Naked Empire

Chapter 48

Richard didn’t know if the antidote was supposed to make him feel better, but if it was, it hadn’t yet done its work. As they crept through the pitch-black fields, his chest hurt with every breath he took. He paused and closed his eyes briefly against the pain of the headache caused by his gift. He wanted nothing more than to lie down, but there was no time for that. Everyone started out once more when he did, quietly making their way through the fields outside of Witherton.

It felt good, at least, to have his sword back, even if he dreaded the thought of having to draw it for fear of finding its magic was no longer there for him. Once they recovered the other two bottles of the antidote and he was rid of the poison, then maybe they could make it back to Nicci so that she could help him deal with his gift.

He tried not to worry if a sorceress could help a wizard once his gift had gone out of control, as his had. Nicci had vast experience. As soon as he reached her, she could help him. Even if she couldn’t help him, he felt confident that she would at least know what he had to do in order to get the help he needed. After all, she was once a Sister of the Light; the purpose of the Sisters of the Light had been to help those with the gift to learn to control it.

“I think I see the outer wall,” Kahlan said in a quiet voice.

“Yes, that’s the place.” Richard pointed. “There’s the gate. See it?”

“I think so,” she whispered back.

It was a dark night, with no moon. While the others were having difficulty seeing much of anything as they made their way through the dark, Richard was glad for the conditions. The starlight was enough for him to see by, but he didn’t think it was enough to give the soldiers any help in seeing them.

As they crept closer, the sleeping house came into view through the open gate. The torch still burned outside the door to the building where the soldiers slept. Richard signaled everyone to gather around close. They all crouched low. He grabbed the shoulder of Anson’s shirt and pulled him up closer yet, then did the same with Owen.

Both now carried battle-axes. Anson also carried the knife he’d earned.

The rest of the men carried the weapons they had helped finish making.

When Richard and Anson had returned to the forest clearing, Anson had told the waiting men everything that had happened. When he said that he killed the man called the weasel, Richard held his breath, not sure exactly how the men would react to hearing that one of their own had actually killed a man. There was a brief moment of astonished silence, and then spontaneous joy at the accomplishment.

Every man wanted to shake Anson’s hand to congratulate him, to tell him how proud they were. At that moment, any lingering doubts Richard harbored had vanished. He had allowed the men to celebrate briefly while he waited for the night to darken, and then they had started making their way through the fields.

This was the night that Witherton gained its freedom.

Richard looked around at all the dark shapes. “All right, now, remember all the things we’ve told you. You must stay quiet and hold the gates steady while Anson and Owen cut the rope where they hinge. Be careful not to let the gates fall once the ropes are cut.”

In the dim starlight Richard could just make out the men nodding to his instructions. Richard carefully checked the sky, looking for any sign of black-tipped races. He didn’t see any. It had been a long time since they’d seen any races.

It seemed that the trick of taking to the forests just before they changed their expected route and being careful to stay out of sight from the sky had worked. It was possible that they had succeeded in slipping out from under Nicholas the Slide’s surveillance. If they really had escaped his observation, then he wouldn’t know where to begin looking for them.

Richard briefly squeezed Kahlan’s hand and then started for the opening in the town wall. Cara crouched close at his other side. Tom was bringing up the rear, along with Jennsen, making sure there were no surprises from behind.

They had left Betty not only tied up, but confined to a makeshift pen to be sure she didn’t follow after them and give them away at the wrong moment. The goat had been unusually distraught to be left behind, but with lives at stake they couldn’t risk Jennsen’s goat causing trouble. She would be happy enough after they returned.

When they reached the fields close to the town gates, Richard motioned for everyone to get down and stay where they were. Along with Tom, Richard moved up to the gates, taking cover in the shadow of the wall. There was a soldier just inside the gate, pacing slowly in his lonely nighttime sentry duty. He wasn’t being very careful, or he would not be doing such duty in the light of the torch.

