Matching the distress in her voice, Kahlan’s exquisite features twisted in horror at seeing him kneeling in the mud. Her eyes were rimmed with red. Tears streamed down her cheeks along with the rain.
Richard knelt frozen in terror, frozen at the sight of her, right there, so close yet so far. Frozen to discover that she was there, in the middle of thousands upon thousands of enemy troops.
“Richard!”
Her arm desperately stretching for him again. She was trying to get to him, but she couldn’t.
She was being held back by a burly soldier with a shaved head.
Richard noticed for the first time that the buttons on Kahlan’s shirt were gone, ripped off, so the shirt hung open, exposing her to the leers of the soldiers.
But she didn’t care. She only wanted Richard to see her, as if that was all that mattered in life, as if that single sight of him was her whole life. As if she needed only that to live.
A painful knot swelled in his throat. Tears welled up. Richard whispered her name, too shocked by the sight of her to bring forth more.
Frantic, Kahlan again reached out for him, straining against the restraint of the soldier’s meaty hand. His tight grip left white prints of his fingers in the flesh of her arm.
“Richard! Richard, I love you! Dear spirits, I love you!”
As she tried to tear away, to lunge toward him, the soldier circled a powerful arm around her middle, inside her open shirt, holding her back. The man reached around and, with a finger and thumb, seized Kahlan’s nipple, twisting it as he glanced up, grinning with meaning, making sure that Richard saw what he was doing.
A small cry of surprised pain escaped Kahlan’s throat, but otherwise she ignored the soldier, instead screaming Richard’s name in abject terror.
Fired by rage, Richard furiously tried to get to his feet. He had to get to her. The soldier laughed as he watched Richard struggle. There was no way another chance would come along. This was it; this would be his only chance.
As he began to force his way to his feet, a guard rammed a boot into Richard’s gut so hard that it doubled him over. Another soldier kicked him in the side of the head for good measure, stunning him nearly senseless. The world dimmed. Sound melted together into a dull drone. Richard struggled to remain conscious. He didn’t want to lose sight of Kahlan. There was no sight in the whole world that meant more to him than the sight of her.
He had to find a way to get her out of the middle of this nightmare.
As he fought to regain his breath, the big hand of a soldier seized his hair and yanked him upright. Richard gasped, trying to draw a breath against the stupefying pain of the blows. He felt warm blood running down the side of his face, washing cold mud down his neck.
As his head was pulled upright, Richard’s gaze fell on Kahlan again, on her long hair now tangled and matted by the rain. Her green eyes were so beautiful that he thought his heart might burst with the pain of seeing her again but not being able to hold her in his arms.
He wanted so badly to hold her in his arms, to comfort her, to protect her.
Instead, another man was holding her in his arms. She tried to squirm away. He cupped her breast, squeezing until Richard could see that it was hurting her. She beat at him with her fists, but he held her fast. He laughed at her futile efforts as his gaze again slid to Richard.
Kahlan fought him, but at the same time ignored what he was doing, ignored the distraction. What he was doing was not what mattered most to her. Richard was what mattered most. Her arms frantically stretched out toward him.
“Richard, I love you! I’ve missed you so much!” She was overcome with sobs of sheer misery. “Dear spirits, help him! Please! Somebody help him!”
To his left, the next man in line tried with all his might to back away as his throat was sliced deep. Richard could hear the man’s frantic gasps gurgling through the gash that opened up his windpipe.
Richard felt faint with panic. He didn’t know what to do.
Magic. He should call his gift. But how was he to do that? He didn’t know how to call forth magic. And yet, in the past he had been able to do it.
Rage.
In the past his gift had always worked through his anger.
Seeing the soldier holding Kahlan, hurting her, provided him with more than enough anger. Seeing another of those monsters come in close to her, leering down at her, touching her intimately, only fanned the wild flames of his anger.
His world went red with rage.
