A man with sword to hand, and sober, she was alarmed to note, appeared suddenly next to her leg. He looked up with a fierce glare. His sharp eyes made her feel suddenly nothing more than a naked woman sitting on a horse.
He took all of her in. “What the . . .”
A foot of steel erupted from his breastbone, driving a grunt from his lungs.
“Mother Confessor!” The naked man behind yanked his sword free and pointed with it. “The command tents are over there!”
A movement to the other side caught her attention. With a backhanded swing, she caught the side of a stumbling drunk’s neck.
“Let’s go! To the command tents! Now!”
Her men abandoned the enemy they were decimating to follow her as she jumped Nick over men and fires and crumpled wagons. As they followed, they didn’t stop to slaughter the confused, panicked, and drunken D’Harans everywhere, but cut down those they could if it didn’t slow their pace. Where necessary, they engaged the sporadic resistance.
The large command tents were surrounded by her white Galeans. They held a small group of about fifteen men at swordpoint. Before them lay a neat row of at least thirty bodies on their backs in the snow.
Others of her men were throwing battle standards and flags atop a large pile already smoldering and burning in the fire. Empty casks lay scattered in the snow. When their army had come under attack, the commanders had issued no orders. The army of the Imperial Order was without benefit of direction.
Lieutenant Sloan pointed with his sword to the line of bodies. “These officers were already dead. The poison did its work. These others were still alive, although not in the best of health. They were all lying about in their tents. We could hardly get them up. They asked us for rum, if you can believe it. We’ve held them, like you said.”
Kahlan surveyed the faces of the bodies in the snow. She didn’t see what she wanted. She looked to the faces of the captured officers. He wasn’t there either.
She directed her Confessor’s face to a Keltish officer at the end of the line. “Where’s Riggs?”
He glared at her, and then spat. Kahlan lifted her gaze to the man holding him. She drew her finger across her throat. He didn’t hesitate. The officer went down in a heap.
She looked to the next officer. “Where’s Riggs?”
His eyes darted about. “I don’t know!”
Kahlan drew her finger across her throat. As he went down, she looked to the next man, a D’Haran commander.
“Where’s Riggs?”
His eyes were wide, but not at the two bleeding bodies beside him. His horror was for her. A spirit before him. He wet his lips.
“He was hurt; by the Mother Confessor. I mean, by you. Before.” His voice trembled. “When you were . . . alive.”
“Where is he!”
He winced, shaking his head vigorously. “I don’t know, great spirit! He was hurt, his face was cut by the horse. He is being tended to by the surgeons. I don’t know where their tents are.”
“Who knows where the surgeon’s tents are?”
Most trembled and shuddered as they shook their heads. Kahlan stepped her horse down the line of officers. She stopped before one she knew.
“General Karsh. I am very pleased to see you again. Where’s Riggs!”
“Wouldn’t tell you if I knew.” He grinned as he leered up at her. “You look better naked than I fancied. Why are you whoring with this lot? We could do you better than these boys.”
The man holding him twisted his arm until he cried out. “Show respect for the Mother Confessor, you Keltish pig!”
“Respect! For a whore holding a sword? Never!”
Kahlan leaned toward him. “These ‘boys’ have you under their blades. Every one is a better man than you, I would say.
“You wanted war, Karsh. You have your wish. You have war, now. A real war, not a slaughter of women and children, but a war led by me—the Mother Confessor. A woman. War without quarter.”
She sat up straight in her saddle, letting his eyes linger on her breasts. “I have a message, Karsh. A message for the Keeper. You will be with him presently. Tell him I said to make plenty of room; I’m sending all his disciples home.”
Her gaze swept down the line of men holding the officers. She drew her finger across her throat in a quick gesture. The response was just as quick.
As the bodies tumbled forward, she cried out, her hand darting to her neck. A stinging pain jolted her. It was in the exact same place . . .
