Faith of the Fallen (37 page)

Some men looked away. Some stared at the ground. Only the crackle of fires and the moans of the wounded filled the frigid night air.

Kahlan glanced around again. “What are you doing sitting here, now?”

Zedd’s brow went up, along with his own anger. “We’ve been at it for two days, Kahlan.”

“Fine. But I don’t allow the enemy to go to bed with victory. Is that clear?”

Captain Meiffert clapped a fist to his heart in salute. “Clear, Mother Confessor.”

He glanced over his shoulders. Fists of attentive men near and far likewise went to their hearts.

“Mother Confessor,” General Leiden said, dropping her title of queen, “the men have been up for two days, now.”

“I understand,” Kahlan said. “We have been riding without pause for three days, now. Neither changes what must be done.”

In the harsh reflection of firelight, the creases in General Leiden’s face looked like angry gashes. He pressed his lips together and bowed to his queen, but when he came up, he spoke again.

“My queen, Mother Confessor, you can’t seriously be expecting us to carry out a night attack. There’s no moon and clouds mostly hide the stars. In the dark such an attack would be a disaster. It’s lunacy!”

Kahlan finally withdrew her cold glare from the Keltish general and passed a gaze among those assembled around her. “Where is General Reibisch?”

Zedd swallowed. “I’m afraid that’s him.”

She looked where Zedd pointed, at the corpse he had fallen asleep atop while trying to heal. The rust-colored beard was matted with dried blood. The grayish-green eyes stared without seeing, no longer showing pain. It had been a fool’s task, Zedd knew, but he couldn’t help trying to heal what could not be healed, giving it everything he had left. It hadn’t been enough.

“Who is next in command,” Kahlan asked.

“That would be me, my queen,” General Leiden said as he took a stride forward. “But as the ranking officer, I can’t allow my men to—”

Kahlan lifted a hand. “That will be all, Lieutenant Leiden.”

He cleared his throat. “General Leiden, my queen.”

She fixed him with an implacable stare. “To question me once is a simple mistake, Lieutenant. Twice is treason. We execute traitors.”

Cara’s Agiel spun up into her fist. “Step aside, Lieutenant.”

Even in the haunting orange and green light of fires, Zedd could see the man’s face pale. He took a step back and wisely, if belatedly, fell silent.

“Who is next in command?” the Mother Confessor asked again.

“Kahlan,” Zedd said, “I’m afraid the Order used their gifted to single out men of rank. Despite our best efforts, I believe we lost all our senior officers. It cost them dearly, at least.”

“Then who is next in command?”

Captain Meiffert looked around and finally lifted his hand.

“I’m not positive, Mother Confessor, but I believe that would be me.”

“Very well, General Meiffert.”

He inclined his head. “Mother Confessor,” he said in a quiet, confidential voice, “that isn’t necessary.”

“No one said it was, General.”

The new general softly struck a fist to his heart. Zedd saw Cara smile in grim approval. Of the thousands of faces watching, that was the only smile. It wasn’t that the men disapproved, but rather that they were relieved to have someone so firmly in command. D’Harans respected iron authority. If they couldn’t have Lord Rahl, they would take his wife, and an iron one at that. They might not have smiled, but Zedd knew they would be pleased.

“As I said, I don’t allow the enemy to go to bed with victory.” Kahlan scanned the faces watching her. “I want a cavalry raid ready to go within the hour.”

“And who do you intend to send on such an attack, my queen?”

Everyone knew what the former General Leiden meant by the question. He was asking who she was sending to their death.

“There will be two wings. One to make their way unseen around the Order’s camp so as to come in from their south, where they will least expect it, and another wing to hold back until the first is in place, and then come in from this side, from the north. I intend to have us spill some of their blood before bed.”

She looked back to the new Lieutenant Leiden’s eyes and answered his question. “I will be leading the southern wing.”

Everyone, except the new general, began voicing objections. Leiden spoke up louder.

“My queen, why would you want us to get our men together for a calvary raid?” He pointed to the wall of men, all on horses behind her: all Galeans—traditional adversaries of the Keltans, Leiden’s homeland. “When we have these?”

