He seemed to enjoy telling her about the habits of such women, as if he were generalizing about all women and in so doing telling her that he thought she was at heart the same. She would rather open a vein. She ignored the innuendo and asked him something else instead.
"If your team is not playing, why do you wish to watch? Surely a man such as you would not bestow your precious presence on the faithful on such a regular basis just to be generous."
He peered at her with a puzzled look, as if it were a strange question. "To see their strategy, of course, to learn the strengths, the weaknesses, of those who will become the opponents of my team."
His sly smile returned. "That is what you do—size up those who might be your opponents—and don't try to tell me that you don't. I see your gaze go to weapons, to the layout of rooms, to the position of men, cover, and escape routes. You are always searching for an opportunity, always watching, always thinking of how to defeat those who stand in your way.
"Ja'La dh Jin is much the same way. It is a game of strategy."
"I've seen it played. I'd say that the strategy is secondary, that it's primarily a game of brutality."
"Well, if you don't enjoy the strategy," he said with a smirk, "then you will no doubt enjoy watching men sweat, strain, and struggle against one another. That's why most women like to watch Ja'La. Men enjoy it for the strategy, the give and take of the contest, the chance to cheer their team to victory, and to imagine being such men themselves; the women like to watch half-naked bodies and sweat-slicked muscles. They like to watch the strongest men prevail, dream of being the desire of conquering heroes, and then scheme of ways to make themselves available to such men."
"Both sound pointless to me. Either brutality, or meaningless rutting."
He shrugged. "In my tongue, Ja'La dh Jin means 'the game of life.' Is not life a struggle—a brutal contest? A contest of men, and of sexes? Life, like Ja'La, is a brutal struggle."
Kahlan knew that life could be brutal, but that such brutality did not define life or its purpose, and that the sexes were not rivals, but meant to share together in the work and joys of life.
"To those like you it is," she said. "That's one difference between you and me. I use violence only as a last resort, only when it's necessary to defend my life—my right to exist. You use brutality as a tool of fulfilling your desires, even your ordinary desires, because, except by force, you have nothing worthwhile to offer to exchange for what you want or needand that includes women. You take, you do not earn.
"I'm better than that. You don't value life or anything in it. I do. That's why you must crush anything good—because it puts the lie to your nothing of a life, shows by contrast how you do nothing but waste your existence.
"That's why you and those like you hate those like me—because I'm better than you and you know it."
"Such a belief is the mark of a sinner. To consider your own life meaningful is a crime against the Creator as well as your fellow man."
When she only glared at him, he arched an eyebrow with an admonishing look as he leaned a little closer. He held up a thick finger—adorned with a plundered gold ring—before her face to mark an important point, as if lecturing a selfish, headstrong child who was within an inch of getting a well-deserved thrashing.
"The Fellowship of Order teaches us that to be better than someone is to be worse than everyone."
Kahlan could only stare at such a vulgar ideology. That pious statement of hollow conviction gave her a sudden, true insight into the abyss of his savage nature, and the vindictive character of the Order itself. It was a concept that had abandoned the distant foundation upon which it had been built—that all life equally had the right to exist for its own sake—in order to justify taking life for the Order's own contrived notion of the common good.
Within that simple-sounding framework of an irrational tenet, he had just unwittingly revealed everything.
It explained the depravity of his whole cause and the determinant emotions driving the nature of those monstrous men massed outside, ready to kill anyone who would not submit to their creed. It was a dogma that shrank from civilization, praised savagery as a way of existence, and required constant brutality to crush any noble idea and the man who had it. It was a movement that drew to it thieves who wanted to think themselves righteous, murderers who wanted holy absolution for the blood of innocent victims that drenched their souls.
It assigned any achievement not to the one who had created it, but instead to those who had not earned it and did not deserve it, precisely because they did not earn it and did not deserve it. It valued thievery, not accomplishment.
It was anathema to individuality.
At the same time, it was a frighteningly sad admission of a rotting core of weakness in the face of life, an inability to exist on any level except that of a primitive beast, always cowering in fear that someone else would be better. It was not simply a rejection of all that was good, a resentment of accomplishment—it was, in fact, far worse. It was an expression of a gnawing hatred for anything good, grown out of an inner unwillingness to strive for anything worthwhile.
Like all irrational beliefs, it was also unworkable. To live, those beliefs had to be ignored to accomplish goals of domination, which in themselves were a violation of the belief for which they were fighting. There were no equals among those of the Order, the torchbearers of enforced equality. Whether a Ja'La player, the most professional of the soldiers, or an emperor, the best were not simply needed but sought after and highly valued, and so as a body they harbored an inner hatred of their failure to live up to their own teachings and a fear that they would be unmasked for it. As punishment for their inability to fulfill their sanctified beliefs through adherence to those teachings, they instead turned to the self-flagellation of proclaiming how unworthy all men were and vented their self-hatred on scapegoats: they blamed the victims.
