The Warrior Maiden

by Melanie Dickerson

  They had fully routed the Teutonic Knights. Rusdorf and his remaining soldiers were caught and would not escape this time. A fist tightened around his heart as Wolfgang searched for Steffan. Was he injured? God, please let him be alive.

  At least Mulan was safe. He turned to gaze at her face. So peaceful.

  There could not be another woman in the world such as her.

  Mulan moved out of the way of the fighting men, watching as Wolfgang beat Rusdorf back, then disarmed him and pinned him to the ground.

  But Wolfgang was not even looking at Rusdorf.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Steffan. He was here, in the battle.”

  Two of their fellow soldiers approached. Wolfgang gave them charge of Rusdorf and rushed away.

  They helped Rusdorf to his feet. Without his sword—and with the arrow protruding from his arm—he appeared small. When his gaze set on Mulan, his arrogant glare returned and never wavered. But she would not allow him the satisfaction of knowing that his black eyes made her insides quake, so she pretended not to notice him and searched for where Wolfgang went.

  All around her, at her feet and beyond, bodies lay on the ground, some writhing and moaning and others silent and still. But the fighting had ended, and many prisoners were kneeling with their hands on their heads, surrendering. She and her allies had defeated Rusdorf and his Teutonic Knights.

  One of the soldiers was leading Captain Bogdan’s white horse toward her, a sober look on his face. “We all want you to have the captain’s horse.”

  Men ambled toward her and soon surrounded her, staring, as if she were their captain, looking to her for what to do next. She could no longer see Wolfgang or Rusdorf because of the crowd.

  Duke Konrad rode his horse at a slow walk toward where Wolfgang had captured Rusdorf. The men around Mulan parted to let him pass, sensing the meeting that was about to take place.

  “Rusdorf. Once again, you are in my power.” Duke Konrad dismounted, a grim look in his blue eyes. He stood staring down at his adversary. A tiny smile lifted his lips. “And so soon.”

  He motioned to the soldiers nearby. They tied Rusdorf’s hands together behind his back, ignoring the arrow that had gone all the way through his arm and stuck out of both sides, blood soaking his sleeve.

  “Don’t worry,” the duke went on, “we will not torture or murder you, as you might have done had we been your captives. We will tend your wound and the wounds of your men. We might even allow you some of Captain Mulan’s mother’s healing salve for your arm.”

  “Keep that witchcraft away from me,” Rusdorf growled. “My men and I have need only of an honest priest and his prayers for our healing.”

  “As you wish.” Duke Konrad appeared quite calm as he raised his brows slightly. “We have many honest Polish priests in my region who would be willing to pray for you and your men.”

  Rusdorf clamped his lips together in a tight line.

  But what had the duke meant by calling her “Captain Mulan”? Or had she misunderstood him?

  Wolfgang hastened toward where he’d last seen his brother. His fellow soldiers were taking charge of the remnants of the Teutonic Knights who could walk, tying their hands and leading them away. Finally he saw Steffan standing in a line of prisoners. His hands were tied in front of him. Blood dribbled down his face from a cut across his cheekbone. He was staring straight ahead, fury infusing his expression.

  Raw emotion took hold of Wolfgang. He wanted to strike his brother and he wanted to throw his arms around him at the same time. But he turned and walked away to help with another group of prisoners.

  Instead of taking Rusdorf and the other prisoners to the dungeon—since he had escaped before—Wolfgang and his soldiers took them to the Great Hall and set them on the floor in a long line against the wall. Even the wounded prisoners were laid out there and given minimal care by the servants.

  Mulan and Andrei were sharing her mother’s healing salve with the soldiers who were the worst off. She approached Steffan. Wolfgang lurked closer, listening.

  Rather than speaking to Steffan, she bent toward him and pointed to his cheek. He gave a tiny nod, and she took a wet cloth and dabbed at it. When most of the blood was cleaned off, she examined it closer. “I shall have someone stitch it up if you like,” she said softly in Polish.

  He shrugged.