“These men will be helping get this army back together, relieving those on duty to get needed rest, helping dig defensive ditches, and filling in wherever they are needed. The men who were bloodied are the ones who need to go to bed with the sweet taste of vengeance. I would not dare to deny D’Harans that to which they are so entitled.”

A cheer went up.

Zedd thought that if war was madness, madness had just found its mistress.

General Meiffert took a step closer to her. “I’ll have my best men ready within the hour, Mother Confessor. Everyone will want to go; I’ll have to disappoint a lot of volunteers.”

Kahlan’s face softened when she nodded. “Pick your man for the northern wing, then, General.”

“I will be leading the northern wing, Mother Confessor.”

Kahlan smiled. “Very well.”

She ordered the Galean troops off to their duties. With a sweep of her finger, she dismissed everyone but the immediate group and called that inner circle closer.

“What about Richard’s admonition not to directly attack the Order?” Verna asked.

“I remember well what Richard said. I’m not going to directly attack their main force.”

Zedd supposed she did remember it well. She had been there with Richard—they hadn’t. Zedd brought up a touchy issue.

“The main force will be in the center, well protected. At their edges, where you attack, will be defenses, of course, but mostly the camp followers will be at the tail end of the Order’s camp—the fringe to the south, mostly.”

“I don’t really care,” she said with cold fury. “If they’re with the Order, then they are the enemy. There will be no mercy.” She was looking at her new general as she spoke her orders. “I don’t care if we kill their whores or their generals. I want every baker and cook dead as much as I want every officer and archer dead. Every camp follower we kill will deprive them of the comforts they enjoy. I want to strip them of everything, including their lives. Is that understood?”

General Meiffert gave his nod. “No mercy. You’ll get no argument from us, Mother Confessor; that is the D’Haran code of warfare.”

Zedd knew that, in war, Kahlan’s way was usually the only way to prevail. The enemy would grant no mercy, and would need none themselves had they not invaded. Every whore and hawker chose to be a part of that invasion, to make what they could off the blood and plunder spilled at the Order’s feet.

Verna spoke up. “Mother Confessor, Ann was going to see you and Richard. We last heard from her over a month ago. Have you seen her?”

“Yes.”

Verna licked her lips in caution at the steely look in Kahlan’s eyes. “Was she all right?”

“The last I saw her, she was.”

“Would you know why she hasn’t sent any word to us?”

“I threw her journey book in the fire.”

Verna stepped forward, making to snatch Kahlan by the shoulder. Cara’s Agiel came up like lightning, barring her way.

“No one touches the Mother Confessor.” Cara’s cold blue eyes were as deadly as her words. “Is that clear? No one.”

“You have one Mord-Sith and one Mother Confessor, here, both in very bad moods,” Kahlan said in a level voice. “I would suggest you not give us an excuse to lose our temper, or we may never find it again in your lifetime.”

Zedd’s fingers found Verna’s arm and gently urged her back.

“We’re all tired,” he said. “We have enough troubles with the Order.” He shot Kahlan a scowl. “No matter how tired or distraught we are, though, let’s remember we’re all on the same side here.”

Kahlan’s eyes told him she challenged that statement, but she said nothing.

Verna changed the subject. “I will get together some of the gifted to escort you on the raid.”

“Thank you, but we will be taking no gifted.”

“But you will at least need them to help you find your way in the dark.”

“We will have the enemy campfires to show us our way.”

“Kahlan,” Zedd said, hoping to interject some reason, “the Order will have gifted—including Sisters of the Dark. You will need protection from them.”

“No. I don’t want any gifted with us. They are expecting any attack to be accompanied by our gifted. Their gifted will be watching for shields of magic. Any riders they do see without detecting magic they will be more likely to discount. We’ll be able to get in deeper and draw more blood without gifted along.”

Verna sighed at such foolishness, but didn’t argue. General Meiffert liked her plan. Zedd knew she was right about getting in deeper, but he knew, too, that getting back out would be more difficult, once the enemy was on to them.

“Zedd, I would like one bit of magic.”

He scratched his brow in resignation. “What would you like me to do?”

Kahlan gestured at the ground. “Make that dust glow. I want it to show up in the dark, and I want it sticky.”

“For how long?”

She shrugged. “The rest of the night would be enough.”

