he had witnessed in the tiny cave that night.
His only regret was that he hadn’t been present at the very
beginning, when D’Jacques had first raided her compound and taken her prisoner
less than a year ago, so he could watch the wondrous unfolding of their love over
time. He knew so much about them, but there was tenfold he would never
discover.
Atty saw the range of emotions pass
through his eyes. Smiling softly, she fluffed her pillow in her arms and laid
her cheek on it.
The men returned, and Renken quickly
broke away to fill his waterskin and give his horse a drink. By the time he was
ready to rejoin them, the caravan was almost passed.
The snowstorm that had threatened
them all day turned the sky prematurely dark in the late afternoon. Mastin
halted the caravan and rode back to the small wagon to consult with the Battle
Lady. “Wind’s picking up something fierce. We’ll need to look for shelter for
the night.”
Atty shook her head. “Keep going,”
she ordered.
“Atty, we didn’t bring enough
clothing for this kind of weather,” the Second argued.
A flash of lightning brightened her
eyes, until they turned a cold gray that equaled the roiling clouds. “The
Bloods are doing exactly as you suggest, Cole,” she told him. “We’re almost
upon them. Tonight we strike. Tonight. Keep going!”
Giving her a nod, he ordered them to
continue, but the soldiers had overheard their exchange, and the air suddenly
began to crackle with anticipation.
Barely another two hours further
into the wood, Atty laid a hand on MaGrath’s arm and squeezed. A quick look
askance told him all he needed to know. He lifted his arm in the signal to
halt.
She was lost in that glazed,
half-here-half-elsewhere netherworld they had come to recognize. Gently, the
physician helped her off the wagon and sat her against a large, sheltering
spruce where she could at least be somewhat out of the direct force of the
wind. As soon as he released her, she clutched his arm again, and he leaned
forward.
“I must speak with the men.”
They gathered quickly as they finished
putting on the last of their battle gear. Once Mastin was aware of what they
were facing, he would give them their orders. Their recovery mission would take
on a double meaning that evening.
Getting to her feet, Atty drew her coat
tightly about her and crossed her arms over her chest. “The Bloods are readying
for the snow. They’ve gathered our men in a small area in the center of their
circle, which is going to prove much to our advantage not having them spread
out. Yulen is being kept apart from them, but where they can see him. I...I
don’t know exactly where yet. All I can sense is what I’m seeing through his
eyes, but there’s a large bonfire nearby.”
“Atty.” Mastin moved closer. “Does
he know it’s coming down tonight?”
She paused, unmoving. “He’s...he’s
drifting in and out, but I’ve let him know.” She gave a violent shake of her
head, and an errant lock of hair flew into her eyes. She brushed it back with
one hand. “It has to be tonight, men. Each day that passes, my connection with
my husband grows weaker, and for shorter and shorter periods of time.”
Atty blinked, and suddenly they knew
she was totally with them. Her nostrils flared, and a dark, violent side of her
they had rarely, if ever, seen came rising from the depths of anger she had
nursed these past few days.
The soldiers nodded,
understanding.
Many of them had
personally witnessed Atty’s revenge on Tosh Karv when he had attempted to
overtake Alta Novis on MaGrath’s wedding day. The man had also attacked and
further threatened the Battle Lord. He had even tried to shove a sword
intoYulen’s neck before Atty punctured him three times with her arrows. The
woman had ice water in her veins when she took her revenge.
First she had told them about the
Battle Lord being tortured on a nightly basis. Today she gave the description
of the creature responsible. They were looking forward to being first-hand
witnesses when Atty confronted the creature. Her brand of justice would be
neither swift nor merciful.
Atty stepped away from the bole of
the spruce and stopped a few feet beyond. Renken left the group of men who were
getting directions and orders from the Second, and walked over to her.
“I would’ve thought you would be
chomping at the bit by this time,” he tried to make light of the seriousness of
the situation. By all accounts they were still vastly outnumbered, but too many
odds were in their favor. Yet, the chance remained they could lose. Lose lives.
Lose D’Jacques.
Atty glanced up at him and frowned.
“Twenty-twenty hindsight,” she admitted. From the corner of her eye she could
see MaGrath checking his supplies and readying the back of the wagon. Earlier
she had confided to him that the rest of the soldiers taken prisoner were
probably able to follow along on foot. They were suffering from hunger and the
cold, not to mention what injuries they’d sustained in battle, but she had a
plan once the rest of the Bloods had been conquered. The men would make it, and
they would be able to return to Alta Novis, hopefully without any further
casualty.
But Yulen’s wounds were too severe.
He would have to be transported by wagon. In spite of their attempts to keep
him alive, the Bloods’ treatment and torturing of him had been worse than
they’d thought.
Atty closed her eyes and prayed he
would make it. When she opened them, she saw Renken giving her a questioning
look. “I only have my quiver of arrows. I didn’t think to pack more. I wasn’t
expected an all-out war with Bloods.”
“Hey!”
MaGrath’s yell of surprise caught
her attention. Atty hurried over to the wagon to find him pulling away a stack
of blankets they’d initially brought to wrap and transport the bodies in.
Underneath lay several piles of arrows—all lengths, all sizes, bearing all
types of barbs and colored fletchings. Atty picked up one to examine it. The
arrowhead tip was dark with congealed green blood. She turned and held it out
toward Renken. “You?”
The man shrugged. “Call it
twenty-twenty foresight. You were unconscious in the back of the wagon. The men
were inside the compound searching for bodies. I was supposed to be watching
you, but there were all those bodies scattered everywhere. And lots of arrows.
I had time on my hands. I figured you could probably use them sooner or later.”
For his confession, he got a warm
hug and a kiss on the cheek. It was more than he could have asked for.
Mastin pushed through the crowd to
stop before her. “We’re ready. How far, Atty?”
She pointed in the direction they’d
been heading. “Three, maybe four hundred yards. Past a grove of wild apple
trees. Cole, how can we keep the horses from giving us away?”
“We can’t,” he answered. “That’s why
we have to be in position and wait for my signal to charge in all at once.”
“What signal?”