With every fiber of his being Richard tried to ignite his gift with the essence of that fury. He clenched his jaw, gritting his teeth with the monumental concentration of his wrath. He shook with rage, expecting an explosion of power to match that rage. He saw what he needed to do. It seemed so close. He imagined it cutting down the soldiers. He held his breath against the storm that was about to be unleashed.
It felt like falling unexpectedly, without any ground below him to catch his fall.
The rain continued to plunge from the gray sky as if to drown his effort. No magic arced through the empty space between Richard and the man who held Kahlan. No conjured lightning erupted. No justice was at hand.
In all his life, if there was anything there, this was the moment it would have come—that much he knew beyond any doubt. There could be no more urgent need, no more desire, no more wrath for the woman he loved. But no power was there, no redemption at hand.
He might as well have been born without the gift.
He had no gift. It was gone.
It felt to Richard as if the world was caving in around him. He wanted everything to slow down, to give him time to find a solution, but everything swirled in a terrible rush. It was all happening too fast. It was so unfair to have to die like this. He hadn’t had a chance to live, to have a life with Kahlan. He loved her so much and he hadn’t really been able to be with her, just the two of them, living in peace. He wanted to smile and laugh with her, to hold her, to go through life with her. Just to sit in front of a fire with her on a cold, snowy night, holding her close to him, safe and warm, as they talked about the things that mattered to them, about their future. They should have a future.
It was so unfair. He wanted to live his life. Instead, it was to end in this miserable place for no good reason. For nothing. He wasn’t even able to make his death mean something, to die fighting for life. Instead, he was
going to die here in the rain and mud, surrounded by men who hated all that was good in life, while Kahlan was forced to watch it happen.
He didn’t want her to see this. He knew that she would never be able to get the sight of it out of her mind. He didn’t want to leave her with that last, horrific memory of him struggling in the bloody throes of death.
He made another attempt to get up, as did most of the other men. The soldier behind him stepped on his calves, bearing down with all his weight. The pain felt distant. Richard was in a daze.
He wanted nothing in the world so much as to get Kahlan away from the men who were holding her, groping her. Kahlan screamed in rage at them, clawed at them, swung her fists at them, and at the same time cried in helpless terror for Richard.
He twisted with all his might against the leather thongs binding his wrists but, rather than part, they only cut deeper. He felt like an animal caught in a trap. His hands had gone numb. He could no longer feel the warm blood dripping off his fingertips.
He didn’t want to die. What was he to do? He had to stop this. Somehow, he had to. But he didn’t know how. In the past, anger was the means to reach his gift, to call forth its power. Now, there was nothing but a helpless confusion.
“Kahlan!”
He couldn’t seem to help himself from being swept up in the terror of it, in the blind panic of it. He couldn’t stop the headlong rush of it. Couldn’t regain his sense of control over himself. He was being swept away in a river of events he could not control or stop. It was all so senseless. It was all so overwhelmingly pointless, so monumentally brutal.
“Kahlan!”
“Richard!” she cried as she again reached out for him. “Richard, I love you more than life! I love you so much. You’re everything to me. You always have been.”
Sobs caught her breath, turning them to gasps.
“Richard…I need you so badly.”
His heart was breaking. He felt that he was failing her.
A soldier seized Richard by the hair.
“No!” Kahlan screamed, holding out a hand. “No! Please no! Somebody please help him! Dear spirits, somebody, please!”
The soldier leaned down, a cruel smile twisting his grime-streaked face.
“Don’t worry, I’ll see to her…personally.” He laughed in Richard’s ear.
“Please,” Richard heard himself say, “please…no.”
“Dear spirit, please, somebody help him!” Kahlan cried to those around her.
She could do nothing and she knew it. There was no chance for him and she knew it. She was reduced to begging for a miracle. That, in itself, fed the flames of hot dread burning out of control within him. This was the end of everything.
“She’s a real looker,” the soldier said as he leered across the way at Kahlan, proving what Richard knew—that no miracle was at hand.
“Please…leave her be.”
The soldier behind him laughed. That was what he had wanted to hear.
Richard was choking on the sob welling up in his throat. He couldn’t breathe past it. Tears ran down his face along with the rain. She was the only woman he had ever loved, the one person who meant everything to him, meant more than life itself to him.
