Commander Karg shared in a brief, sly smile with the emperor before turning and yelling at the guards. “Let’s go!”
Jillian clutched Kahlan tightly on one side, Nicci on the other as they continued to slip away to the side, trying not to be seen. The guards helping Jagang started moving him out. The men Commander Karg had brought with him hacked and slashed their way back through the battle.
Kahlan dreaded the thought of being back in Jagang’s tent. As she kept an eye on the guards, she looked back over her shoulder, searching, but she didn’t see Richard.
Drunken, angry soldiers fought on all around the three of them as Kahlan watched the emperor’s guards start to organize a forward wedge to clear a path to get them back away from the Ja’La field and toward the emperor’s compound.
Almost all of the torches had long since gone dark in the fighting. The guards had brought some of their own, but they weren’t close. As dark as it was with the heavy overcast, Kahlan couldn’t even see the Ja’La field anymore. Even the plateau rising up above the Azrith Plain seemed to have vanished in the blackness. She had to use the distant ramp, lit by torchlight, to get her bearings.
With a thud that shook the ground, fire boiled up as Sisters apparently used their power to blast their way through the vast army in order to get to Jagang’s rescue. There had been hundreds of thousands of men at the Ja’La match. It didn’t seem like any were fleeing. Now the guards protecting the emperor needed to escape that mob.
Kahlan, Jillian, and Nicci, too, needed to escape through the mob, but they didn’t have thousands of heavily armed guards to help them. They relied, instead, on trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. Hunching to look harmless, they avoided looking directly at the men around them. They kept the hoods of their cloaks up and their heads down as they slowly slipped through pockets of relative calm amid the chaos. It was slow going. They still hadn’t managed to get clear of the guards engaged in hand-to-hand fighting with the mob. Somehow, they had to make it through that line of guards, and then through the army beyond.
Commander Karg, a wicked grin on his snake-face, abruptly appeared out of the darkness and seized Nicci by the upper arm. “There you are.” He pulled the hood of her cloak back to get a good look at her. “You’re coming with me.” He gestured to one of his men. “Take the girl along, too. Since we’re going to have a party, we might as well make it a proper affair with a young lady for my men.”
Jillian screamed as the man ripped her out of Kahlan’s grip and pulled her along as he followed after Commander Karg and Nicci. When Jillian tried to stab the man, he wrenched the blade from her hand. The men couldn’t see Kahlan, or they would have grabbed her as well.
Kahlan stepped in close behind the man holding Jillian. She started to lift her knife, but a powerful hand grabbed her wrist. It was one of her special guards—the sixth man, whom she’d lost track of. He towered behind her. Kahlan knew him. He was one of the smarter men. He wasn’t as careless as the others. He still had all his weapons.
As Nicci and a screaming Jillian were being dragged farther and farther away from Kahlan, the man twisted her arm behind her back until her fingers went numb. She cried out in pain. His expression was grim and indifferent to her torment as he stripped the knife out of her hand. She kicked back at his shins, trying to make him let go of her. Rather than let up, the man twisted her arm all the more until the pain made it impossible for her to struggle. He muscled her in the direction the emperor was going.
Nicci looked back at Kahlan as Commander Karg dragged her through the confusion of men. Kahlan could see only glimpses of blond hair between the churning bodies.
The hand holding her let go of her wrist. Instead it grabbed her upper arm. That hand abruptly pulled her back through the battling men, back into the darkness. Kahlan turned, ready to fight what the brute obviously intended.
Richard was standing right there instead.
The world seemed to stop.
His gray eyes were staring into her soul.
Up close like this, the strange bloodred designs painted on his face were terrifying. But the smile on his face made him look like the gentlest, kindest man in all the world.
He seemed to be unable to do anything but smile as he stared into her eyes. It took Kahlan a moment to remember how to breathe.
