Read Online The Battle Lord's Lady by Linda Mooney - Free Book Online Page A

surprised to see the Battle
Lord still standing in the exact spot. He had never moved while
she’d wept. Neither had he made a sound or made any further gesture
toward her. He had waited until she could regain control of
herself. Once he was sure she was ready to listen again, he
continued.
    “Are you Mutah?”
    “Didn’t you already ask me that?”
    “What is your mark?”
    Drawing a ragged breath, Atty lifted her
long, thick braid. “My hair,” she admitted in a tiny voice.
    “What?”
    “My...hair. My hair is my mark.”
    “What of it?”
    “Its...its color is...unusual.”
    “There are no other marks about you? Nothing
physical? Nothing abnormal?”
    “No.” She shook her head. “Nothing else. At
least, not that I’m aware of.”
    “And your ability with the bow...” It was a
question left open. A probing sense of wonder laced through it.
    Atty shrugged. “To me it’s natural. If you
want to call it mutant, that’s your prerogative.”
    “Have you had any training? Any schooling?
Did you have a teacher?”
    “No. Nothing formal. We have masters that
teach our men such skills, but because I was a girl I wasn’t
allowed to attend their lessons, so I had to go out in the woods
and teach myself. Sometimes my father would give me pointers. It
wasn’t until last spring that I applied for membership into the
caste of hunters.” She paused, remembering.
    “Go on,” the Battle Lord urged.
    “There was a lot of arguing about my joining.
Women weren’t allowed to become part of the caste of hunters.”
    “Why not?”
    She shot him a dark look. “Do you allow your
women to become part of your hunting parties?”
    “None of our women have your abilities. Their
arms aren’t strong enough to wield a sword, much less master the
bow. Although I will admit some have tried. Those who have shown
promise are part of our militia who guard our compound against
invaders.” The Battle Lord rubbed his hand along his chin where
several days’ growth of beard itched. “How strong are you,
Mutah?”
    Sighing loudly, she shook her head. “I don’t
know. I went into the forest to prove myself, although now I
believe they made my indoctrination harder than they did for the
others. I slew a wolfen, as instructed, and I brought its head back
to the compound.”
    She’d managed to get most of the shredded
pieces of rope from out of her wounds, all except for one very tiny
section which resisted her efforts, no matter how painfully she
tried to dig it out with her bare fingers. She never expected the
large hand to grab hers and twist it so he could see it more
clearly. Several drops of blood slipped over her arm and landed on
the front of his shirt, but he didn’t appear to notice. The dagger
reappeared; the blade slid out of its sheath as smoothly as melting
butter.
    “This might hurt,” he muttered as he bent
over to get the errant shred out.
    Atty closed her eyes and waited for the blade
to slice into her flesh. Her whole body was trembling, but not
because of her fear or the cold. No, she realized in a dazed,
almost disconnected way. The Battle Lord had pressed himself close
to her, almost to where his body touched hers. He smelled of sweat
and leather and the tang of metal from where his armor had rubbed
against his clothes and skin. And there was something else she
couldn’t place. Something more virile. More masculine. More
threatening.
    When he bent over her wrists his head was
turned away from her. She could see that she had been wrong about
the color of his hair. It wasn’t orange-ish, but blond with red
highlights, a shade she’d once heard referred to as strawberry
blond. For a split second, before she could realize how perfectly
she could slip a weapon into the back of his neck from this
vantage, she wondered if anyone had brushed away the
shoulder-length hair and dropped tiny kisses along the
well-developed shoulder muscles.
    The shard of pain that lanced up her arm made
her gasp, but it was gone as