Suddenly, she was free of the camp, galloping through the open snow. Kahlan followed her own tracks across the flat by the waning light of the moon. The muscular horse plowed through the snow almost as if it weren’t there.
She reached the trees at last, and before plunging in and ascending the steep slopes, she checked over her shoulder.
A good fifty men were not three minutes behind. She would be able to open the lead as she went up along the forest trail, but they would still catch her.
She would see to that.
Chapter 39
“Easy now,” she cautioned. One hesitant hoof slipped. “Back, back, back. Come on boy, back.”
From down the slope behind, she could hear the sounds of the chase; a man, probably one of the D’Haran officers, yelling angrily at the top of his lungs not to let her get away, and others urging their horses up the steep trail. When they reached the flat where she was, they would be in a full gallop again.
Kahlan tugged gently on the reins. Nick lifted his hoof from the ice and backed up, into the tight gap between the snow-crusted pines, back along his trail.
She found the long branch, with the forked end she had whittled to a pushing pole, stuck upright in the snow where she had left it beside the twin trunked spruce. She hefted it up, and started pushing the heavy, snow-laden branches. Her shoulder ached from having the lance shattered as she held it under her arm.
As she backed Nick between the trees, off her trail, she held the long push-stick out over his head, jostling the limbs. Relieved of their loads, they sprang up, partly screening the gap between the trees. More importantly, the snow tumbled to the ground, piling over her tracks. She pushed at a branch here, another there, sprinkling their snow over Nick’s backing trail, covering it in, making it look natural, as if wind had simply freed the branches of their load.
She said a silent thank-you to Richard, for teaching her about tracks. He had said he would make a woods woman of her. She ached for Richard. She was sure he wouldn’t approve of the desperate risk she was undertaking with the aid of what he had taught her.
But she couldn’t allow these men to track her back to the Galean boys. There was a chance that some would carry word of what they had seen back, and then the Galeans would be slaughtered. If none of these men returned, it would be a long while before any more were sent, if ever.
Even if they were, by then it would be too late; she would have long been up and over the passes from which she had come, where the wind howled and drifted the snow constantly, and her tracks would be lost to them. They would not know where she had gone. From there, the mountains and forests went on in endless tracts, and her trail would have been last seen leading steadily away from her true destination. Those back at camp would have confidence that these soldiers would have her sooner or later, and with the prospect of plunder only days away, they would turn their attention to it instead.
The snow-muffled thundering of hooves brought her mind back to what she was doing. The men had reached the flat, and were charging at full speed again. Steadily, she worked her way back into the trees, shaking branches, covering her trail, backing toward the way she had come on her way to the army of the Imperial Order. The sounds of chase were almost upon her.
Kahlan leaned almost all the way over, stroking an arm along her horse’s neck. She whispered toward his ears, and they swiveled back to the sound of her voice.
“Quiet now, Nick. Please don’t move or make a sound.” She stroked his sweaty neck again. “Good boy. Quiet now.”
It sounded, to her, as if anyone would be able to plainly hear her heart beating in her chest.
The pursuers had reached her. As they charged along her trail, right in front of her, they broke through the screen of trees to her left, not ten yards away, at full speed. Kahlan held her breath.
She heard the clop of hooves as they hit the sloping ice hiding in the moon shadows beyond those trees, beyond her false trail. She had led her tracks between those trees, to the edge of a steep, rocky stream, where its water would tumble, were it not frozen, over a cliff.
It was a small stream, but as it froze, more water had bubbled and frothed over that which was already frozen, growing the area into an ice palace. Snow had been washed away as it fell, leaving the rounded, downward-sloping humps of ice bare and slick.
As the men broke through the trees, they had not twenty feet to halt their headlong rush before the cliff’s edge, before the rock and ice halted, and only thin air lay beyond. And they had to do it on cascading mounds of ice. Were it flat ice, like a lake, the horses could have dug their iron shoes in, and tried to skid to a halt. But this was not flat, it was water slicked tumble-down ice, and as they slipped and slid and tripped and fell at a charge, they had no chance.
Kahlan could hear the pop of horses’ legs breaking, as thousands of pounds of muscle moving at full speed could not be stopped by hooves catching in crevices. The bareback riders were helpless passengers.
The men shouted encouragement to their mounts, and the ones behind didn’t recognize quickly enough the change in shrieking from anger to fright. Those behind crashed into those ahead, tumbling over and past each other. Bareback, with only halters and no aggressive battle bits, the riders didn’t have the control they were accustomed to, and were carried helplessly forward.
Some leapt from their mounts as they came through the trees, and could see what lay ahead, but their momentum was too great, the distance too short, their fate beyond retrieval. The horses behind, their leg bones snapping, crashed down atop the ones already fallen, who were desperately grasping for a hold. There was none. It became a waterfall of living flesh, cascading over the edge.
Kahlan sat still, wearing her Confessor’s face, as she listened to the screams of men and horses mingled together into one long wail as they disappeared over the mountainside. In the span of mere seconds, it was finished; more than fifty men and their mounts had plunged to their deaths.
