Free The Battle Lord's Lady by Linda Mooney

hand
through his hair. His fingers met the knot at the back of his neck,
and he jerked the lacing free. It was only a few hours ago when
he’d pulled MaGrath away from the fire pit where the last of the
badger lay smoking, and asked him one simple and definitely
unexpected question.
    “Is she a virgin?”
    Without showing his shock at the question,
the physician had nodded. “Without a doubt,” he’d said, then
returned to finish his meal.
    And why did he have to know that? Yulen
chided himself. Why did he need to know that intimate detail about
her? Because it tells you more about your
enemy than a hundred probing questions could , a little
voice in the back of his mind whispered.
    But the questions came anyway, preventing him
from getting any kind of decent night’s sleep. Whenever he’d closed
his eyes, he saw the bloody bodies of his men, most of them with
the shaft of a single arrow embedded in some critical area. Despite
their body armor, despite the distance that had been between her
and his men, despite the early hour and the near darkness, she had
found their most vulnerable spots and pierced them without
hesitation. Her aim had been impossibly perfect.
    And then, just as quickly, he saw the girl
sitting on the counter of the small shop, her face bruised and
swollen and bloody, her body beaten, her head hanging in pain, and
he’d felt this overwhelming need to touch the full lips with his
fingers. To cup her cheek in his equally calloused hand and lift
her face so he could see her eyes. Her eyes. What depths to her
soul would he find in her eyes?
    Her soul? When it was known Mutah didn’t have
a soul?
    My God. He
shook his head.
    He’d gone twice more to check on her, peering
through the window and watching as she fitfully slept. She shivered
from the cold, and a powerful desire to fetch her a blanket or,
even worse, to pull her into the warmth of his arms, came unbidden
into his mind.
    It was when he saw the streaks of blood
running down her arm that he’d relented, using it as his excuse to
finally approach her one-on-one, without an audience.
    And then...
    Gritting his teeth, Yulen turned around and
headed toward the small grove of lemon trees someone had planted
along the dirt walk bordering the shops.
    He stopped.
    Someone had planted these trees. Someone had
watered them, and pruned them, and cared for them until they had
grown from saplings into fruit bearers.
    He glanced around him. This compound wasn’t
one that had been abandoned years ago by normals, only to be moved
into by the unnaturals, much like a hermit crab moves into a larger
shell. Plus there were too many signs of upkeep. That building’s
paint job looked fresh. The curtains in the window...
    Curtains?
    Yulen gasped, his mind reeling.
    A Mutah? Caring for their habitation?
Painting it and making curtains?
    A Mutah?
    He hurried to find his Second who was
blissfully snoring in his bedroll, his back to the wall of another
shop.
    “Karv, get up!” He kicked the man lightly in
the backside.
    The trained soldier was instantly awake,
short sword in his hand. “Sir!”
    “Step down. I want the men up and ready to
leave at first light. See to it.”
    “Are we proceeding on?”
    “No. We’re returning home, back to our own
beds.”
    Scowling, the man got up from his bedroll and
proceeded to shake the dirt from it as he folded it back up. He was
used to the Battle Lord’s demands, but in the past few hours things
had changed.
    Knowing Karv would be questioning his every
move on their way back home, Yulen went to fetch his own unused
bedroll and pack his horse, but not before ordering one of their
fallen to be doubled on another animal’s back so that their
prisoner could have a ride. That order elicited another protest
from the small but powerful Second.
    “She should walk!”
    “It’s a good five days’ journey. I need her
to be strong if she is to begin teaching our men upon our return.”
Lowering his eyebrows, Yulen added,