  “But it should heal quickly without it if you’d like to try my mother’s healing salve.”

  “What’s in it?” Steffan eyed the greenish-brown concoction with raised brows.

  “Oh, garlic, ox gall, and some other things. It smells foul, but it works well to keep wounds from getting putrid and to help them heal more quickly.”

  “Very well.” Steffan tilted his head to expose his wounded cheek to her ministrations.

  Wolfgang held his breath, remembering how she had applied it to his wounded shoulder before he knew she was a woman. He let it out when she moved on and Steffan let his chin fall to his chest again.

  He should go talk to his brother, should try to convince him . . . of what? What good would it do? He felt the same overwhelming emotion welling up in him again. He couldn’t talk to him. Later, perhaps.

  Duke Konrad and his captains were in and out of the Great Hall, shouting and celebrating their victory. Always, several armed men guarded the captives, and later a feast would be held to celebrate further.

  Wolfgang and Mulan were both promoted to captains rather unceremoniously.

  “Wolfgang,” Duke Konrad said, “your company wishes to make you a captain. For Mulan, that honor already has been bestowed.”

  Did this mean Wolfgang was to be only a captain instead of a knight?

  But it was Mulan everyone seemed to love. And why not? How bold and fierce she had appeared atop Captain Bogdan’s horse, with the grapnel raised over her head! How beautiful, how noble and courageous, a peasant girl with the obvious favor of God.

  Now that the feast was underway, rather than sitting across from him, she sat at his side, smiling and talking with Duke Konrad and his wife, regaling them both with stories of the battle, at their insistence. Several times she mentioned Wolfgang, turning to involve him in the conversation, but somehow he didn’t feel like conversing tonight. His spirit was stirred, but stirred to silence rather than words.

  What did his future hold? Where was he to go from here? The Teutonic Knights had been so thoroughly defeated, their army had retreated and there was no one left to fight. With the battle over, would they all return home—he to Hagenheim in the German regions and she to Lithuania, on the other side of Poland from his homeland? What other choice was there? He had nothing to offer Mulan, no land, no house, no title, nothing.

  Perhaps it was not his long-term goal to be a soldier for a Polish duke, but Duke Konrad was a good and fair man. And the thought of never seeing Mulan again sent a stab of pain through him.

  They feasted and drank and, surprisingly, no one went over to harass the prisoners in the same room with them. One soldier, obviously drunk, tried to, but Duke Konrad had him reprimanded by one of the captains.

  “There is to be no gloating over our enemies,” the duke said quietly. “A priest read it to me once, something God said to the Israelites.”

  The way the duke and his wife smiled at Mulan . . . They had no children, as the duchess was never able to carry a child long enough, and their babies were all stillborn. Would they become attached to her? As attached as he was? For he already felt almost as close to her as he had felt toward Steffan when they’d been inseparable. But it was a different feeling. She was a woman, after all.

  It wasn’t the way he felt about his sisters either. Mulan made his heart do strange things when he looked into her eyes and felt the integrity and goodness there, when she was telling him how much she cared about her mother, how grateful she was for her love when her father had brought her home with him, the motherless child of her husband’s foreign mistress.

  Mulan had been special e
ven as a child. Two different holy men had prophesied about her—correctly, as it turned out. That a woman should do what she had done . . . It was not something that could have been guessed. The prophecies had been God-given.

  She laughed at something the duchess said. The sound was so feminine. She was so feminine. His heart expanded.

  God, is there any hope that she might . . . fall in love . . . with me?

  CHAPTER 17

  Mulan awakened with a feeling of foreboding. She searched her mind and memories from the day before. They had completely defeated the Teutonic Knights and taken over a hundred prisoners, including their grand master, Rusdorf. Duke Konrad was taking no chances. He was keeping them tied up, with many more soldiers guarding them than he normally would have. Wolfgang was safe, as was Andrei, who had brought their horses to the castle. He’d also brought her more of Mother’s salve, and her wounds were feeling much better.

