A Battle Lord’s Heart Read online

Page 3


  “They attacked at night?”

  “Yes, sir. Both times.”

  “Casualties?” Yulen asked as his eyes swept back to the side door where he’d entered.

  “Four, but casualties were heavier on the enemy’s side. Better than a few dozen.”

  “Is the compound secure?”

  “Yes, but Verris sent me to see if we could have more men. And to see if you had any specific instructions.”

  Again Yulen’s eyes locked onto the far door. This time the sub-lieutenant felt obligated to mention it. “Sir, is something the matter?”

  “Matter?” The Battle Lord stared at him. Blue-gray eyes quickly assessed who else was in the room, finally resting on a trusted face. “Sorcher, see if Atty’s still at the new lodge, or if she got sidetracked.” The soldier rushed out as the messenger from Bearinger began to elaborate on the circumstances regarding the attacks.

  “The attacks are crude. Nothing more than a massive surge coming straight at us.”

  “What kind of weapons are they using?”

  Powell shook his head. “Mostly ineffective swords and a couple of crude bows. Quite a few axes. It was as if they just wanted to swarm over us. Several times they pressed up against the walls and tried to chop their way in.”

  “Was there any sign of a leader or someone who seemed to be giving the orders to attack?” Yulen questioned.

  “Not that we noticed.”

  “How far apart were these attacks? When was the last one?”

  “The first one was a week ago. The second, the night before we left to come here. It was during the second raid that we noticed something unusual, which prompted Verris to send us here.”

  “Noticed what unusual?” Yulen asked, his gaze swinging back to the side door. It was obvious to everyone who he was waiting for.

  “This, sir.” The soldier stepped forward and handed the Battle Lord a small wrapped object. “They were carrying it when they attacked.”

  Yulen quickly unfolded it to find himself holding a ragged, blood-stained pennant in colors that were half red and half blue. The colors that were the symbol of Alta Novis. He glared at the sub-lieutenant. “Where did they get this?” he demanded softly. The pennants were not easily obtainable. Without exception, they flew from the top masts of the highest buildings in a compound, or from observation towers set along the perimeter, so that people approaching could see which Battle Lord was in charge. It was clear the one he held had been torn from its moorings.

  Again, Powell shook his head. “We don’t know, sir. It’s not from Bearinger, that we know of.”

  Not from Bearinger. And definitely not from Alta Novis, or he would have been informed. Yulen felt an iciness crawl over his skin. That left one other compound that was flying his colors.

  “Sir!”It was Del Ray yelling at him from the side door. The man’s face was white. “Sir, Sorcher’s taken Atty to the clinic!”

  Without taking time to question the man further, Yulen jumped off the table where he’d been sitting and ran for the door under the stairwell that led directly into MaGrath and Madigan’s private quarters. From there he knew he could go straight into the adjoining clinic, rather than have to go outside and around the lodge to the main entrance in the back.

  Several people looked up at the man who strode past them with long, hurried steps through the outer waiting room and into the back area where the physician did his examinations. MaGrath was already leaning over the prone body of his wife when Yulen arrived. Sorcher stood to one side, his eyes on the wilted figure beneath the single blanket on the narrow padded table.

  “Sam?” Yulen asked briskly.

  “I noticed the front door was open at the new lodge, sir, so I looked inside. That’s when I found her just inside, lying on the floor, out cold.”

  “Was there any sign of a struggle? Any sign she’d been attacked?” Yulen snapped, more harshly than he realized he was asking.

  “No, sir. It was like she’d just—”

  “She fainted, Yulen,” MaGrath’s calmer voice interrupted. He looked up from his examination as Yulen turned toward him. “She passed out. There’s no need to worry. Pregnant women are notorious for it. Their hormones are going crazy, they get a bit over-stressed or over-exerted, and down they go.” His eyes drifted over to where the soldier nervously stood. “You’re dismissed, Sam. Thanks for bringing her in. She’ll be all right.”