It was the pain of Darken Rahl’s lips on her neck, the pain she had felt when he had come to them in the spirit house, when he had burned Richard with his hand. When he had kissed her neck and silently promised her unimaginable horrors.
Men rushed forward. “Mother Confessor! What is it?”
She took her hand away. Blood coated her white fingers. She couldn’t say how she knew, but she knew without doubt that the blood was drawn by the perfect, snow white teeth of Darken Rahl.
“Mother Confessor! There’s blood on your neck!”
“It’s nothing. I’m all right. I must have just been nicked by an arrow, that’s all.” She gathered her wits and courage. “Put the head of every officer on a pole, for all their men to see, to let them know they are without leaders. And hurry.”
By the time the last dripping head was hoisted up, D’Harans were pouring in from all sides. Most were drunk, laughing as if it were nothing more than a drunken brawl. But inefficient and clumsy as they were, their numbers were alarming. They were like a swarm of bees; for every one knocked down, ten replaced him.
Her men fought fiercely, but they were no match for the overwhelming numbers sweeping in. Men she had talked to, reassured, inspired, yelled at, and smiled to were falling with cries of pain and terror. They had been here too long.
Ahead, a pitched battle erupted. The Galeans were being driven back. If they were driven back, they had no chance of escape. They couldn’t go back the way they had come, back to men who would have had time to have been sobered by the carnage around them, to gather their senses, and their spirit.
Without surprise, they were nothing but a bunch of naked boys and one woman. If they tried a second time what had worked once, they would all die. They had to cleave their way through the Order, to the other side of the valley. D’Harans hacked in at the white forms. Her ankle was grasped by a powerful hand. She hewed it off and shook her foot to shed the disembodied hand.
They were in danger of being swallowed into the belly of this beast.
Disregarding the death cries of her men, disregarding her promise not to leave the protective ring of the fiercest Galean swordsmen, disregarding her promise not to deliberately put herself into peril, Kahlan charged Nick into the thick of the battle, and beyond—into the enemy.
Her sword stabbed to each side, into any enemy close enough. Teeth gritted, she swung at flesh and bone. Her wrist tingled from the jarring impacts, and her arm was so weary she feared she would not be able to lift the sword much longer.
Frightened that she would be taken down, her men poured ahead, toward her, with renewed resolve. They drove the dark wave back, rolling over it as she urged her horse forward into the sea of dark leather uniforms.
She stood in the stirrups, holding her sword high. “For Ebinissia! For her dead! For her spirit!”
It had the desired effect. Men of the Order who were confused by the white enemy, but were nonetheless determined to crush them, whatever they were, stopped and stared openly at a white, naked woman atop a horse suddenly in their midst. Their faith, that the attack was from men and not spirits, faltered. They gaped in open astonishment. She swept her gaze around at all the eyes peering up at her.
She swung the white sword in a circle over her head as a breeze ruffled her white hair back off her shoulders. “In the name of their spirits, I have come to avenge them!”
Leather-clad men fell to their knees, dropping their swords, pressing prayerful hands together. They held those hands
up to her. They wailed for protection. They called for her mercy. They cried for forgiveness. Had they been sober, she wondered, would the illusion be so convincing? As it was, the effect was apocalyptic.
“We grant no quarter!”
As all faces stared up toward her, as eyes shed tears of trepidation, weapons set upon them from behind. The sudden, violent, merciless wave of hard steel terrified them, convinced them that the spirits would have them all. They broke and ran, dropping weapons, screaming in fear of the underworld.
They had done what they had come to do. Time was now against them. They needed to escape.
They charged onward, a deadly, swift river of white that poured over and around the tents and fires and wagons and men, surprising ever more of the lethargic enemy, killing as many as they could while rolling ahead. White death moved into the mist once again.
Kahlan glanced behind, and saw the pairs of draft horses, their riders holding the chains up between them. She waved them into the stream of white, urging them to move faster. They started unhooking one end of the chains from the hame hooks and looping the chain over the horn on the other horse, to give each horse freedom, now that they needed to make a quick escape.
