Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

Chapter 36

Kahlan could only wonder at Jillian’s claim. She now knew that the man could indeed start a war, but she didn’t really believe that he could go to the underworld and come back. Watching the perilous turmoil unfolding all around them, though, she knew that this was not the time or place to discuss it.

She scanned the confusion of runaway violence, searching for a way out. If Jagang died, or even if he were only to pass out, she might be able to use such an opportunity to get Jillian, Nicci, and herself away from there. She wondered if it mattered if Jagang, being a dream walker, was unconscious or not. She worried that even in an unconscious state he might still be able to control them through their collars.

If Jagang did die or lose consciousness, and wasn’t able to stop Nicci and Kahlan through their collars, there was still the matter of the vast army all around them. Kahlan was invisible to virtually all of the men around them, but Jillian and Nicci certainly weren’t. Getting a woman who looked like Nicci and the tempting target of a girl like Jillian through all these men would not be easy. Nicci certainly put a lot of faith in Richard, though.

“Do you really think Richard can get us out of here?” she asked Nicci.

Nicci nodded. “With my help. I think I know a way.”

Kahlan didn’t think that Nicci was the kind of woman who would put her faith in a hope and a prayer. During her ordeal with Jagang she had never tried to latch on to delusions or false hope for salvation. If she said she knew a way, then Kahlan was inclined to think that there was something to it.

Off through a gap in the battle, Kahlan spotted Richard. He thrust the sword forward, running a man through before the soldier could complete the swing of his own sword. Richard, covered in the bloodred symbols, immediately pulled the sword back out of the man and on the backswing smashed the pommel into the face of the man coming at him from behind.

“This may be our only chance, then,” Kahlan said.

Nicci stretched her neck to check on Richard’s progress before again glancing to the confusion swirling around the injured emperor. “I don’t think we’ll get a better one. I think it’s now or never. With these collars, though . . .”

“If Jagang is distracted enough he might not use our collars to stop us.”

Nicci shot Kahlan a look that suggested how foolish the thought was. “Now, listen to me,” she said. “If anything goes wrong, I’ll do what I can to see to it that you, Jillian, and Richard have a chance to get away.” Nicci held up a cautionary finger. “If it comes to that, you take that chance—you hear me? If it comes to that, don’t you dare waste the opportunity I gain you. Do you understand?”

Kahlan didn’t like that Nicci was thinking of sacrificing her life to give them a chance to get away. She also wondered why Nicci would think it more important that Kahlan live than her.

“If you promise that you won’t even consider doing such a thing unless there’s absolutely no other way. I’d rather find a way to get us all out of this.”

“It’s the only life I have,” Nicci said. “I want to keep it, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

Kahlan smiled at that and put a hand on Jillian’s shoulder. “Stay close, but don’t get in the way if I have to use a knife. And don’t be afraid to use yours if you have to.”

Jillian nodded as Kahlan ushered her in the direction of the Ja’La field where she’d last seen Richard. Nicci stayed close behind Jillian.

Before Kahlan had taken a dozen steps, Commander Karg, atop a huge warhorse, broke through the wall of combat behind them. The big horse snorted its displeasure at the men in its way.

The commander, leading a large force of royal guards, looked around in appraisal of the situation. Like the men guarding Jagang, these were elite combat soldiers. They were all big, powerfully built, and armed to the teeth—and there looked to be thousands of them. The violence they brought to bear was extraordinary to witness. They poured through the soldiers on a wave of blood.

Not far off in the distance behind the royal guards Kahlan saw gouts of flame rise up into the night sky. The harsh red glow lit the straining faces of men fighting for their lives. Who the men were fighting seemed to have lost its importance. The soldiers seemed to have gone mad in a world gone mad. It was every man for himself, except for the royal guard, who did have a very clear idea of who they were fighting—anyone but them.

“Sisters are coming,” Nicci said as she watched the flames and smoke boiling up into the black sky. “We don’t have much time before it’s too late. Try to stay out of sight and out of the way of the guard.”

Kahlan nodded as she eased her way along with Jillian in a direction away from the main force fighting their way in. Nicci had a plan to get them away. Richard would be searching for them, so Kahlan didn’t want to get too far away from where he had last seen them.

Her aim was to skirt the main confrontation between the regular soldiers and the royal guard while moving toward where she’d last seen Richard, hoping that as they moved off to the side she didn’t get too far away from Richard’s approach. At the same time she wanted to stay out of the new confrontation. The elite guard would be a very different foe from the regular soldiers.

Commander Karg leaped down off the horse among the original royal guard contingent. “Where’s Jagang?” he called out to the wall of guards protecting the injured emperor.

“He’s been shot with an arrow,” one of the guard officers said as he signaled his men to open a path for the commander.

Kahlan saw Jagang, then, still on his knees, being supported by a big man squatting down to each side of him. He was pale, but conscious. He was having difficulty breathing, occasionally coughing, leaving little dark spots of blood on his chin and down the front of him. One hand clutched the arrow jutting from the right side of his chest.

“An arrow!” Karg yelled. “How in the name of Creation did that happen?”

The officer seized Karg by his chain mail and yanked him close. “Your man shot him!”

Commander Karg glared as he lifted the officer’s chin with the point of a knife. “Get your hands off me.”

The man released the commander, but returned the glare in kind.

“Now, what are you talking about it being my man?” Karg asked.

“It was your point man. He shot the emperor with an arrow.”

Karg’s expression darkened. “Then I’ll kill him myself.”

“If we don’t kill him first.”

“Fine. You do it, then. I don’t really care who kills him—as long as he’s dead that’s all that matters. The man is dangerous. I don’t want him running around loose to do any more damage. Just bring me his head so that I know that it’s finished.”

“Consider it done,” the officer said.

Karg ignored the man’s boast as he started pushing other men out of his way. “Get the emperor on his feet!” he yelled at the wall of men around Jagang. “We’re getting him back to his compound. There are Sisters there who can help him. We can’t do anything here.”

No one argued. Guards helped Jagang to his feet. Two men, one to each side, put shoulders under his arms, supporting him.

“Karg,” Jagang said in a weak voice.

The commander stepped close. “Yes, Excellency?”

A grin spread on Jagang’s face. “Glad to see you. I guess you earned her for a while.”

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 behind lifted a sword on Jillian, someone ran him though 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.