  His last remark managed to calm the lieutenant. Nodding, Sorcher left the room. Yulen crossed over to the table until he was standing directly over Atty’s still form. MaGrath had opened her jacket in order to check her heart and the baby. He found her cold hand lying beside her, and wrapped it inside his warmer one as he stared down at her face. Other than a small scratch right above her left eyebrow, she looked as if she were asleep.

  “The baby’s fine, Yulen,” the physician reassured him. “It was the second thing I checked.”

  “You’re sure?”

  MaGrath sighed loudly, letting Yulen know he was quite good at his job, despite the man’s hesitation. “I heard Bearinger got hit by Bloods.”

  Yulen met the man’s dark gaze. Without a doubt the physician was trying to draw his concern away from the woman resting beneath the blanket. “Yes, they did.”

  “What do you plan to do about it?”

  “I don’t know yet, Liam. I can only worry about one thing at a time, and right now all I can think about is Atty. Are you certain she’ll be okay?”

  “Well, if you’re asking me if she’ll faint again, the answer is I don’t know, but it’s possible. We’ll just have to keep an eye on her to make sure she doesn’t injure herself or the baby.” MaGrath cocked his head at the Battle Lord. “Have you got an extra minute before you go back to those men?” When Yulen glanced back at his wife, the physician added, “She should be coming out of it pretty soon. I’ll ask Maddy to stay with her in case she does before I return.” He walked around the examination table and gestured for the man to follow him. “Come. There’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.”

  Reluctantly, Yulen laid her hand over her slightly swollen belly and bent down to place a gentle kiss on her forehead before turning to follow the older man into an adjoining room. MaGrath left him alone momentarily while he summoned his wife to watch over Atty, then quickly rejoined him, closing the door behind them.

  They were in what Yulen thought of as the physician’s inner sanctum. Here the man played around with experiments, mixed noxious concoctions, and basically performed a lot of physician things the Battle Lord had no way of perceiving, much less understanding. MaGrath waved him over to one table where there were several glass vials seated in wooden trays. A small journal was open before them, and Yulen immediately spotted Atty’s name on one of the pages, along with the name of Wallis and other notations he could identify. He waited for the man to continue.

  “When we got back from Wallis, I started doing a little investigating on my own time. Ever since I had all those discussions with Gilter...you remember him, their physician?” At Yulen’s nod, MaGrath picked up the journal and flipped over a few pages. “I’ve been making some notes and doing some comparisons.” Taking a moment to heave a big sigh, MaGrath asked, “Do you realize how incredibly lucky we are that Atty hasn’t miscarried by now? Do you have any idea what kind of odds she’s dodged at this stage?” He smacked the journal with the back of one hand. “In the past six years every single woman with the exception of two, every single female who’s managed to get pregnant has lost their first conception. All of them, Yulen, except for two. Two, Yulen. Two who didn’t originally come from Wallis, but who got pregnant elsewhere before moving to Wallis.”

  Yulen swallowed. Hard. “You’re saying that every woman who’s gotten pregnant in Wallis has lost her first child.”

  “Yes. That’s what the records say, and they don’t lie,” MaGrath concurred. Then a big grin spread over his face, and he stuck an index finger in Yulen’s face. “But! I want
you to think back, Yulen. Think back to the first time we saw Atty. Think about how the people of Wallis appeared. What they were going through. What do you remember?”

  Yulen dropped his head as he searched his memory. He remembered the terrified faces. The sunken cheeks and wide eyes with dark circles around them. The gaunt frames of a compound facing starvation near the end of a cruel winter.

  Then he remembered when Sorcher had dragged the semi-conscious figure of the skinny kid they’d found shooting arrows at them with deadly accuracy from the top of a building. A skinny kid who turned out to be a thin, hungry woman who had fiercely struggled to protect her people against overwhelming odds.

  “I remember the people were starving. Trying to survive.”

  MaGrath nodded emphatically. “That’s right. They were malnourished. They’re still malnourished, Yulen. They eat well when there’s plenty for their hunters to bring back, but did you notice there wasn’t one overly plump person at Wallis? Okay, I’ll give you Twoson, but he’s got all the signs of a pancreatic imbalance. But on the whole, they’re not getting enough to sustain them at a healthy level. And they haven’t for generations. It doesn’t take a super smart person to understand that if you keep a whole compound of people near starvation levels for generations, it will eventually kill them off.”