As the soldier turned to walk away from them, Tom slipped up behind the man and swiftly silenced him. As Tom dragged the dead man through the gates to hide him in the darkness outside the wall, Richard moved in through the gates, staying in the shadows and away from the torch burning outside the sleeping house. The door to the sleeping house stood open, but no light or sound came from inside. This late, the men were bound to be asleep.

He moved past the first long building to the second, and there came upon another guard. Quickly, silently, Richard seized the man and cut his throat, holding him tight as he struggled. When he finally went limp, Richard laid him in the darkness at the head of the second sleeping house, around the corner from the torchlight.

In the distance, the men had already swarmed over the gates, holding them up while Anson and Owen worked quickly at cutting the ropes that acted as hinges. In moments, both sections of gate were freed. Richard could hear the soft grunts of effort as the heavy gates were manhandled around by the two gangs of men.

Jennsen handed Richard his bow, the string already strung. She handed him one of the special arrows, holding the rest at the ready for him. Kahlan slipped up to the torch on the pole outside the first building and lit several small torches, handing each of them off to the men. She kept one for herself.

Richard nocked the arrow and then glanced around at the faces seeming to float before him in the wavering torchlight. In answer to the unspoken question, they all nodded that they were ready. He checked the men balancing the two gates and saw their nod. The bow in one hand, with his fist holding the arrow in place, Richard gave hand signals to the men, starting them moving.

What had been a slow, careful approach from the woods into the town suddenly transformed into a headlong rush.

Richard held the head of the arrow nocked in his bow in the flame of the torch Kahlan held out for him. As soon as it caught, he ran to the open door of the sleeping house, leaned into the darkness, and fired the arrow toward the back.

As the blazing arrow flew the length of the building, it illuminated row upon row of men sleeping on the bed of straw. The arrow landed at the far end, spilling flame across the straw. A few heads lifted at the confusing sight. Jennsen handed Richard another. He immediately drew string to cheek and the arrow shot toward the middle of the interior.

As Richard pulled back from the doorway, two men with torches, dripping flaming drops of pitch, heaved them just inside. They hissed as they flew through the air, landing amid the sleeping men, bouncing and tumbling through the straw, igniting a wall of flame.

In a matter of only a few heartbeats since the attack started, the first sleeping house was set afire from one end to the other. The largest blaze, by design, was the fire spread by the pitch-laden torches, at the end of the building nearest the door. Confused cries came from inside, muted by the thick walls. The sleeping soldiers scrambled to their feet.

Richard checked that the men with the heavy gates were coming; then he ran around the sleeping house to the second building. Jennsen, following close behind, handed him an arrow, the flames around its head wrapped in oil-soaked cloth making a whooshing sound as she ran.

One of his men pulled the torch from the stand outside the building where the guard Richard killed had been patrolling. Richard leaned in the doorway only to see a big man charging at him out of the dark interior.

Richard pressed his back against the doorjamb and kicked the man squarely in the chest, driving him back.

Richard drew the bowstring back and shot the flaming arrow off into the interior. As it lit the interior in its flight through the building, he could see that some of the men had been awakened and were getting up.

Turning to take the second flaming arrow from Jennsen, he saw smoke pouring up from the first building. As soon as he drew string to cheek and loosed the second arrow, he leaned away and men heaved the torches in.

One torch fell back out of the doorway. It had bounced off the chest of a man rushing for the doorway to see what was happening. The pitch from the torch caught his greasy beard afire. He let out a bloodcurdling scream.

Richard kicked him back inside. In an instant, men by the dozens were racing for the door, not only to escape the burning building, but to meet the attack. Richard saw the flash of weapons being drawn.

He sprang back from the doorway as the men carrying the heavy section of gate rushed in. They turned the gate sideways and rammed it in under the eaves, but before they could bring the bottom down to wedge it against the ground, the weight of bellowing men inside crashed into the section of gate and drove it back. The men carrying it fell back, the weight knocking them from their feet, the gate landing atop them.

