Naked Empire

Chapter 47

Richard scanned the site off in the broad, green valley, watching for any sign of troops. He looked over at Owen.

“That’s Witherton?”

Hands pressed against the rich forest floor at the crown of a low ridge, Owen pulled himself closer to the edge. He stretched his neck to see over the rise and finally nodded before pulling back.

Richard had thought it would be bigger. “I don’t see any soldiers.”

Owen crawled back away from the edge. In the shadowed cover among ferns and low scrub, he stood and brushed the moist crumbles of leaves from his shirt and trousers.

“The men of the Order mostly stay inside the town. They have no interest in helping to do the work. They eat our food and gamble with the things they have taken from our people. When they do these things they are interested in little else.” His face heated to red. “At night, they used to collect some of our women.” Since the reason was obvious enough, Owen didn’t put words to it. “In the daytime they sometimes come out to check on our people who work in the fields, or watch to see that they come back in at night.”

If the soldiers had once camped outside the city walls, they no longer did. Apparently, they preferred the more comfortable accommodations within the town. They had learned that these people would offer no resistance; they could be cowed and controlled by words alone. The men of the Imperial Order were safe sleeping among them.

The wall around Witherton blocked much of Richard’s view of the place.

Other than through the open gates, there wasn’t much to see. The wall was constructed of upright posts not a great deal taller than the height of a man. The posts, a variety of sizes no bigger around than a hand-width, were bound tightly together, top and bottom, with rope. The wavy wall snaked around the town, leaned in or out in places. There was no bulwark, or even a trench before the wall. Other than keeping out grazing deer or maybe a roaming bear, the walls certainly didn’t look strong enough to withstand an attack from the Imperial Order soldiers.

The soldiers had no doubt made a point of using the gate into the town for reasons other than the strength of the wall. Opening the gates for soldiers of the Imperial Order had been a symbolic sign of submission.

Broad swaths of the valley were clear of trees, leaving fields of grain to grow alongside row crops in communal gardens. Tree limbs knitted into fencing kept in cows. There, the wild grasses were chewed low. Chickens roamed freely near coops. A few sheep grazed on the coarse grass.

The smells of rich soil, wildflowers, and grasses carried on a light breeze into the woods where Richard watched. It was a great relief to have finally descended from the pass. It had been getting difficult to breathe in the thin air up on the high slopes. It was considerably warmer, too, down out of the lofty mountain pass, although he still felt cold.

Richard checked the sweep of open valley one last time and then he and Owen made their way back into the dense tangle of woods toward where the others waited. The trees were mostly hardwoods, maple and oak, along with patches of birch, but there were also stands of towering evergreens. Birds chirped from the dense foliage. A squirrel up on the limb of a pine chattered at them as they passed. The deep shade below the thick forest crown was interrupted only occasionally by mottled sunlight.

Some of the men, swatting at bugs, stood in a rush when Richard led Owen into the secluded forest opening. Richard was glad to stand in the warmth of sunlight slanting in at a low angle.

It appeared that the open area in the dense woods had been created when a huge old maple had been hit by lightning. The maple split and fell in two directions, taking other trees down with it. Kahlan hopped down off her seat on the trunk of the fallen monarch. Betty, her tail wagging in a blur, greeted Richard, eagerly looking for attention, or a treat. Richard scratched behind her ears, the goat’s favorite form of attention.

More of the men came into the open from behind upturned roots that had been turned silver by years of exposure to the elements. A crop of spruce, none more than chest high, had sprung up in the sunny spot created when the old maple had died such a sudden and violent death. Spread among Kahlan, Cara, Jennsen, and Tom were the rest of the men—his army.

Back up in the pass, Anson’s saying that he wanted to help rid his people of the Imperial Order soldiers seemed to have galvanized the rest of the men, and the balance had finally tipped. Once it had, a lifetime of darkness and doubt gave way to a hunger to live in the light of truth. The men all declared, in a breathtaking moment of determination, that they wanted to join with Richard to be part of the D’Haran Empire and fight the soldiers of the Imperial Order to gain their freedom.

They had all decided that the men of the Order were evil and deserved death, even if they themselves had to do the killing.