  Flipping the pages of his journal, he continued. “But for the past six months Atty’s been living here, she’s been fed and fed well. She’s been drinking milk like it’s going out of style. Milk full of rich butterfat. And you can tell by just looking at her that she’s filled out. She’s lost that sunken appearance. Her hair is thick and glossy. Her eyes are bright. Her skin glows. And although I’ll give you that some of that right now is because of the baby, our little bluebell has gone from a scrawny young woman to a full-fledged, ravishing beauty, if you haven’t noticed the looks she gets.”

  Yulen perked up. “Looks? What looks?”

  The physician barked out in laughter. “My God, you are the most unknowledgeable lovesick sap I’ve ever known. Atty, our sassy little Mutah, draws men to her like bees to a flower. But Atrilan, our beauty, has those same men seated at her feet, ready and eager to do her bidding. I’m told strangers to the compound have been known to become enthralled when she walks by them. Oh, don’t worry, Yulen. She’s so deeply in love with you, you’ll never have to worry about another man catching her eye. But you need to be aware of the power she has over others, a power I don’t think even she realizes she has.”

  He turned to plop himself down on a nearby stool. “As long as we’ve known her, Atty eats as if every meal is her last meal. As a result, her body has adapted, and she’s no longer suffering from a lack of essential nutrients and vitamins. However, if she were still living in Wallis...” His voice trailed off to allow the Battle Lord to draw his own conclusions.

  “She would have lost the baby by now, simply because her body wouldn’t have been able to adequately nourish it.”

  “Yes!” MaGrath affirmed. “At least, that’s my theory. Oh, but I’m not finished. Look at these.” He lifted the tray of vials, many of which contained dark-colored liquids and sediment. “Atty found that pouch of tunsul leaves. You know, the pouch she couldn’t find before we left for Wallis? Anyway, I caught her throwing away the leaves and I asked to have them, to run them through a few experiments. Just to chase a hunch, you understand.”

  “Did you find anything?” Yulen asked.

  The physician gave a low chuckle. “Ohhhho-ho, I found plenty, my boy. Plenty. Look at this vial. See the green leaves and green tint? Okay, I’ll admit a lot of my methods are somewhat unorthodox, but I chewed up a leaf and spit it in here. The dried leaf stayed green. I did a few cultures on it, and I suspect it was because the testosterone in my saliva didn’t affect it. Yulen, you remember what a contraceptive does, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. It keeps the woman from releasing an egg to be fertilized.”

  “Mm-hmm. Keeping that in mind, I had Maddy chew up a leaf. Don’t look at me like that, Yulen. Your mother is still capable of bearing children, even if she’s up in years, and it’s time you realized it. Anyway, I also had her chew up a leaf and spit it in here. Notice anything different?”

  Having recovered from MaGrath’s announcement of his mother’s fertility, Yulen glanced at the second vial. “The contents are red.” He looked back at the physician. “The leaves turned red,” he repeated.

  “Yeah. Dark red, because of her estrogen. This is how the leaf changes when it goes into Atty’s system. And that’s when I did a few chemical experiments.” Deftly, he pointed to the other five vials filled with five other different-colored compounds. “Maddy was nice enough to give me five more samples. I tested each and every one, and what I found has left me speechless. Yulen, the leaves do what they’re expected to. They prevent the women from producing enough estrogen to release an egg for fertilization. But it also poisons their inner workings. Until I do a little more research, I can’t be for certain. But at this point, I’m willing to bet that over time, if used consistently, the damn stuff coats the inner lining of their wombs with a thin sheet of some kind of toxin. Even if the woman stops taking the leaves, hoping to get pregnant, this toxin prevents any fertilized egg from becoming attached to the inner walls, which means the egg dies. No pregnancy. But if the egg somehow manages to find a break in the lining, there’s still the chance of that egg never reaching maturity, and you get a miscarriage. If the egg manages to grow into a baby, the lining may keep the fetus from getting enough oxygen or nutrition from the mother, even if the mother somehow manages to eat enough and eat properly during pregnancy. Then you have a stillborn. Take it to nine months, give birth, and...well, I’m pretty sure you’re getting the whole picture by now. Of course, this is all my theory, Yulen, such as it is.”