Suddenly, men were pouring from the doorway. Richard’s men were ready and fell on them, driving the wooden weapons into their soft underbellies and snapping the handles off as man after man spilled out of the doorway.

Standing to the side of the door, others used their maces to bash in the skulls of soldiers who emerged. When one soldier came out with his sword raised, the man to the side clubbed his arm as another rushed in and drove a wooden stake in up under his ribs. The more men who fell at the doorway, the more those trying to get out were slowed and could be dispatched.

The soldiers were so stunned to see these people fighting that in some cases they fought back only ineffectually. As a soldier leaped over the bodies in the doorway and lifted a sword, a man jumped on his back and seized his arm while another stabbed him. Another, crying orders, charged Jennsen, only to have the bolt of a crossbow fired into his face. A few soldiers escaped the burning building and managed to slip past Richard’s men only to meet Cara’s Agiel. Their screams, worse than the cries of men on fire, briefly brought the gaze of every man, from both sides of the battle.

Fallen knives and swords were scooped up by the men of the town and turned on the men from the Imperial Order. Richard fired an arrow into the center of the chest of a man emerging from the smoke that rolled out of the doorway. As he was falling, a second arrow felled the man behind him. As more men rushed out, they fell over those piled around the doorway and were hacked to death with commandeered axes or stabbed with confiscated swords.

Since they could emerge only one at a time, the soldiers couldn’t mount a coordinated attack, but those waiting could.

As Richard’s men fought back those struggling to get out of the doorway of the burning building, other men rushed to help lift the gate so those under it could get up and get control of it. Once the gate was lifted, the men swung it around and, with a cry of joint effort, ran with it toward the building. They drove the top up under the eaves, first, but when they brought the bottom edge down, the bodies piled in the doorway prevented them from getting the bottom down so they could wedge it in place.

Richard called out orders. Some of his men rushed in and seized an arm or a leg of a dead man and dragged the body aside so the others could finally bring the bottom of the gate down against the building to close off the opening.

One man from inside squeezed through just before they had the gate in place. The weight of the door pinned him against the building. Owen leaned in and with a sword he’d picked up decisively stabbed the man through the throat.

As men inside pounded at the gate covering the doorway and threw their weight against it, men on the outside piled around to push it down and hold it in place. Other men fell to their knees and drove stakes into the ground to lock the gate section in place, trapping the soldiers inside. Behind, streamers of flame leaked out from under the eaves of the first building and leaped up into the night sky. The roof of the building ignited all at once, explosively engulfing the entire sleeping house in sparks and flames.

Screams of men being burned alive ripped the night.

The waves of heat coming off the massive fire as the first building was consumed by the flames began to carry the heavy aroma of cooking meat. It reminded Richard that, for the killing he did, his gift demanded the balance of not eating meat. After all the killing of this night, since his gift was already spinning out of control, he would have to be even more careful to avoid eating any meat.

His head was already hurting so much that he was having trouble focusing his vision; he couldn’t afford to do anything that would further unbalance his gift. If he was not careful, the poison wouldn’t get the chance to be the first to kill him.

Heavy black smoke billowed out from around the edges of the gate covering the doorway of the second sleeping house. Screams and pleas came from inside. The men of the town moved back, watching, as smoke began rolling up from under its eaves. The battle seemed to have ended as quickly as it had started.

No one spoke as they stood in the harsh glare from the roaring fires.

Flames ate through the second building. With a loud whoosh it was engulfed in fire.

The heat drove everyone back away from the two sleeping houses. As they moved back from the burning buildings, they encountered the rest of the people of the town, all gathered in the shadows, watching in stunned silence.

One of the older men took a step forward. “Speaker Owen, what is this? You have committed violence?”

Owen stepped away from the men he was with to stand before the people of his town. He held an arm back, pointing toward Richard.