When Tom glanced down to see Betty going back to browsing on weeds, Richard noticed that the man’s brow was beaded with sweat. Cara fanned herself with a handful of big leaves from a mountain maple. Richard was about to ask them how they could be sweating when it was such a cool day when he realized that it was the poison making him cold. With icy dread, he recalled how the last time he had gotten cold, the poison had nearly killed him that awful night.

Anson and another man, John, took off their packs. They were the ones planning to slip in among the field-workers returning to town at nightfall.

Once they sneaked into town, the two men planned to recover the antidote.

“I think I’d better go with you,” Richard said to Anson. “John, why don’t you wait here with the others.”

John looked surprised. “If you wish, Lord Rahl, but there is no need for you to go.”

It wasn’t supposed to be a foray that would result in any violence, only the recovery of the antidote. The attack on the Imperial Order soldiers was to be after the antidote had been safely recovered and they had assessed the situation, the number of men, and the layout.

“John is right,” Cara said. “They can do it.”

Richard was having difficulty breathing. He had to make an effort not to cough.

“I know. I just think I had better have a look myself.”

Cara and Kahlan cast sidelong glances at each other.

“But if you go in there with Anson,” Jennsen said, “you can’t take your sword.”

“I’m not going to start a war. I just want to get a good look around at the place.”

Kahlan stepped closer. “The two of them can scout the town and give you a report. You can rest—they will only be gone a few hours.”

“I know, but I don’t think I want to wait that long.”

By the way she appraised his eyes, he thought she must be able to see how much pain he was in. She didn’t argue the point further but instead nodded her agreement.

Richard pulled the baldric and sword belt off over his head. He slipped it all over Kahlan’s head, laying the baldric across her shoulder.

“Here. I pronounce you Seeker of Truth.”

She accepted the sword and the honor by planting her fists on her hips.

“Now don’t you go starting anything while you’re in there. That’s not the plan. You and Anson will be alone. You wait until we’re all together.”

“I know. I just need to get the antidote and then we’ll be back in no time.”

Beside getting the antidote, Richard wanted to see the enemy forces, how they were placed, and the layout of the town. Having the men draw a map in the dirt was one thing, seeing it for himself was another; these men didn’t know how to evaluate threat points.

One of the men took off his light coat, something a number of the men wore, and held it out to Richard. “Here, Lord Rahl, wear this. It will make you look more like one of us.”

With a nod of thanks, Richard drew the coat on. He had changed out of his war wizard’s outfit into traveling clothes, so he didn’t think he would look out of place with the way the men from the town of Witherton looked.

The man was nearly Richard’s size, so the coat fit well enough. It also hid his belt knife.

Jennsen shook her head. “I don’t know, Richard. You just don’t look like one of them. You still look like Lord Rahl.”

“What are you talking about?” Richard held out his arms, looking down at himself. “What’s wrong with the way I look?”

“Don’t stand up so straight,” she said.

“Hunch your shoulders and hang your head a little,” Kahlan offered.

Richard took their advice seriously; he hadn’t thought about it, but the men did tend to hunch a lot. He didn’t want to stand out. He had to blend in if he didn’t want to raise the suspicions of the soldiers. He bent over a little.

“How’s that?”

Jennsen screwed up her mouth. “Not much different.”

“But I’m bending down.”

“Lord Rahl,” Cara said in a soft voice as she gave him a meaningful look, “you remember how it was to walk behind Denna, when she held the chain to the collar around your neck. Make yourself like that.”

Richard blinked at her. The mental image of his time as a captive of a Mord-Sith hit him like a slap. He pressed his lips tight, not saying anything, and conceded with a single nod. The memory of that forsaken time was depressing enough that he would have no trouble using it to fall into the role.

“We had better be on our way,” Anson said. “Now that the sun is falling behind the mountains, darkness comes quickly.” He hesitated, then spoke again. “Lord Rahl, the men of the Order will not know you—I mean they probably will not realize you aren’t from our town. But our people do not carry weapons; if they see that knife, they will know you are not from our town, and they will send up an alarm.”

Richard lifted open the coat, looking at the knife. “You’re right.” He loosened his belt and removed the sheath holding the knife. He handed it to Cara for safekeeping.