Without Kahlan there was no life, there was only existence. She was his world.
Without Kahlan life was empty.
Without him, he knew, Kahlan’s life would be just as empty.
He saw other women not far from Kahlan, all being held by soldiers, all screaming for their men. He saw them saying things much like the things Kahlan was saying, offering the same words of love, the same calls for someone to save them. The soldiers taunted the men kneeling in the mud with vile oaths.
Seeing the women in the hands of the soldiers, one of the kneeling men to Richard’s right struggled hard enough to earn himself a lightning-quick stab to the gut. It didn’t kill him, but it was enough to keep him from fighting while he was made to wait his turn. As he knelt stiff and still, his wide eyes stared down at his own pink, glistening insides slowly bulging out of the gash. The screams of the man’s wife seemed like they could have split the clouds above.
The man immediately to Richard’s left gasped his last breath, thrashing in uncoordinated movements as the soldier holding up the man’s head sawed the large knife back and forth across the victim’s exposed throat. When finished, the soldier growled with the effort of heaving the dead
weight back into the open pit. Richard heard the body thud down in the bottom of the open grave atop other bodies. He could hear gurgling gasps coming from the dark hole.
“Your turn,” the soldier holding Richard said as he stepped around behind him to assume the role of executioner. The man leaned close. His breath stank of ale and sausage. “I need to finish this. I’ve a meeting with your lovely wife as soon as I’m done with you. Kahlan, isn’t it? Yes, that’s right—one of the other women confessed that your wife’s name was Kahlan. Don’t you worry, lad, I won’t give Kahlan much of a chance to grieve, reminiscing about you. I’ll have her full attention—I can promise you that. After I’ve had my satisfaction from her, others will have their turn on her.”
Richard wanted to break the man’s neck.
“Think about that as your wicked soul slides into the dark, eternal agony of the underworld, as you fall into the cold, merciless grasp of the Keeper. That’s where all your kind goes—to the justice of eternal suffering—and that’s as it should be, seeing as how we’ve all sacrificed everything to come up here to this forsaken land so we can bring divine Light and the law of the Order to all you selfish heathens. Your sinful way of life, your mere existence, offends the Creator—and it offends those of us who bow to Him.”
The man was working himself up into a righteous rage.
“Do you have any idea what I’ve sacrificed for the salvation of the souls of your people? My family went hungry, went without—sacrificed—so that they could send everything to our courageous troops. My brother and I gave ourselves over to the fight for our cause and everything we believe in. We both came north to do our duty to our emperor and our Creator. We both devoted our lives to the cause of bringing goodness to you people. We fought in countless bloody battles against those who resist our efforts on behalf of what is right and just. We saw countless of our brethren die in those battles.
“I saw the glory of our army of the Order continue on in the fight for salvation while your people sent the wicked gifted against us. Those gifted conjured evil made of magic. My brother was blinded by some of that magic. He screamed in agony as that magic bloodied his eyes and burned his lungs. The infections that swiftly befell him made his whole
head swell, his sightless eyes bulge. He could only moan in agony. We left him to die alone, so that we could move on in our noble struggle, as was only right.
“Your wife and those like her will now sacrifice themselves to give us a small diversion in this miserable life as we labor in that noble struggle. It’s her small payment on a debt of gratitude for what we have given over for our fellow man in order to bring the word of the Order to those who would otherwise turn away from their duty to faith.
“Someday your sinful wife will join you there in the darkness of the underworld, but not until after we’re finished with her. Just don’t expect her to be joining you any time soon, as I expect she’ll be whoring for the brave soldiers of the Order for some time to come, what with how the men like to get their hands on a good-looking woman like her in order to take their minds off the drudgery of their honorable work. I expect she’ll be kept good and busy, since there is so much honorable work to do”—he waggled his knife before Richard’s eyes—“like this business here. With the relief us men get from her, we’ll have the strength to redouble our determination to eliminate all those who will not submit to the ways of the Order.”