“This is Lord Rahl, of the D’Haran Empire. I went in search of him to help us be free. We have much to tell you, but for now you must know that tonight, for the first time in many seasons, our town is free.

“Yes, we have helped Lord Rahl to kill the evil men who have terrorized us. We have avenged the deaths of our loved ones. We will no longer be victims. We will be free!”

Standing silently, the people seemed able only to stare at him. Many looked confused. Some looked quietly jubilant, but most just looked stunned.

The boy, Bernie, ran up to Anson, peering up in astonishment. “Anson, you and our other people have freed us? Truly?”

“Yes.” He laid a hand on Bernie’s shoulder. “Our town is now free.”

“Thank you.” He broke into a grin as he turned back to the town’s people. “We are free of the murderers!”

A sudden, spontaneous cheer rose into the night, drowning out the sound of the crackling flames. The people rushed in around men they had not seen for months, touching them, hugging them, all asking questions of the men.

Richard took Kahlan’s hand as he stepped back out of the way, joining Cara, Jennsen, and Tom. These people who were so against violence, who lived their whole life avoiding the truth of what their beliefs caused, were now basking in the tearful joy of what it really meant to be freed from terror and violence.

People slowly left their men to come and look at Richard and those standing with him. He and Kahlan smiled at their obvious joy. They gathered in close before him, smiling, staring, as if Richard and those with him were some strange creatures from afar.

Bernie had attached himself to Anson’s arm. Others had the rest of the men firmly embraced. One by one, though, the men started pulling away so that they could stand behind Richard and Kahlan.

“We are so happy that you are home, now,” people were telling the men.

“We have you back, at last.”

“Now we are all together again,” Bernie said.

“We can’t stay,” Anson told him.

Everyone in the crowd fell silent.

Bernie, like many of the others, looked heartbroken. “What?”

Buzzing, worried whispers spread through the crowd. Everyone was shaken by the news that the men were not home to stay.

Owen lifted a hand so they would listen. When they went silent, he explained.

“The people of Bandakar are still under the cruel power of the men from the Order. Just as you have become free tonight, so must the rest of the people of Bandakar be free.

“Lord Rahl and his wife, the Mother Confessor, as well as his friend and protector Cara, his sister Jennsen, and Tom, another friend and protector, have all agreed to help us. They cannot do it alone. We must be part of it, for this is our land, but more importantly, our people, our loved ones.”

“Owen, you must not engage in violence,” an older man said. In view of their sudden freedom, it was not an emphatic statement. It seemed to be an objection more out of obligation than anything else. “You have begun a cycle of violence. Such a thing is wrong.”

“We will speak with you before we go, so that you might come to understand, as we have, why we must do this to be truly free of violence and brutality. Lord Rahl has shown us that a cycle of violence is not the result of fighting back for your own life, but is the result of a shrinking back from doing what is necessary to crush those who would kill you. If you do as you must in duty to yourself and your loved ones, then you will eradicate the enemy so completely that they can no longer do you any harm. Then, there is no cycle of violence, but an end to violence. Then, and only then, will true peace and freedom take root.”

“Such actions can never accomplish anything but to start violence,” an old man objected.

“Look around,” Anson said. “The violence has not begun tonight, but ended. Violence has been crushed, as it should be, by crushing evil men who bring it upon us.”

People nodded to one another, the heady relief of being suddenly freed from the grip of the terror brought by the soldiers of the Imperial Order plainly overcoming their objections. Joy had taken over from fear. The reality of having their lives returned had opened their eyes.

“But you must understand, as we have come to understand,” Owen said, “that nothing can ever again be the way it once was. Those ways are in the past.”

Richard noticed that the men weren’t slouching anymore. They stood with their heads held high.

“We have chosen to live,” Owen told his people. “In so doing, we have found true freedom.”

“I think we all have,” the old man in the crowd said.