After Zedd had spun a web over the dusty patch of ground, giving it a green glow, Kahlan bent and rubbed her hand in it. She walked around back of her horse and slapped the hand on each flank, leaving a glowing green handprint on each hindquarter.

“What are you doing?” Zedd asked.

“It’s dark. I want them to be able to see me. They can’t come after me if they can’t find me in the dark.”

Zedd sighed at the madness.

General Meiffert squatted and rubbed his hand in the glowing dust. “I’d also hate for them to miss me in the dark.”

“Be sure to wash your hand clean before we go,” she said.

After she had explained her plan to the new general, Kahlan, Cara, and General Meiffert started off to their tasks.

Before they could get far, Zedd halted Kahlan with a softly spoken question.

“Kahlan, do you have any idea how we can get Richard back?”

She gazed boldly into his eyes. “Yes. I have a plan.”

“Would you mind sharing it with me?”

“It’s simple. I plan on killing every Imperial Order man, woman, and child until I get to the very last one left alive, and then if she doesn’t give him back, I’m going to kill her, too.”

Kahlan focused past the black void to the glowing points of the fires as she leaned forward over the withers of her galloping horse, urging him onward, faster and faster. The muscles in her thighs strained as she pressed her weight against the stirrups and squeezed her legs against the feverish warmth of the massive body rhythmically, incessantly, frantically flexing and stretching, feeling its every pounding strike against the ground. Her ears were filled with the hammering of her own heart and the thunder of yet more hooves behind her. She was distantly aware of the weight of the Sword of Truth sheathed in its scabbard, an ever-present reminder of Richard.

She gripped the reins in one fist. With her other, she lifted her royal Galean sword high. The lights were coming. Unexpectedly, the first came out of nowhere and exploded into her vision.

Racing past what looked to be the light of a single candle, she was there, at last. Crying out with the sudden power of emotions that could no longer be stifled, she slammed her sword down against the dark shape of a man. The impact of the blade against bone jarred her wrist. The hilt stung against her palm.

On their way by, the men behind her unleashed their fury against the remaining sentries at the outpost. Kahlan held tight, knowing the greater unleashing of her need was yet to come. She would not be denied, now.

The fires of the outer fringes of the camp flew toward her. Her muscles were rigid with expectation. She felt at the brink of control. And then she was upon them. At last, she was there. She met them with all her strength. Her blade came down again and again, lashing against their bodies, slashing anyone within her reach. The outer fires shot past the sides of her horse with dizzying speed. She gasped for breath.

Laying the reins over, Kahlan pulled her big warhorse around in a tight circle. He was not as agile as she would have preferred, but he was well trained and for this job he would do. He bellowed with the excitement of battle begun.

Tents and wagons were scattered everywhere, with little apparent order. Kahlan could hear the merry laughter of those not yet aware of the enemy in their midst. She had brought a small attack force, keeping them tight and close on the way in so it wouldn’t raise the kind of alarm a broad attack would. It had worked. She saw men around fires tipping up bottles, or eating meat off skewers. She saw men sleeping, with their feet sticking out of tents. She saw a man walking with his arm around the waist of a woman. In the dim light she saw men in tents between the legs of other women.

The couple, arm in arm—undoubtedly at a price—was close. The man was on the far side of the woman as Kahlan raced up behind them, so with a mighty swing she took off the woman’s head, instead. The stupefied man clutched the headless body as it began to fall. The cavalry man right behind Kahlan took the startled man down.

Kahlan dug in her heels and charged her big warhorse over a haphazard row of tents with men and women inside. She could feel the huge hooves crushing bone. Screams rose around her and her mount.

A soldier with a pike stood with his legs spread in a stance of sudden alarm. On her way past, Kahlan snatched the pike from his grip, stabbed it into a small tent, twisting it, getting the canvas tangled up on its barbs, and then backed her horse, hauling the tent off a man and woman. Her men following behind stabbed the exposed couple as Kahlan pulled the remnants of the tent through a fire. As soon as it lit, she dragged the flaming canvas to a wagon, setting that wagon’s tarp afire, and then threw the blazing remains in another wagon full of supplies.

