Faith of the Fallen

Chapter 32

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.