When the night had been silent for a time, she dismounted and circled around, to keep her false trail free of any off-leading tracks, to the edge of the ice flow. In the dim light she could see the dark stains of blood over the ice mounds. Blood from broken legs, blood from cracked skulls. There were none of the enemy left on the cliff.
As she turned to leave, she heard low grunts of desperation. Kahlan pulled her knife and carefully inched her way to the source of the sounds, toward the edge. Grasping a stout limb, she leaned out over the slanting ice flow. Forest debris was frozen in the ice; sticks and leaves had made a small dam at the edge, to be covered over as the ice grew. It left a few branches sticking out of the wall of ice.
Around one of these branches were clutched fingers. A man clung by his fingertips to the branch, his legs dangling over a drop of close to a thousand feet. He was grunting with effort as he tried to catch his feet up on the ice, but it was too slippery to give him any toehold.
Kahlan stood at the edge, holding the branch for support, as she watched him shivering. Dribbles of water bubbled over the ice, over his face, matting his hair and soaking his Keltish uniform. His teeth chattered.
He looked up to see her standing over him in the moonlight. “Help me! Please help me!” He couldn’t have been past her age.
She regarded him without emotion. He had big eyes, the kind of eyes young women would surely have swooned over. But the young women in Ebinissia would not have swooned when they saw those eyes.
“In the name of the good spirits, help me!”
Kahlan squatted down, closer to him. “What is your name?”
“Huon! My name’s Huon! Now please help me!”
Kahlan lay down on the ice, hooking a foot around a tangled root, taking a good grip on the stout spruce limb with one hand. She extended her other hand partway out, but not far enough for Huon to reach.
“I will help you, Huon, on a condition. I have sworn no mercy, and none shall be granted. If you take my hand, I will release my power into you. You will b
e mine, now and forever. If you are to live, it will be as one touched by a Confessor. If you would think to pull me over the edge with you before I can release my magic, let me assure you I would not make the offer were there that chance. I have touched more men than I can count. You will have no time. You will be mine.”
He blinked icy water dripping down on him from his eyes, shook it from his face, and stared up at her.
Kahlan extended her hand toward him. “From now on, Huon, either way, your old life is ended. If you live it will not be as who you are now. That man will be gone forever. You will be mine.”
“Please,” he whispered, “just help me up. I won’t hurt you. I swear to let you be on your way. It would take me hours to make it back to camp on foot, and you’ll be long gone by then anyway. Please, just help me up.”
“How many people in Ebinissia did you hear beg for their lives? To how many did you grant mercy?” Her words came as cold as the ice she lay on. “I am the Mother Confessor. I have proclaimed war without quarter on the Imperial Order. The oath stands as long as one of you lives. Choose, Huon. Death, or to be touched by my power. Either way, who you are dies.”
“The people of Ebinissia got what they deserved. I’d rather take the hand of the Keeper himself than be touched by your filthy magic. The good spirits would never accept me to them if I were touched by your dark and profane magic.” His lip curled in a sneer. “To the Keeper with you, Confessor!”
Huon threw his arms open and silently dropped away into the darkness.
As she rode back to the Galean recruits, she thought about the things Riggs, Karsh, and Slagle had told her. She also thought about the creatures of magic living in the Midlands.
She thought about the beautiful land of the night wisp, with open fields deep in ancient, remote forests, where the wisps gathered at twilight to dance together in the air above the grasses and wildflowers, like joyous fireflies. She had spent many a night lying on her back in the grass as they hovered above her and spoke with her of things common to all life: of dreams and hopes; of loves.
She thought about the creatures living in Long Lake, translucent things hard to see, seeming almost made of liquid glass, or of the water that was their home, with whom she had never spoken, but whom she had watched emerge at night to bask in the moonlight on rock and shore; creatures who had no voice, but with whom she had shared understanding, and had promised to protect.
She thought about the whispering tree people, whom she had spoken with in a hauntingly beautiful experience, frighteningly eerie, but somehow gently peaceful at the same time.
The whispering tree people were all joined as one, through their roots touching under the earth, and each spoke as if they were all but one, as if there were no individuals; yet each had a name to whisper to you if you made it promises of simple favors, a mass community that was at the same time all only one. To cut down a tree there would be to bring the pain of that one’s death to all; they could not escape the contact they felt with each other. If people went into that land and cut down the trees, it would be torture to all. Kahlan had seen them in pain before. Their wails could make the stars cry.
There were other creatures, too, that were magic, and people, too, who possessed it. Sometimes it was hard to place a line between creatures of the wild and people. Some people of the Midlands were part creature, or perhaps some creatures were part people. They were strange and delightful, and very shy.
And so it went throughout various forms of magic, from the simplest things in the Howling Caves that could let you peek through solid rock to see their nests, to people like the Mud People, who had only simple magic that would do but one thing.
As Mother Confessor, all these, and many more, were her charges, and as Mother Confessor, she commanded all to protect these magic places, so no one people would bear the brunt of burden against others. It was an arrangement backed by Confessors and wizards extending back for thousands of years.