In the distance, in the fog to the right, she saw a line of picketed horses. She saw Brin and Peter come together, snap the end of the chain over the other hook again and urge Daisy and Pip into gallops. She thought to scream at them, to order them to keep with the others, that they couldn’t hope to get them all, that they had done enough and must leave now, that it was too late. But she knew they wouldn’t hear her.
Brin dropped the loops of chain. They spread the horses to pull the steel taut as they peeled away toward the picket line of horses. The hooves of the big horses thundered across the ground. She took a last look at Brin and Peter, knowing it would be the last time she ever looked upon them in this world, and then turned her attention ahead.
She pointed with her sword. “There are the rest of the supply wagons!”
The men knew what to do. As she charged the column past, the wagons were doused with lamp oil. Wheels were staved in, and torches thrown. The wagons erupted in flame. More torches set fire to tents. The men brought awake by the noise and fire found blades sweeping at them. The fires faded into an orange glow in the mist behind as they plunged onward into the fog.
Suddenly they broke free of the camp, and were in open snow. Now that they were away from the camp, and its fires, the darkness pressed around them. The men in front faltered, looking about as they jogged.
“Scouts forward!” she yelled. “Where are the scouts!”
Two men charged through the ranks, to the fore, pointing out the direction of the pass they sought. She looked for the others, turning from side to side. None came. She galloped Nick to the van, after the two scouts.
“Where are the others! They were ordered to be in the lead!”
The round, wet eyes that looked up at her answered her question without words.
“All right,” she said, “you two know the way. Get us out of here.”
Fifty men had scouted the pass they wanted. Fifty, to be sure there would be a good number left to show the way. Two were left.
With a silent growl she cursed the spirits. Shamefaced, she called the curse back. They had at least left her those two; without them, they would be left to wander in the fog, freezing and vincible to the men of the Order chasing them.
She pulled Nick to a halt beside the stream of naked men. She swooped her arm frantically.
“Move move move! Run, curse you, run! They’ll be on top of us!” The men on the draft horses, Brin and Peter not among them, came abreast of her. “Drivers! Watch for the scout ahead! He’ll show you the stakes to follow.” They nodded that they remembered.
Men in D’Haran uniforms, with white cloth swatches sewn into their epaulets to show that they were in fact the Galean men who had infiltrated the enemy camp in the uniforms of the sentries, ran past. “Don’t forget to pull up the stakes before you get up on the horses.”
They were to double or triple up on the draft horses and ride to one of the other small camps established around the enemy. Earlier in the day, they had made trails all over the valley so that without the sticks stuck in the snow to mark the proper trail, none would know the way to those camps.
The trail through the snow from all the men on foot would be easy for the enemy to follow. But they had plans to take care of that.
In the distance, back toward the Order, she saw the rear guard engaged in a pitched battle. Lieutenant Sloan was supposed to keep that from happening, and keep the rear moving. Cursing anew, she galloped her horse back. Without pause, she charged between the two forces, spun and charged through again, separating the two sides. The leather-clad D’Harans fell back at the sight of the white spirit woman atop a white horse.
She waded in among the Galeans. “What’s the matter with you! You know the orders! Run, or you won’t make it!”
The men started moving, trying to drag a body with them.
“Where’s Lieutenant Sloan! He’s supposed to be back here!”
The men nodded to the body they were dragging. The side of the head was gone, and she could see the exposed brain. It was Lieutenant Sloan. The D’Harans charged in again. She pulled the reins and Nick reared. The D’Harans fell back once more.
“He’s dead! Leave him! Run! Run, you idiots! If any of you stops again for anything, I’ll make you fight the rest of this war naked! Now run!”
This time they took off in earnest, kicking up snow, running for their lives. Again she swept past the line of drunken D’Harans, causing them to stumble backward and fall over one another in panic. She had to stall these men to give her own time to gain enough of a lead.
