Now I Rise (The Conqueror's Saga #2)(92)

Their second day on the road they met with no further thieves. They found evidence of campsites, hastily abandoned. Lada felt a stirring of something like what she imagined maternal pride to be. Her little robber boy was obeying her.

Bogdan rode closer to her than before, and occasionally in the midst of his inelegant protectiveness she caught a hint of newfound tenderness. It made her deeply uncomfortable. She knew Bogdan felt more for her than she did for him. She had always accepted it as natural, good even. He belonged to her, but she did not belong to him. Perhaps she had crossed a line she should not have.

Her discomfort was soon replaced with an inconvenient relief when she felt a gush of warm blood between her legs. She nearly prayed, she was so grateful. But she doubted that God cared one way or the other about the continued emptiness of her womb.

Lada pulled her horse to a stop and dismounted. In her bag she had extra strips of cloth. She peeled off her chain mail and draped it across her saddle.

“What is it?” Bogdan asked, halfway through dismounting.

“No!” She gestured impatiently for him to stay. “I will be back.”

“You should not go alone,” Nicolae said.

Lada glared at all of them. She could feel the blood still flowing. If she did not catch it soon, her trousers would be stained. Daciana, who rode on Stefan’s horse with him, looked at how Lada walked with stiff legs. “Let her go. Lada is more frightening than anything in the forest.”

Lada turned her back and marched toward the trees. “God’s wounds, you are all ridiculous. Rest. Eat. I will be back.”

She moved quickly through the trees, putting as much distance as possible between the massive party of men and her immediately pressing, deeply private needs.

She found a clear stream and squatted next to it. The water was freezing, but at least there was some warmth in the air. While she cleaned herself, she cursed the fact that she had to deal with this at such an important time.

But the blood was a welcome sight. Perhaps Bogdan had been a lucky thing, dislodging whatever had blocked her since being with Mehmed. She took it as confirmation that Daciana’s thoughts were correct. Her body was not made for carrying babies. She hummed to herself as she rinsed out her underclothes and set them on a rock to dry next to her trousers. She took care to place the extra strips of cloth in her new underclothes to absorb the blood. Then, because she was happy and the day was warmer than any had been for a long time, she pulled off her tunic and rinsed it as well.

That was when she heard the sound of furtive footsteps. She froze, ready to curse Bogdan or Nicolae or whoever had disobeyed her. And then she realized the footsteps were coming from the opposite direction where her men were. For a moment the memory of other trees in another place, of another man sneaking up on her, paralyzed Lada. Her breath would not come. The memory of Ivan’s weight on her, his hands …

She snatched her tunic out of the water, looking around desperately for somewhere to hide. The trees were too thin to climb, the stream was open and exposed. And she was alone, because of her stupid woman’s body. She looked down at her arms clutching the dripping tunic against her chest. Her woman’s body. Ivan had seen it as a weakness, as something he had power over.

The footsteps were getting closer.

Ivan was dead. Her body was a weapon. She could kill whoever approached, but … Unbidden, Huma drifted across her mind’s eye. The way she draped herself across furniture. The way she moved. Lada tried to recall everything about it, because Huma had been a weapon just as much as Lada was.

Lada picked up a knife where it lay next to her boots, holding it hidden behind her back. And then she let her tunic fall as three men appeared at the opposite end of the stream. Their tense grips on their weapons relaxed as their jaws dropped in shock.

“Oh!” Lada squealed, a poor imitation of what she thought a girl would sound like in this circumstance. She drew one arm across her unwieldy breasts.

One of the men averted his eyes, blushing. The other two had no such decency. “What are you doing here?” one of them asked, a puzzled smile on his face.

“I …” Lada leaned down, picking up her tunic and hiding the knife beneath it. “I live there”—she gestured vaguely to her right—“and I was washing.”

“You should not be here.” The blushing soldier looked behind himself at something she could not see. “There are a lot more men coming.”

“Oh! Oh no.” Lada gathered up her trousers and her boots, feigning embarrassed clumsiness. She was grateful she had not put her trousers back on. Bundled as they were, it was not obvious that she did not have skirts.

“Go home,” the man said, his voice tense but gentle.

The leering soldier grinned even bigger. “We will visit you after we take care of some trouble.”

Lada did not know how to smile demurely, but she gave it her best shot. Then she hurried in the direction she had told them she lived. As soon as she thought it was safe, she yanked on her boots, shoving the rest of her things in her bag. She cut back toward the road, running as fast as she could. Her men would not be ready. They had gotten too used to being unchallenged. She had no idea how many soldiers were in the trees, but if they had the element of surprise, she did not like her forces’ odds.

She burst onto the road much farther ahead of the troops than where she had left. Sprinting toward them, she waved her trousers in the air. She could not shout for fear the enemy was close enough to hear.