She finally glanced down and saw the special guard who had been holding her wrist. He was on the ground; his head was twisted around at an unnatural angle. He didn’t look to be breathing. With bodies sprawled everywhere, no one paid any attention to one more. After all, he was just a regular soldier, like all the men battling each other.
Except that he had been able to see her.
Kahlan’s thoughts came rushing back in. The thought of that man having Nicci and Jillian made Kahlan feel dizzy and sick. She flicked her hand in a quick gesture.
“We have to help Nicci and Jillian. Commander Karg has them.”
Richard didn’t hesitate. His gray eyes turned toward where Nicci had vanished. “Hurry. Stay close.”
Within a dozen steps they were back in the thick of battle. This time, though, it was not the regular soldiers that Richard had to fight—it was the royal guard. It didn’t seem to matter. He moved through them, cutting men down to clear a path for her when he had to, avoiding them when possible.
As a man thrust his sword, Richard stepped back, out of the way, and severed the man’s arm, catching the sword before it hit the ground. He tossed the sword to Kahlan. She caught it and immediately had to use it to stop a man going for Richard.
It felt good to have a sword in her hands. It felt good to be able to defend herself. The two of them cut their way onward through the royal guards.
Commander Karg glanced back and saw Richard coming. He let go of Nicci as he turned to his point man, grinning, ready to do battle. The guards all around saw that the commander wanted to handle this himself, so they turned back to their own problems.
“Well, Ruben, it seems—”
Richard swung, decapitating the snake without ceremony. He wasn’t interested in anything but what needed to be done. He was a man who didn’t need to teach the enemy a lesson. He was only interested in eliminating them.
A guard who had seen what happened started for Richard. Nicci swiftly reached around and pulled her knife across his throat. The man’s face registered complete surprise as he clutched at the gaping wound, dropping first to one knee before falling face-first to the ground.
In an instant, they were in the middle of a furious battle. With so many experienced men coming after them, Richard could no longer hold back. He cut into the royal guard with a vengeance.
Worried that there were too many for him, Kahlan couldn’t let him do it alone. She now had the advantage of being invisible. She could move among the men attacking Richard and do her own damage. Men expecting to fight Richard fell to her blade coming from nowhere. Between the two of them, they were slaughtering the guard.
Nicci, too, immediately went on the attack. The three of them now had a single purpose—to fight their way out of the midst of the royal guards.
“We need to get to the ramp!” Nicci shouted at Richard.
He pulled his sword out of a man falling past him and frowned at Nicci. “The ramp? Are you sure?”
“Yes!”
Richard didn’t argue. He changed the direction of the fight, covering Jillian as he battled his way through the endless mass of big men, making sure that none of them could get at her.
As they stabbed and hacked their way through, Kahlan knew that she had to stay clear of Richard so that he would have the room he needed. Most of the men were going after him. None could see Kahlan, so she pulled Jillian well back out of Richard’s way so that the guards couldn’t snatch her to use as a shield to get at Richard. Kahlan was better able to protect her than Nicci. Kahlan tried to shield Jillian while she also covered Nicci’s back as she went after men who weren’t paying attention.
As one of the men beh
ind lifted a sword on Jillian, someone ran him through from behind.
As the dying man fell away, Kahlan found herself staring into the smiling face of a man with the strangest golden eyes.
“I’m here to help you, pretty lady.”
Even in the near darkness, the man’s sword gleamed.
He was dressed like an Order soldier, but he wasn’t one of them. As Jillian backed against Kahlan when another man stabbed at her with a sword, the man with the golden eyes spun and with a backhanded swing caught the attacker along the side of the head. When the gleaming sword hit, the guard’s head exploded in bits of bone and brain.
Kahlan blinked in astonishment.
Richard saw what was happening and rushed up. The stranger, suddenly looking enraged, thrust that gleaming sword right at Richard.
Richard then did the strangest thing: he just stood there.