Richard cupped a hand quickly to the side of Kahlan’s face as a way of saying his good-bye. She seized the hand in both of hers and pressed a quick kiss to the backs of his fingers. Her hands looked so small and delicate holding his. He sometimes kidded her that he didn’t see how she could possibly get anything done with such small hands. Her answer was that her hands were a normal size and perfectly adequate, and his were simply outsized.

The men all noticed Kahlan’s gesture of affection. Richard was not embarrassed that they did. He wanted them to know that other people were the same as they in important, human ways. This was what they were fighting for—the chance to be human, to love and cherish loved ones, to live their lives as they wanted.

The light faded quickly as Richard and Anson made their way through the woods running beside fields of wild grasses. Richard wanted to work around to where the forest came in closer to the men out weeding in the gardens and tending to animals. With the nearby mountains to the west being so high, the sun vanished behind them earlier than what would normally be sunset, leaving the sky a swath of deep bluish green and the valley in an odd golden gloom.

By the time he and Anson had reached the place where they would leave the woods, it was still a little too light, so they waited a short while until Richard felt the murky light in the fields was dim enough to hide them. The town was some distance away and since Richard couldn’t make out any men outside the gates, he reasoned that if soldiers were watching, then they couldn’t see him, either.

As they moved quickly through the field of wild grass, staying low and out of sight, Anson pointed. “There, those men going back to town, we should follow them.”

Richard spoke quietly back over his shoulder. “All right, but don’t forget, we don’t want to catch up with them or they might recognize you and make a fuss. Let them stay a good distance ahead of us.”

When they reached the town walls, Richard saw that the gates were no more than two sections of the picket walls. A couple of posts no bigger than Richard’s wrist had been tied sideways to stiffen two sections of wall and make them into gates. The ropes that tied the posts together served as the hinges. The sections were simply lifted and swung around to open or close them. It was far from a secure fortification.

In the murky light of twilight, the two guards milling around just inside the gates and watching workers return couldn’t really see much of Richard and Anson. To the guards, they would appear to be two more workers.

The Order understood the value of workers; they needed slaves to do the work so that the soldiers might eat.

Richard hunched his shoulders and hung his head as he walked. He remembered those terrible times as a captive when, wearing a collar, he walked behind Denna, devoid of all hope of ever again being free. Thinking of that inhuman time, he shuffled through the open gates. The guards didn’t pay him any attention.

Just as they were nearly past the guards, the closest one reached out and snatched Anson’s sleeve, spinning him back around.

“I want some eggs,” the young soldier said. “Give me some of the eggs you collected.”

Anson stood wide-eyed, not knowing what to do. It seemed ludicrous that these two young men were allowed to serve their cause by being bullies.

Richard stepped up beside Anson and spoke quickly, remembering to bow his head so that he wouldn’t loom over the man.

“We have no eggs, sir. We were weeding the bean fields. I’m sorry. We will bring you eggs tomorrow, if it pleases you.”

Richard glanced up just as the guard backhanded him, knocking him flat on his back. He instantly took a firm grip on his anger. Wiping blood from his mouth, he decided to stay where he was.

“He’s right,” Anson said, drawing the guard’s attention. “We were weeding beans. If you wish it, we will bring you some eggs tomorrow—as many as you want.”

The guard grunted a curse at them and swaggered off, taking his companion with him. They headed for a nearby long, low structure with a torch lashed to a pole outside a low door. In the flickering light of that torch, Richard couldn’t make out what the place was, but it appeared to be a building dug partway into the ground so that the eaves were at eye level.

After the two soldiers were a safe distance away, Anson offered Richard a hand to help him up. Richard didn’t think he’d been hit that hard, but his head was spinning.

As they started out, faces back in doorways and around dark corners peeked out to watch them. When Richard looked their way, the people ducked back in.

“They know you are not from here,” Anson whispered.

Richard didn’t trust that one of those people wouldn’t call the guards.

“Let’s hurry up and get what we came here for.”

Anson nodded and hurriedly led Richard down a narrow street with what looked like little more than huts huddled together to each side. The single torch burning outside the long building where the soldiers had gone provided little light down the street. The town, at least what Richard could see of it in the dark, was a pretty shabby-looking place. In fact, he wouldn’t call it a town so much as a village. Many of the structures appeared to be housing for livestock, not people. Only rarely were there any lights coming from any of the squat buildings and the light he did see looked like it came from candles, not lamps.