With a backhanded swing of her sword, Kahlan smashed the face of a burly man who ran up to pull her off her horse. She had to yank the blade free of his skull. Before more men could snatch at her, she dug in her heels again and charged off toward another fire, where men were just jumping to their feet. The horse knocked down several, and her sword cut another. By now, the shrieks of women sent up an effective alarm, and men were rushing out of tents and wagons with weapons in their fists. The whole scene was one of erupting pandemonium.

Kahlan wheeled her mount, stabbing anyone within reach. Many were not soldiers. Her sword felled leatherworkers and wagon masters, whores and soldiers. High-stepping at her command, her horse trampled down a line of big tents where wounded were being cared for. Beside a lamp, Kahlan spotted a surgeon with needle and thread working on a man’s leg. She drove her horse around to trample the surgeon and the man he was sewing up. The surgeon held his arms up before his face, but his arms were no good at warding the weight of a huge warhorse.

Kahlan signaled her men in. Army surgeons were valuable. The D’Harans killed every one they saw. She knew that killing each was as good as killing untold numbers of enemy soldiers. Kahlan and her men wreaked havoc through the whores’ tents, toppled cook wagons, cut down soldiers and civilians alike. When her men saw lamps, they leaped off their horses and snatched them up to use to start fires. Kahlan hacked at an enraged cook who came at her with a butcher knife. It took three rapid cuts to dispatch him.

To her left, Cara’s horse cut off a man about to throw a spear. Cara coolly went about killing him and anyone else within her reach. A twist of her Agiel usually seized up their hearts, and if not, Kahlan could at least hear bones snap. Their cries of death and pain seemed frightful enough to send a shiver up the spines of the dead, and did add to the general confusion and panic. It was glorious music to Kahlan’s ears.

The Agiel would only function through the bond to the Lord Rahl. Because it worked, she and Cara knew Richard was alive. That alone gave Kahlan heart. It was almost as if he were there with her. His sword strapped to her back was like his hand touching her, encouraging her to throw herself into the fight, telling her to cut.

The indiscriminate nature of the killing in among the camp followers confused the enemy soldiers, and terrorized the people who commonly believed themselves impervious to the violence they ultimately fed off of. Now, rather than being the vultures picking at the carcasses, they were the hapless prey. Life in the Imperial Order’s camp would never be the same—Kahlan would see to that. No more would the enemy soldiers enjoy the comforts provided by these people. They would now know they were no less targets than officers. They would know the price of their participation. The price was a merciless death and payment had come due.

Slashing her way through the running crowds of screaming people, Kahlan kept an eye on a large group of the Imperial Order’s horses, stabled not far off, watching as soldiers threw saddles on their mounts. She drove her horse over men and tents, getting closer, until she was sure she was within earshot of those cavalry men saddling their horses.

Kahlan stood in her stirrups, waving her sword high in the air. Men paused to stare.

“I am the Mother Confessor! For the crime of invading the Midlands, I condemn you all to death! Every one of you!”

The hundred men with her sent up a cheer. Their voices joined in a chant.

“Death to the Order! Death to the Order! Death to the Order!”

Kahlan and her men charged their horses around in an ever-widening circle, trampling anyone they could, hacking anyone within reach, stabbing anyone who rushed them, setting fire to anything that would burn. These D’Haran soldiers were the best at what they did, and they did it with brilliant effectiveness. When they found a wagon with oil, they broke the barrels open and tossed on flaming logs they plucked up with lances from fires. Night whooshed into day. Everyone could plainly see Kahlan, now, as she charged through their midst, screaming her pronouncement of death.

Kahlan saw the Order’s cavalry mounting up, pulling their lances from racks, drawing their swords. She reared her horse, holding her sword high.

“You are all cowards! You will never catch me or best me! You will all die like the cowards you are at the hands of the Mother Confessor!”

When her horse came down, she thumped its ribs with her boots. The horse charged off at a dead run, Cara right at her side, her hundred men at her heels, a few thousand infuriated Imperial Order cavalry right behind them, with more mounting up all the time.

Being at the edge of the Order’s camp, they wouldn’t have much ground to cover before they were out of the camp, again, and into the open countryside. As they raced away, Kahlan took the opportunity to kill anyone who presented themselves. It was too dark to tell if they were men or woman, and it didn’t matter anyway. She wanted them all dead. Each time her sword made contact, slashing muscle or breaking bone, was a delicious release.