  No, there was no reason for a sense of foreboding. She must have had a bad dream she couldn’t remember. That was all.

  She rose to don her garments, as the sun was already coming up. But what should she wear? One of the two silk cotehardies the duchess had given her? Or the coarse linen tunic and leather hose she’d been wearing as a soldier?

  Since there were no more battles to fight . . . She reached for the fine linen chemise and silk gown. She slipped them over her head. Did Wolfgang think she looked pretty in her gown last night? What would happen when they parted ways? For they could not remain as they were. He would eventually go back to his family in Germany and she would return to her mother in Lithuania. But had the prophecies been fulfilled? Or was there more she still had to do? Would she have to remain a soldier for the rest of her and her mother’s lives?

  She knelt by her bed. It had been many days since she’d observed any formal prayer times. She bowed her head. “God, guide me by Your Holy Spirit and show me where to go and what to do. I love these people here as if they were my own. If there is more for me to do for them, please show me.”

  She felt a peace in her core, a sense of finality. A vision of sunny wheat fields ripe for harvest flooded her mind. Duke Konrad’s people were safe and free to plant their fields and harvest them again without being molested and burned out of their homes.

  “Thank You, God.” She kept her eyes closed and held on to that feeling of peace, wishing to bask in it as long as she could. But an unsettled feeling, a strange longing, soon replaced it, and Wolfgang’s face appeared before her mind’s eye.

  “God, what am I to do with this longing?” She waited, but no answer came to her. Gradually, the foreboding returned. “Will something bad happen to Wolfgang? To me?” Her mind was vacant. “God? Are You there?”

  A knock came at the door to her bedchamber. She took a deep breath and sighed, crossed herself, then stood. “Come in.”

  A servant, the motherly woman she had seen the first time she had come to the castle, opened the door.

  “Please excuse me, but Duke Konrad wishes to see you, whenever you are ready. I was sent to help you, but I see you are already dressed. May I help you with your hair?”

  “Oh, no. It is too short to bother with.”

  “Not too short, but very becoming as it is.” The servant smiled. “And may I say, I feel pleased and proud to be a woman whenever I think of you.” She shyly bowed her head. “We all feel that way.”

  Mulan opened her mouth but didn’t know what to say. “God is great. He has blessed me for His purposes, to do His good will. I had very little to do with it.”

  “You were willing, as some women would not have been. And you didn’t make yourself into a man. You fight and live as you are—a woman. But I probably shouldn’t be saying—you shouldn’t care what a bunch of servants think.”

  “I welcome your kind words, and I thank you.”

  The woman curtsied.

  Mulan made her way down the stairs to the Great Hall. It was strange to garner so much attention. She was not so far removed from a servant herself.

  Her silk cotehardie rustled as she descended. She liked this gown even more than the first one the duke had given her. The deep red color contrasted with her black hair, and it made her feel feminine and . . . beautiful.

  At one end of the Great Hall, Duke Konrad sat on his throne-like chair with a few other men around him. The prisoners were gone from sight, but she recognized one of the men speaking with Duke Konrad.

  Rusdorf’s arm was bandaged, and his face was nearly as gray as the gray linen bandage. He stood to the side, his expression a dark mask of stony coldness. When his eyes settled on Mulan, they narrowed.

  Wolfgang was standing on the other side of Duke Konrad. His eyebrows were low and his mouth was pressed in a straight line.

  “We have an agreement, then?” Duke Konrad addressed Rusdorf.

  “What is she doing here?” Rusdorf’s gaze stayed on Mulan as she walked toward them, pretending not to be bothered by his words. “Do you allow women to involve themselves in important negotiations?”

  “She is allowed to go wherever she likes, for she is one of the commanders of my army.”

  A harsh laugh burst from Rusdorf. “You cannot be serious.”

  “What objections can you have? She defeated your men more than once and was the one who overheard the information that sent her here—just in time to save me from you.”

  It would have been understandable if the duke had said the words angrily or gloatingly. But he looked as if he were speaking of the weather rather than his attempted murder.