At the end of the street, Richard followed Anson through a small side door into a larger building. The cows inside mooed at the intrusion. Sheep rustled in their pens. A few goats in other pens bleated. Richard and Anson paused to let the animals settle down before making their way through the barn to a ladder at the side. Richard followed Anson as he climbed quickly to a small hayloft.

At the end of the loft, Anson reached up over a low rafter to where it tied into the wall behind a cross brace. “Here it is,” he said as he grimaced, stretching his arm up into the hiding place.

He came out with a small, square-sided bottle and handed it to Richard.

“This is the antidote. Hurry and drink it, and then let’s get out of here.”

The large door banged open. Even though it was dark outside, the torch down the street provided just enough light to silhouette the broad shape of a man standing in the doorway. By his demeanor, he had to be a soldier.

Richard pulled the stopper from the bottle. The antidote had the slight aroma of cinnamon. He quickly downed it, hardly noticing its sweet, spicy taste. He never took his eyes off the man in the doorway.

“Who’s in here?” the man bellowed.

“Sir,” Richard called down, “I’m just getting some hay for the livestock.”

“In the dark? What are you up to? Get down here right now.”

Richard put a hand against Anson’s chest and pushed him back into the darkness. “Yes, sir. I’m coming,” Richard called to the soldier as he hurried down the ladder.

At the bottom of the ladder, he turned and saw the man coming toward him. Richard reached for his knife under the coat he was wearing, only remembering then that he didn’t have his knife. The soldier was still silhouetted against the open barn door. Richard was in the darkness and the man probably wouldn’t be able to see him. He silently moved away from the ladder.

As the soldier passed near him, Richard stepped in behind him and reached to his side, seizing the knife sheathed behind the axe hanging on his belt. Richard gingerly drew the knife just as the man stopped and looked up the ladder to the hayloft.

As he was looking up, Richard snatched a fistful of hair with one hand and reached around with the other, slicing deep through the soldier’s throat before he realized what was happening. Richard held the man tight as he struggled, a wet gurgling the only sound coming from him. He reached back, frantically grabbing at Richard for a moment before his movements lost their energy and he went limp.

“Anson,” Richard whispered up the ladder as he let the man slip to the ground, “come on. Let’s go.”

Anson hurried down the ladder, coming to a halt as he reached the bottom and turned around to see the dark shape of the dead man sprawled on the ground.

“What happened?”

Richard looked up from his work at undoing the weapon belt around the dead weight of the soldier. “I killed him.”

“Oh.”

Richard handed the knife, in its sheath, to Anson. “Here you go. Now you have a real weapon—a long knife.”

Richard rolled the dead soldier over to pull the belt the rest of the way out from under the man. As he tugged it free, he heard a noise and turned just in time to see another soldier running in toward them.

Anson slammed the long knife hilt-deep into the man’s chest. The man staggered back. Richard shot to his feet, bringing the weapon belt with him.

The soldier gasped for breath as he clutched at the knife handle. He dropped heavily to his knees. One hand clawed at the air above him as he swayed.

Pulling a final gasp, he toppled to his side.

Anson stood staring at the man lying in a heap, the knife jutting from his chest. He bent, then, and pulled his new knife free.

“Are you all right?” Richard whispered when Anson stood.

Anson nodded. “I recognize this man. We called him the weasel. He deserved to die.”

Richard gently clapped Anson on the back of the shoulder. “You did well. Now, let’s get out of here.”

As they made their way back up the street, Richard asked Anson to wait while he checked down alleyways and between low buildings, searching for soldiers. As a guide, Richard often scouted at night. In the darkness, he was in his element.

The town was a lot smaller than he had expected. It was also much less organized than he thought it would be, with no apparent order to where the simple structures had been built. The streets through the haphazard town, if they could be called streets, were in most cases little more than footpaths between clusters of small, single-room buildings. He saw a few handcarts, but nothing more elaborate. There was only one road through the town, leading back to the barn where they had recovered the antidote and run into the two soldiers, that was wide enough to accommodate a wagon. His search didn’t turn up any patrolling soldiers.

“Do you know if all the men of the Order stay together?” Richard asked when he returned to Anson, waiting in the shadows.