Running at full speed, past the last of the campfires, they plunged suddenly into the black void of night. Kahlan leaned forward over her horse’s muscular neck, as they ran west, hoping there were no holes in the ground. If they hit one, it would be all over not just for her horse, but, most likely, for her as well.

She knew this land well enough, the gentle hills, the bluffs ahead. She knew where she was, even in the dark, and she knew where she was going. She was counting on the enemy not knowing. In the disorienting sweep of darkness, they would fixate on following the glowing handprints on her horse’s rump, thinking one of their gifted had gotten close enough to mark her horse for them. They would be gleeful with the blinding anticipation of having her naked to their swords.

Kahlan used the flat of her own sword to smack her horse’s flanks, urging him on, whipping him into a wild state. They were away from the excitement of battle, now, and out in the lonely openness of the countryside. Horses dreaded predators nipping at their flanks, especially in the dark. She encouraged him to think teeth were snapping at his hindquarters.

Her men were right behind her, but, as instructed, rode to each side so there was a gap, allowing the enemy to see the glowing marks on her horse. When Kahlan feared she was as close as they dared get, she signaled with a whistle. Over her shoulders, she watched her men, her protection, peeling away, off into the night. She would not see them again until she returned to the D’Haran camp.

With her advantage of the distant fires of the Order’s camp in back of them, Kahlan was able to see the silhouette of the enemy cavalry close behind, coming at a full charge, their hungry gazes no doubt fixed on the glowing handprints on her horse’s flanks, the only thing they could see out in the wide-open countryside on a moonless night.

“How far?” Cara called over from close beside her.

“Should be—”

Kahlan’s words cut off when she suddenly spotted briefly what was right there before her.

“Now, Cara!”

Kahlan pulled her leg up just in time as Cara rammed her horse over. The two huge animals jostled dangerously. Kahlan threw her arm around Cara’s shoulders. Cara’s arm seized Kahlan’s waist and yanked her over, off her horse. Kahlan gave her horse one last smack with the flat of her sword. The horse snorted in panic as it charged onward at full speed into the blackness.

Kahlan threw her leg over the rump of Cara’s horse, sheathed her sword, and then held tight to Cara’s waist as the Mord-Sith pulled her horse’s head hard to the left, forcing it, at a full gallop, to turn away just in time.

For an instant, through a break in the clouds, Kahlan spied the dull slur of starlight reflecting off the churning, icy waters of the Drun River below.

She felt a pang of sorrow for her startled, bewildered, terrified horse as it sailed out over the bluff. It was giving its life to take many more with it. The beast would probably never know what had happened.

Neither would the Imperial Order cavalry as they followed the glowing handprints on into the dark. This was her Midlands; Kahlan knew what was there; they were invaders, and did not. Even if they did see it coming in the last twinkling of their lives, at a full charge into pitch blackness they would never have a chance to avert their doom.

She hoped, though, that those men did realize what was happening—just before they gasped in the frigid dark waters, or before their lungs burst with the need of air as the merciless river dragged them down into its inky embrace. She hoped every one of those men suffered a horrifying death in the dark depths of those treacherous currents.

Kahlan turned her thoughts away from the heat of battle. The forces of the D’Haran Empire could sleep, now, with a victory over their enemy and with the sweet taste of vengeance. Kahlan found that it did little, though, to quell the fires of her raging anger.

After a brief time, Cara’s horse slowed to a canter, and then a walk. They heard no hoofbeats behind them, only winter’s vast silence. After the crush of people, the noise, and the turbulence of the Imperial Order’s camp, the isolation of the empty grasslands seemed somehow oppressive. Kahlan felt as if she were a speck of nothing in the middle of nowhere.

Cold and exhausted, Kahlan pulled her fur mantle around her shoulders. Her legs trembled from the effort finally finished. She felt as if everything had been washed out of her. Her head slumped forward to rest against Cara’s back. Kahlan was aware of the weight of Richard’s sword lying against her own back.

“Well,” Cara said over her shoulder after they had ridden for a time through the hushed expanse of countryside, “we do this every night for a year or two, and that should just about wipe them all out.”

For the first time in what seemed an eternity, Kahlan almost laughed. Almost.