Kahlan knew for certain that this time Richard was going to be run through, but the blade, which only an instant before had shattered a man’s head, this time did the most bewildering thing. Just before it impaled Richard, it veered off to the side of him, as if he’d been been protected by an invisible shield of some sort.
The man, even more enraged, thrust again, but again the sword simply turned aside, slipping right by Richard. The stranger looked not only surprised, but worried. The worry turned to a look of cold rage.
“It’s mine!”
Kahlan couldn’t imagine what the man was talking about. Before she had a chance to wonder at it, she saw Nicci collapse, holding her throat.
A new clot of royal guards charged in with such speed and numbers that Richard was forced to turn and engage them or be killed. A new battle was suddenly in full force. Men yelling battle cries rushed in, swords swinging. Richard fought furiously, but he was forced to fall back. As the wave of men poured in, the space between Richard and Kahlan began to widen.
Kahlan started to attack the men swarming in around Richard, but the stranger grabbed her upper arm, pulling her back away. “We have to go. Now. He can handle those men. He’s giving us a chance to get away. We have to take it.”
“I’m not leaving him to—”
Kahlan suddenly gasped in a breath as the pain came on with full force. The sword fell from her grip. Her hands went to her throat, clawing at the collar. She screamed even though she tried not to. The searing pain was so sharp, so violent, that it was impossible not to scream.
She dropped to her knees, just as Nicci had done. Tears of agony streamed from her eyes.
“Come on!” the stranger yelled. “We have to get away—hurry!”
Kahlan was incapable of doing anything to get away. It was all she could do to pull a breath through the ripping agony.
Through vision blurred by tears, she could see the horror, the rage, on Richard’s face as he tried in vain to get to her.
Yet more of the elite royal guard poured in, intent on taking out the point man who had humiliated the emperor and started the riot. Even as his sword killed with every thrust and men fell dying all around him, more and more men charged in and Richard was driven back.
Kahlan fell face-first onto the hard ground. The pain seared down the nerves of her back and then her legs, making them twitch. She had no control over her muscles.
The stranger grabbed Kahlan’s arm. “Come on! We have to get away now!”
When she was unable to respond, he started dragging her.
CHAPTER 37
Richard could see Kahlan crying out in pain, clawing at the collar around her neck. His heart hammered in dread as he fought. Despite his frantic attempts to break through the wall of men in leather and chain mail it was proving impossible for him to get to her. In fact, it was all he could do to hold his own against the increasing numbers of men descending on him.
A deadly variety of weapons came in at him from every direction—swords, knives, axes, and spears. He had to shift his tactics to fend off each of them. He stabbed a man wielding a sword and on the backswing broke a spear. He ducked under an axe as it whistled past just overhead. He knew that if he made even one mistake it could cost him his life.
Through it all, despite fighting as hard as he had ever fought in his life, he was increasingly forced to give ground. It was the only way to keep from being overpowered. Time and again he went back on attack with wild fury, cutting into the enemy line, but as he did ever more men appeared to take the place of those who fell to his blade. In those flurries of frantic exertion the best he could do was to hold his ground. Whenever he took a breath he lost ground.
Kahlan was so close, but so far.
Now, Jagang was taking her from him again.
Richard reprimanded himself for not doing more to try to take out Jagang. He should have tried harder. If only that man hadn’t stepped in front of Jagang at exactly the wrong moment, Richard’s arrow would have done its job. But even as he told himself that he should have done more, should have tried something else, he knew that he couldn’t dwell on what he might have done differently. He had to come up with something that he could do now.
In all-too-brief glimpses he could see Nicci on the ground as well. Like Kahlan, she was also in desperate distress. Richard knew that it was urgent that he help them. Samuel certainly wasn’t doing anything worthwhile.
The distraction of Richard’s concern was throwing his timing off. He missed connecting with a thrust, leaving the man alive to come back at him. Only swift action saved him from the blade doing more than making a shallow slash across the side of his shoulder. Several times he nearly lost his life as he tried to catch a glimpse of Kahlan. He had nearly missed a move until it was almost too late. He knew that he had to focus. He couldn’t help Kahlan, Nicci, and Jillian if he was dead.