She ran Nick through the D’Harans, trampling those who got in the way. The men scattered in momentary dread of the white spirit woman, some calling to the spirits for protection. But others came back swinging weapons. If they caught Nick’s legs . . .
She fought back with her sword and her warhorse, as they closed around her. Her men were fading into the fog. Run, she bid them, run. She swung the sword at men who reached out. The next time she glanced back, she saw nothing but dark fog and mist. She was losing her sense of direction as she wheeled Nick around, charging at the men, trying to buy her own men the time they needed to escape.
She tried to break away, but the enemy swarmed around her, with more coming all the time. Some yelled at the others that she was just a woman, and not a spirit, and they weren’t going to let a woman get away. She felt more naked than she had felt all night.
Men threw themselves around Nick’s legs, and although he reared and kicked them off, even more took their place, staggering the big horse with their weight. Kahlan hacked furiously at the men, shearing off arms, splitting skulls, and stabbing bodies.
With a sea of men all around her, she suddenly realized that her situation was untenable. She knew that if they got her off her horse, she was finished, and her horse was being hobbled. Try as she might, she couldn’t get the men away.
For the first time that night, she truly feared she wasn’t going to make it. She was going to die, here, in the snow, in this mist-shrouded valley. She would never see Richard again.
She felt an abrupt, icy pain in the bite on her neck. Darken Rahl’s bite. She thought she heard quiet laughter in the air.
She slashed away at the men grabbing for her. Powerful fingers clutched her legs. The pain of those fingers urged her into frantic stabbing. Nick managed to spin, the men’s feet flying outward, but they held on tight. She slashed and hacked the arms. More caught hold of her horse’s bit, taking control from her. A horse was valuable plunder, and they didn’t want it killed, as long as they thought they were in control of the situation.
A big soldier grabbed the horn of her saddle, dragging himself up. “Don’t kill her! It’s the Mother Confessor! Don’t kill her! She must be alive when she’s beheaded!”
&nb
sp; She slashed the side of his neck, A fountain of hot blood gushed across her thigh. Another yelled, “Don’t kill her! Bring the bitch down!” A cheer went up from the reaching men.
She swung at the grasping hands. Fingers raked her legs. Eyes all around leered up at her. She slashed wildly as Nick stumbled sideways, trying to pull his head free, but the men held his bit tight.
A man leapt up from behind and snatched her by the hair. She let out a cry as he yanked her backward off the saddle. Hands grappled her as she tumbled to the ground. Everyone went down in a pile under her. Big hands seized her by her legs, her waist, her ankles, and her breasts.
Fingers wrapped around the blade, trying to wrench it from her. She twisted the hilt, severing the fingers. She swung and stabbed ferociously. Bodies pressed her to the cold ground, pressed the wind from her lungs. She bit the fingers covering her mouth. A huge fist struck her across the jaw.
They finally seized her flailing arms.
There were too many.
Dear Richard, I love you.
Chapter 45
Kahlan struggled to draw a breath, but with the weight of men on her, she couldn’t. Tears stung her eyes. More men piled on. A beefy elbow in her middle pressed into her, feeling as if it would squash her in two. Drunken breath bathed her face.
Her vision dwindled to a small spot. Everything around the center was going black, and the center was shrinking. She swallowed a mouthful of blood. Her own.
She heard what sounded like the distant rumble of thunder. At first, she could only feel the vibration in her back against the ground, but then the sound swelled, growing louder, sharper. The screams of men reached her ears.
Some of the men over her looked up. Their weight lifted a bit, and she sucked air into her lungs. It was the sweetest breath she had ever drawn.
As the giant of a man atop her, the one who had struck her face, turned to the sound of thunder, turned his fierce eye from her, she saw that his other had a scar across it, and down his cheek. That empty eye was sewn shut. Somehow, her left hand squirmed free. She seized his throat.
Stone of Tears tsot-2 Page 78