“At night they go inside. They sleep in our place, by where we came in.”

“You mean that low building where the first two soldiers went?”

“That’s right. That’s where most people used to gather at night, but now the men of the Order use it for themselves.”

Richard frowned at the man. “You mean you all slept together?”

Anson sounded mildly surprised by the question. “Yes. We were together whenever possible. Many people had a house where they could work, eat, and keep belongings, but they rarely slept in them. We usually all slept in the sleeping houses where we gathered to talk about the day. Everyone wanted to be together. Sometimes people would sleep in another place, but mostly we sleep there together so we can all feel safe—much like we all slept together at night as we made our way down out of the pass with the statue.”

“And everyone just . . . lay down together?”

Anson diverted his eyes. “Couples often slept apart from others by being with one another under a single blanket, but they were still together with our people. In the dark, though, no one could see them . . . together under a blanket.”

Richard had trouble imagining such a way of life. “The whole town fit in that sleeping building? There was enough room?”

“No, there were too many of us to all sleep in one sleeping house. There are two.” Anson pointed. “There is another on the far side of the one you saw.”

“Let’s go have a look, then.”

They moved quickly back toward the town gates, such as they were, and toward the sleeping houses. The dark street was empty. Richard didn’t see anyone on the paths between buildings. What people were left in the town had apparently gone to sleep or were afraid to come out in the darkness.

A door in one of the small homes opened a crack, as if someone inside were peering out. The door opened wider and a thin figure dashed out toward them.

“Anson!” came the whispered voice.

It was a boy, in his early teens. He fell to his knees and clutched Anson’s arm, kissing his hand in joy to see him.

“Anson, I am so happy that you are home! We’ve missed you so much. We feared for you—feared that you were murdered.”

Anson grabbed the boy by his shirt and hauled him to his feet. “Bernie, I’m well and I’m happy to see you well, but you must go back in now. The men will see you. If they catch you outside . . .”

“Oh, please, Anson, come sleep at our house. We’re so alone and afraid.”

“Who?”

“Just me and my grandfather, now. Please come in and be with us.”

“I can’t right now. Maybe another time.”

The boy peered up at Richard, then, and when he saw that he didn’t recognize him shrank back.

“This is a friend of mine, Bernie—from another town.” Anson squatted down beside the boy. “Please, Bernie, I will return, but you must go back inside and stay there tonight. Don’t come out. We fear there might be trouble. Stay inside. Tell your grandfather my words, will you now?”

Bernie finally agreed and ran back into the dark doorway. Richard was eager to get out of the town before anyone else came out to pay their respects. If he and Anson weren’t careful, they would end up attracting the attention of the soldiers.

They moved quickly the rest of the way up the street, using buildings for cover. Pressing up against the side of one at the head of the street, Richard peered around the corner at the squat daub-and-wattle sleeping house where the guards had gone. The door was open, letting soft light spill out across the ground.

“In there?” Richard whispered. “You all slept in there?”

“Yes. That is one of the sleeping houses, and beyond it the other one.”

Richard thought about it for a moment. “What did you sleep on?”

“Hay. We put blankets over it, usually. We changed the hay often to keep it fresh, but these men do not bother. They sleep like animals in dusty old hay.”

Richard looked out through the open gates at the fields. He looked back at the sleeping house.

“And now the soldiers all sleep in there?”

“Yes. They took the place from us. They said it was to be their barracks. Now our people—the ones still alive—must sleep wherever they can.”

Richard made Anson stay put while he slipped through the shadows, out of the light of the torch, to survey the area beyond the first building. The second long structure also had soldiers inside laughing and talking. There were more men than were needed to guard such a small place, but Witherton was the gateway into Bandakar—and the gateway out.

“Come on,” Richard said as he came up beside Anson, “let’s get back to the others. I have an idea.”

As they made their way to the gate, Richard looked up, as he often did, to check the starry sky for any sign of black-tipped races. He saw instead that the pole to each side of the gate held a body hanging by the ankles.

When Anson saw them, he paused, held frozen by the horror of the sight.

Richard laid a hand on the man’s shoulder and leaned close. “Are you all right?”

Anson shook his head. “No. But I will be better when the men who come to us and do such things are dead.”