  Wolfgang glared at Rusdorf.

  “May God’s will be done. I will accept your terms.”

  “And you agree never to attack anyone in my region, you or any Teutonic Knights, nor to even set foot on this land again? And in exchange, I shall set you and your men free to go directly back to Malbork Castle.”

  “I agree.”

  The hair on the back of Mulan’s neck prickled. If Rusdorf signed the treaty and he and his men returned to Malbork Castle and their own territory, she and the duke’s people would be safe. It must be the way Rusdorf had looked at her, his sneering contempt, that made her remember her feelings of foreboding.

  “I shall have my clerk draw up a peace charter with our stipulations. Tonight we shall sign it, and you and your men may be on your way.”

  “Very well. But I warn you, Konrad.” Rusdorf’s voice was so low she could barely hear him. “Women have no place in battle and certainly no place in command. They are a restless evil, leading men astray, a favorite tool of Satan from the beginning of time. And this one”—he pointed at Mulan—“is from Lithuania, that last bastion of pagan worship, a cursed people. To trust her is to invite ruin.”

  Duke Konrad fixed his stony glare on Rusdorf. “I will not have you speak against Mulan, a faithful Christian warrior. Her father was an ally of my father. Mulan has proven herself noble and righteous. And if you say another word against her, I shall render our treaty null and void and turn you over to your enemy Vytautas, the Grand Duke of Lithuania, you and your men. He will ransom you and will execute those whose families cannot pay. You will not leave his dungeon until every penny of the ransom is paid.”

  Rusdorf’s jaw twitched and hardened. No one spoke. The air was thick with tension, and Mulan’s stomach tightened.

  After several moments, Duke Konrad laced his fingers together. “Good. We understand each other.”

  With a wave of the duke’s hand, guards led Rusdorf away.

  Wolfgang approached Mulan and touched her arm, gazing into her face.

  Duke Konrad spoke. “Don’t worry, my dear. That should be the last you see of that toothless lion.”

  “He doesn’t like me very much, does he?” She tried to smile, but the way Duke Konrad had spoken to Rusdorf, and in front of Mulan . . . She shuddered to think how the grand master might already be plotting his revenge. “Do you think he will truly never attack here again?”

  “The Teutonic Knights, as well as
their allies, the Livonian Brothers of the Sword, have ruthlessly raided Polish lands for two centuries. But Rusdorf prides himself on being righteous. If he signs the treaty, I believe he will honor it.” The duke frowned. “But we shall see tonight if he is still willing to sign it.”

  Wolfgang used the time before the feast—after getting cleaned up—to write a missive to his parents. He told them that he and Steffan were both safe. He decided not to worry them with the details of Steffan’s minor wound, his rebellion, or the fact that he was now with the Teutonic Knights.

  He told of how they defeated the enemy, and he even found himself telling all about Mulan and her exploits in battle and of the other soldiers’ acceptance of her even though she was a woman. He imagined how his mother and sisters would especially enjoy hearing about her.

  “You would relish meeting her, Mother, and would like her very much.” He stopped himself from writing, She is fierce and good and humble and beautiful. His heart beat faster as he realized how that would sound.

  After writing to his family, he did need to speak to his brother, but it was difficult to think of what to say. Steffan wasn’t reasonable, just refused to listen. His anger controlled him, and the anger made no sense. He was angry at the people who only wanted to help him. Why could he not see that?

  After passing some time in prayer, Wolfgang went downstairs. Because of their caution, he had to bring a guard with him who could vouch for him, as no one was allowed to visit the prisoners.

  The stench wafted up to him before he even reached the door leading down to the dungeon, where most of the prisoners had been installed. Human excrement mingled with sweat, but he felt more determined than ever to talk to his brother.

  At the checkpoints along the way, guard after guard examined Wolfgang’s face and asked him questions about who he was and where he came from before approving him to continue down to Steffan’s cell. Finally he arrived and the final gate was unlocked. He went inside and heard the clang of the metal gate shutting and the click of the lock behind him.