His arms, though, felt like lead.
His hands were slick with blood. His grip on his sword kept slipping.
A man spun an axe in his fingers as he lifted it, as if to show Richard that he was now up against an expert. The man caught the handle and started to swing the axe down with lethal intent. At the last instant, Richard ducked to the side, then, with a cry of effort, swung his own weapon. The strike took the man’s arm off. Richard used his foot to topple the startled man back out of the way, then ducked under a wild swing of a sword at his head and thrust his own weapon into the man’s lower abdomen.
The sword he was using worked, but it was not his sword. Samuel had his sword.
What Samuel was doing there Richard feared to imagine. Seeing him standing over Kahlan, though, he didn’t really have to imagine.
Richard remembered Zedd telling him, when he had first given him the Sword of Truth, that he couldn’t use it against Darken Rahl because he had put the boxes of Orden in play. Zedd said that during that yearlong period the power of Orden protected Darken Rahl from the Sword of Truth.
Richard knew that it was foolish to do what he’d just done, but he had to test his theory. He had to know the truth of it if he was to succeed in what lay ahead. The boxes of Orden really were in play in his name, and the Sword of Truth couldn’t harm him for that reason.
When he thought he couldn’t go on, he used the sheer rage he felt for Kahlan’s dire jeopardy to force himself to continue anyway. He didn’t know how long he could sustain such an effort. He knew only that when he stopped, he would die.
Just then, another man cut his way in from behind Richard, protecting his left side from a trio of men attacking from that direction. Out of the corner of his eye Richard saw red paint.
He slashed his blade down across the face of a man as soon as the man made the mistake of cocking back his arm. As he fell to the side with a cry, Richard used the opening to snatch a quick glance to his left.
It was Bruce.
“What are you doing here?” Richard yelled over at the man between the clash of steel.
“What I’m always doing—protecting you!”
Richard could hardly believe that Bruce, a regular Imperial Order soldier, was fighting besid
e him, fighting off the emperor’s royal guard. The man was committing treason to fight beside Richard. He supposed that winning against the emperor’s team was the bigger treason. Bruce fought with a fury of his own. He knew that this was a game that they couldn’t afford to lose. What he lacked in finesse he made up for in sheer tenacity.
Richard stole another look and saw that Samuel was starting to drag Kahlan away. Her face was a picture of terrified distress. Her fingers were bloody from clawing at the collar.
With an abrupt flash and heavy thud to the air, the soldiers all around Richard, including Bruce, were blown back as if by a blast. Yet there was no flame, no smoke, no flying debris, no ringing noise from a blast. Standing at the core of the event, Richard was left with his vision blurred and his flesh stinging from the force of the concussion.
In every direction, the forest of big royal guards lay felled across the dark ground, like toppled trees. In the distance the roar of battle raged on, but closer in it was eerily quiet. Most of the men looked to be unconscious. A few moaned as they tried to move, but their arms dropped after briefly lifting, as if even that much was an effort too great.
A spike of pain suddenly slammed into the base of Richard’s skull. It felt like he’d been hit from behind with an iron bar. The stunning pain dropped him to his knees. He recognized the sensation. He hadn’t been hit with iron; it was magic. Beside him, Bruce lay facedown on the ground.
Still on his knees, Richard saw, off in the distant darkness, a gaunt woman stalking toward him through the downed soldiers. She moved like a vulture watching wounded prey. Her shabby appearance made Richard suspect that she was one of Jagang’s Sisters.
Unable to endure the ringing pain in his head, Richard toppled over face-first. Hot agony flashed through every nerve in his body. Little clouds of dust were forced up into the night air with each of his panting breaths. He couldn’t move his legs. He strained with all his might to get up, but he simply couldn’t make his body respond. With the greatest of effort he was finally able to move his head just a little.