  Yulen could only stare at the man as a hundred scenarios raced around inside his head. Finally, after a long moment of deliberation, he commented, “Would any amount of exposure to these leaves cause the toxin to coat the inner lining of her womb? Or would it have to be over an extended amount of time?”

  “Ah. Good question. I thought of that myself, so I went back to Gil’s records. But this time I had to check to see how long a woman had been having intercourse before she began to try to conceive. Conceptions were more frequent in the earlier years, and practically nonexistent later on. So I’m willing to bet that there would have to be repeated exposure to these leaves for the toxin to fully coat the interior lining.” MaGrath shook his head, setting the container of vials back on the table. “Atty only took the leaves for a few short months. Between that, and her nutrition, I believe that’s why she hasn’t been plagued with the problems we’ve been expecting her to have. That doesn’t mean she can’t still lose this baby, Yulen, but I feel confident enough to say that the biggest problem has been averted.” He got to his feet and walked over to lay a hand on the Battle Lord’s shoulder. “We’ve been more than lucky. We’ve been blessed.”

  “If Atty never takes any more of those leaves, will whatever toxins she’s gotten from the leaves she took earlier eventually wear off? Reverse, or something like that?”

  “Perhaps. I honestly can’t tell you at this point.”

  “Atty had a sister many years younger than her. How could that have been possible, when we know for a fact that her mother took the leaves?”

  MaGrath shrugged. “I’m going to guess that Eenoi stopped taking the leaves once she got that infection. Remember what we were told? Atty’s mother was never expected to have another child after her sickness. That’s when she got pregnant with Atty. And, after that, she maybe never took them again, which gave her body a chance to remove the toxins, which allowed her to get pregnant with Atty’s sister, albeit years later. And, remember, too, Keelor was always a sickly child, at that.” Shaking his head, MaGrath closed his journal and placed it back on the table, next to the vials. “We’ll never know for certain, but I’m positive about what’s in those tunsul leave
s. They’re poison, and the sooner I get word to Gil, the sooner we can start to remedy that problem.”

  A sharp rap at the door interrupted them. It was MacIntyre, who informed them that Atty had come out of her faint. Yulen and MaGrath hurried into the examination room, only to find the warrior woman sound asleep, curled on her side on the table. Madigan stood next to her, shaken and white-faced. MaGrath went over to take her in his arms.

  “What, Maddy? What’s wrong?” He turned his attention to the dozing woman, but his expert eye could see nothing amiss. “We got word Atty had come to.”

  Madigan nodded slowly. “She did. She asked for Yulen. I told her you two were in the next room. I...I asked her if there was anything I could do for her, or get for her, but she said she was tired, and she rolled over and went to sleep. But, uhhh, before she did, she wanted me to relay a message to Yul.”

  “What?” Yulen’s eyes narrowed. “What else did she say, Madigan?”

  Madigan rolled her eyes to look up at her son staring intently back at her. “She said to tell you the baby was a boy.”

  Chapter Four

  Split Decision

  She was back in her own bed. She was warm and comfortable, and her favorite pillow was scrunched against her middle, between her arms and drawn-up knees. A faint breeze blew against the back of her neck, making her smile when she realized it wasn’t a breeze.

  Atty rolled over to find a gaze lovingly observing her. She grinned. “Hi.”

  “Hi. How do you feel?”

  She didn’t have to think about it. “I’m starved.”

  Yulen chuckled. There was just the one lantern hanging by the door to give them any light. It cast partial shadows over his features, and for a second Atty could envision how her husband would look many years in the future. She could see how his already strong facial lines would deepen. The creases about his eyes would lengthen, leaving him with a stronger, more imposing visage, especially with the elongated scar. “I had a feeling you’d be hungry, since you missed dinner and supper.”