The twilight beings, Riggs had called them. That was the name given to these magical creatures by the Blood of the Fold, among others, because many of them came out only at night. For this reason, the Blood associated them with darkness, and so, out of fear, with the darkness of the Keeper of the Dead.
The Blood considered magic the force through which the Keeper extended his influence into this world, into the world of the living. The Blood were as unreasonable and thickheaded as any men alive. And they considered it their duty to send to the land of the dead any who they thought served the Keeper. That was just about anyone who disagreed with their view of things. In some lands the Blood were outlawed, and in some, like Nicobarese, they were encouraged and paid by the Crown.
Maybe Riggs was right. Maybe she should have brought the rule of law to stop men like this. But that had never been the intent of the council—to make all to bow in all things to one. The strength and beauty of the Midlands was in its diversity, even if some of that diversity was ugly. What was ugly to one was beautiful to another, and so it was that each land was to be left to rule itself, as long as it brought no force of arms to another. It was a tolerant suffering of things repugnant to allow things beautiful to blossom. It was a sometimes difficult and fine line to hold the council to: forcing lands to work together in some things, but allowing them to be autonomous in others.
But perhaps Riggs was right. People in some lands suffered the cruel or poor rule of their greedy or inept leaders, with no hope of matters being brought to change from without. Though the wise, but smaller, lands had not to live in fear of outside conquest. If the suffering of the people under less fortunate rule could be ended with wise central rule, would not matters be improved?
Yet when all lived under the same rule, every other form of existence was extinguished, never to have the chance to grow, though one of them might have been a superior way. The kind of single rule the Imperial Order represented was slavery.
Kahlan was surprised to encounter Galean sentries farther from their camp than before. They were no longer spread too far apart, and they were well hidden, popping up with drawn bows and bared steel when she was almost upon them. Chandalen, Prindin, and Tossidin had obviously been at work. The sentries put fists to hearts when they recognized her.
The dawn was turning the sky to a dark steel gray. It was warmer than it had been, with the clouds covering the land like a warming quilt. She was dead tired in the saddle as Nick plodded through the snow toward the camp, but as she came into sight of men rushing about, she came alert with the thoughts of what needed to be done.
Chandalen, Prindin, Captain Ryan, and Lieutenant Hobson were speaking with a group of men when they saw her riding toward the camp. The four came at a run to meet her at the edge of the activity. Men were cooking, eating, stowing gear, preparing weapons, and tending to wagons and horses. She spotted Tossidin, in his white wolf mantle, off some distance with Lieutenant Sloan, waving his arms in explanation as he talked to men who stood mute, with their spears all standing upright in the snow, the tight mob of them looking like a dark porcupine against the white ground.
Kahlan let out a weary moan as she dismounted before the four men who had come to greet her. Other men all around kept to their tasks, but moved more slowly as they watched her with great interest. The four before her stared openly with wide eyes. None said a word.
“What are you all staring at?” she said, a little short-tempered.
“Mother Confessor,” Captain Ryan said, “you’re covered in blood. Are you hurt?”
Kahlan stared down at the white wolf fur of her mantle, only it was no longer white. She realized for the first time that the skin of her face was tight with dried blood, her hair stiff with it.
“Oh,” she said, in a quieter tone. “It’s all right. I’m fine.”
Chandalen and Prindin sighed with relief.
Lieutenant Hobson, still wide-eyed, swallowed. “What of the wizard? Did you see him?”
She lifted an eyebrow to him. “What you see on me is what
’s left of him.”
Chandalen appraised her with a sly smile. “And how many others did you kill?”
Kahlan gave a tired shrug. “I was awfully busy. I didn’t take the time to count, but all things considered, I would guess, including the fires, well over a hundred. The wizard is dead, that’s what matters. Two of their commanders are dead also, and at least two more are wounded.”
Captain Ryan and Lieutenant Hobson paled.
Chandalen’s proud grin widened. “I am surprised you left any for others to kill, Mother Confessor.”
She didn’t return his smile. “There are plenty left.” Kahlan rubbed her horse’s nose. “Nick did most of the work.”
“I told you he wouldn’t let you down, Mother Confessor,” Hobson said.
“That he did not. He was better aid than the good spirits. He kept me alive this day.”
Kahlan lowered herself to one knee in the snow before the two Galean officers. She bowed her head.
“I find I must beseech your forgiveness.” She took a hand of each in hers. “Though you are ignorant of how to accomplish what must be done, you have put your duty to the Midlands before my orders. That was courage of the highest order. I want you all to know I was wrong. You acted of noble intent.” She kissed each hand. “I laud your righteous hearts. You have kept in mind your duty above all else. I beg you forgive me.”
There was silence as she knelt on one knee. At last Captain Ryan whispered down to her.
“Mother Confessor, please. Get up. Everyone’s watching.”
“Not until you forgive me. I want everyone to know you did the right thing.”
“But you didn’t realize what we were doing, or why. You had only our safety in mind.” Kahlan waited and he was silent in embarrassment a moment longer. “All right. I forgive you . . . Don’t do it again?”
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