In the end, the belief was nothing more than fabricated divinityunthinking nonsense repeated in a mantra in an attempt to give it credibility, to make it sound sacred.
"I've already seen the Ja'La games," Kahlan said. She turned away from him. "I have no desire to see more of it."
He seized her upper arm, pulling her back around to face him. "I know you're eager to have me bed you, but you can wait. Right now we are going to watch the Ja'La games."
A lecherous smile oozed onto his face, like greasy muck bubbling up from his festering soul. "If you don't enjoy watching the games for their strategy and competition, then you can let your eyes roam over the naked flesh of the rivals. I'm sure that such sights will make you eager for what comes later tonight. Try not to be too impatient."
Kahlan suddenly felt foolish for protesting any reason to avoid his bed. But the Ja'La game was out among the men, and she had no desire to go out there again. She also had no choice. She hated being among those vile men. She reminded herself to get a grip on her feelings. The soldiers couldn't see her. She was being silly.
He pulled her toward the passageway out of the tent. She went without resisting. This was not a time to resist.
Outside, the five special guards waited. They all noticed that Kahlan was dressed, but none of them spoke. They stood tall, straight, and attentive, looking ready to jump if told to do so. They were obviously on their best behavior before their emperor, wanting to impress him.
Kahlan guessed that to be better than someone was all right if you were the emperor, and that it wouldn't make him worse than everyone. He fought for a doctrine from which he exempted himself, as did each and every one of his men. Kahlan knew better than to point it out.
"These are your new guards," Jagang told her. "We'll not have a repeat of the last incident, since these men can see you."
The men all looked pretty content with themselves, and the apparently harmless nature of the woman they were to guard.
Kahlan took a quick but good look at the first man the Sisters had brought to task, the partner of the one with the broken
nose. With a glance she evaluated the weapons he carried, a knife, and a crudely made sword with two halves of a wooden hilt wired onto the tang, and how graceless he appeared in the way he wore them. In that glance she knew that they were implements he no doubt used with bravado when slaughtering innocent women and children. She doubted that he had ever used them in combat with other men. He was a thug, nothing more. Intimidation was his weapon of choice.
By his self-satisfied smile, he looked unimpressed with her. After all, he had already, by himself, nearly brought her to task, and to his tent. In his mind he had been only a few steps away from having her under him.
"You," she said, pointing right between his eyes. "You I will kill first."
The men all snickered. She swept an appraising gaze over them and their weapons, learning what there was to learn.
She pointed at the man with the broken nose. "You die second, after him."
"What about us three?" one of the others asked, unable to suppress a chuckle. "What order will you kill us in?"
Kahlan shrugged. "You will know just before I cut your throat."
The men all laughed. Jagang didn't.
"You would be well advised to take her seriously," the emperor told them. "The last time she got her hands on a knife she killed my two most trusted bodyguards—men a lot better at soldiering than you—and a Sister of the Dark. All by herself, and all in a matter of a few brief moments."
The laughter died away.
"You all will stay on your toes," Jagang said in a low growl, "or I will gut you myself if I even think you are being inattentive to your duty. If she gets away under your watch, I will send you to the torture tents and command that your death take a month and a day, that your flesh rot and die before you do."
There was no longer any doubt in the men's minds as to the seriousness of Jagang's orders, or the value of his prize.
A vast escort of hundreds, if not thousands, of the inner and most expert of the emperor's guards formed up around their leader as he strode purposefully away from his tent. The five special guards surrounded Kahlan on every side except the side Jagang was on. They all moved out into the camp in a wedge of armor and drawn weapons. Kahlan supposed that, as a leader, Jagang was just taking normal precautions against spies, but she thought that it was more than that.
He was better than everyone else.
* * *
CHAPTER 46
By the time they returned to the emperor's compound and his large tent after the Ja'La contests, Kahlan's level of worry had risen. It wasn't just the obvious dread of being alone with such an unpredictable and dangerous man—or even her near panic over what she knew he intended to do to her.
It was all of that, with a sinister undercurrent to his cruelty churning just beneath the surface. There was a flush to his face, a more assertive nature to his movements, an edgy quality to his short comments, a fierce intensity in his inky eyes. Watching the games had put Jagang in an even more violent mood than what she believed was his norm. The games had worked him up. They had excited him—in every way.
Back at the games he'd felt that one of the teams had not played to their full potential, had not given it everything they had. He'd thought they were holding back and not putting their all into the contest.
When they lost, he had them executed on the field.
The crowd had cheered more at that than at the rather tedious play of the game itself. Jagang was hailed for putting the losers to death. The games that followed were played with considerably more passion, and on ground soggy from the blood of the beheadings. Ja'La was a game in which men ran, dodged, and darted past one another, or blocked, or chased the man with the heavy ball—the broc—trying to capture it, or attack with it, or score with it. Men often fell or were knocked from their feet. When they did they rolled across the ground. In the summer heat, without shirts, they were soon slick not just with sweat but with blood. From what Kahlan could see of the female camp followers watching from the sidelines, they weren't in the least put off by the blood. If anything, it made them only more eager to catch the attention of the players who were now whipping the crowd into a frenzy with their fast-paced, aggressive tactics.
In all the rest of the games after the one resulting in executions, as in the ones previous, the losing teams, since they had at least played with wild determination, were not put to death but flogged. A terrible whip, made up of a number of knotted cords bound together, was used for the penalty. Each of those cords was tipped with heavy nuggets of metal. The men were given one lash for each point by which they lost. Most losing teams lost by several points, but even one lash from that whip ripped open the naked flesh of a man's back.
The crowd enthusiastically counted out each lash to each man on the losing team kneeling in the center of the field. The winners often cavorted around the perimeter of the field, showing off for the crowd, while the losers, with bowed heads, received their whipping.
It had made Kahlan sick to witness such a thing. It had excited Jagang.
Kahlan was relieved that the games were at last over, but now that she was back inside the emperor's compound and about to enter his tent, a gnawing sense of dread was eating away at her insides. Jagang was in a temper provoked by violence and aroused by blood. Kahlan could see in his eyes that he was in no mood to be denied anything.
And the only thing left for him that night was her.
As the special guards were just about to be posted outside the tent, she spotted a man running into the compound, being followed by a small group of men. Jagang paused in his instructions to Kahlan's special guards as the rings of defenders parted to let the man and a gaggle of officers through. When the man came to a breathless halt, he announced himself as a messenger.
"What is it, then?" Jagang asked the messenger, scrutinizing the half-dozen men of rank with him. Jagang was not at all pleased to be bothered when he had his mind set on other things.
Kahlan knew that she was the focus of his brooding thoughts, and that he wanted to get her inside, and alone. The time had come and he was impatient to get at her.
He had so far not touched her in any improper manner. He was saving it all up. In much the same way that any city in the path of his army had to wait in agonizing dread for the impending assault, she, too, felt the stranglehold of overpowering fear as she waited for what she knew was coming. She tried not to imagine what he was going to do to her and what it would be like, but she could not think of anything else, any more than she could slow her galloping heart.
The messenger handed over a leather tube. It made a hollow thunk when Jagang popped the lid off. With two fingers he extracted a rolled piece of paper. He broke the wax seal, unrolled it, and held it up to read it in the light of the torches flanking the entrance to his tent. The rings he wore on each finger sparkled in the flickering torchlight.
At first frowning, the emperor began to smile as he read. He finally laughed aloud as he looked up at his officers. "The army of the D'Haran Empire has fled the field of battle. Scouts and Sisters alike have all reported the same thing, that the D'Harans were so terrified of the prospect of facing Jagang the Just and the army of the Order that they all deserted and have scattered in every direction, proving what faithless cowards they really are.
"The forces of the D'Haran Empire are no more. There is nothing standing between us and the People's Palace."
The officers cheered their emperor. Everyone was suddenly in a jovial mood. Jagang bestowed his congratulations on the officers for being a part of putting the enemy on the run.
As she listened, standing off to the side while the others all watched Jagang waving the paper and speaking of the end of the long war being at hand, Kahlan slowly, carefully, lifted a leg until her fingers found the hilt of the knife tucked into her right boot.
Making as little movement as possible so as not to draw the attention of the five men who could see her, or Jagang himself, she worked the weapon up out of the boot and into her fist. As soon as
it was securely in hand, she retrieved the second knife from the other boot.
She tightly grasped the leather-wrapped handle of each well-made weapon, working her fingers to get a secure grip on the hilts. Having weapons in hand filled her with a sense of purpose, banishing her helpless dread at what was in store for her that night. She now had a way to strike at them. She knew that she might not be able to stop Jagang from what he would do to her, but it would not be without a fight. This was her chance to extract a price.
She didn't move her head, only her eyes, as she took stock of where each man was standing. Jagang, unfortunately, was not close to her. He had stepped to the messenger, and then closer to his officers. Kahlan knew that he was far from stupid. If she were to walk up to his side he would instantly be suspicious. He would know that she would not do such a thing willingly. She also knew that he was an experienced fighter. He would react before she could lunge at him. Having him closer probably wouldn't have done her much good anyway.
There were better targets, a better chance for surprise. The five special guards were close to her left, the officers a little farther away to her right. The officers couldn't see her. Beyond was a camp of men who couldn't see her. But even though the officers couldn't see her, the five could and as soon as she moved she would have only an instant before they reacted.
She knew that she could draw a lot of blood, but there was little chance she would escape.
The alternative was to submit meekly to her impending rape.
Kahlan summoned her rage. She gripped the hilts of the knives tighter. This was a chance to strike back against her captors.
With a straight-in, direct, and mighty thrust she slammed the long knife in her left hand into the center of the chest of the special guard she had promised to kill first. Some dim part of her mind noted his stiff surprise.