Naked Empire

Chapter 59

Under the sweep of stars, Richard willed himself to stand up straight and tall before all the men gathered beneath the spreading branches of the oak trees at the forest’s edge. A few candles burned among the gathering so they could all see. By the time they charged into the city of Northwick to make their attack, it would just be light.

Richard wanted nothing more than to get into the city and find Kahlan, but he had to use everything he had at hand to help, or he might waste the chance. He had to do this, first.

Most of these men had never really fought before. Owen and Anson’s men from the town of Witherton had been there at the first attack on the sleeping houses and had taken part in the skirmishes there. The rest of the men were from Northwick, where Richard had gone to see the Wise One. They had been in on the clashes with the soldiers who weren’t poisoned. There had not been a great many enemy soldiers to fight, but the men had done what had to be done. If anything, those minor but bloody encounters had served only to make the men more determined, showing them that they could win freedom themselves, that they were in control of their own destiny.

This, though, was different. This was going to be a battle on a scale they had not experienced. Worse, it was in a city that had, for the most part, willingly joined with the Order’s cause. The populace was not likely to offer much help.

Had he more time, Richard might have come up with a better plan that would have chipped away at the enemy’s numbers, first, but there was no time. It had to be now.

Richard stood before the men, hoping to give them something to help them carry the day. He had trouble thinking of anything but finding Kahlan.

In order to have the best chance to save her, he put her from his mind and focused on the task at hand.

“I had hoped we wouldn’t have to do it this way,” he said. “I had hoped we could do it in some manner like we’ve done before, with the fire, or the poisoning, so that none of you would be hurt. We don’t have that option. Nicholas knows we’re here. If we run, his men will come after us. Some of us might escape . . . for a while.”

“We are finished running,” Anson said.

“That’s right,” Owen agreed. “We have learned that running and hiding brings only greater suffering.”

Richard nodded. “I agree. But you must understand that some of us are probably going to die, today. Maybe most of us. Maybe all of us. If any of you choose not to fight, then we must know now. Once we go in, we’ll all be depending on each other.”

He clasped his hands behind his back as he paced slowly before them. It was hard to make out their faces in the dim light. Richard knew, too, that his time was running out. His sight would only get worse. His dizziness would only get worse.

He knew he was never going to get better.

If he was to have a chance to get Kahlan away from the men of the Order, it had to be at once, with these men or without them.

When none said that they wanted to quit, Richard went on. “We need to get to their commanders for two reasons: to find out where the Mother Confessor is being held, and to eliminate them so that they can’t direct their soldiers against us.

“You all have weapons, now, and in the limited time we’ve had, we’ve done our best to teach you how to use them. There’s one other thing you must know. You will be afraid. So will I.

“To overcome this fear, you must use your anger.”

“Anger?” one of the men asked. “How can we bring forth anger when we’re afraid?”

“These men have raped your wives, your sisters, your mothers, daughters, aunts, cousins, and neighbors,” Richard said as he paced. “Think about that, when you look into the enemy’s eyes as they come at you. They have taken most of the women away. You all know why. They have tortured children to make you give up. Think about the terror of your children as they screamed in fear and pain, dying bloody and alone after being mutilated by these men.”

The heat of Richard’s anger seeped into his words. “Think about that when you see their confident grins as they come at you. These men have tortured people you loved, people who never did anything against them. Think about that as these men come at you with their bloodstained hands.

“These men have sent many of your people away to be used as slaves. Many more of your people have been murdered by these men. Think about that, when they come to murder you, too.

“This is not about a difference of opinion, or a disagreement. There can be no debate or uncertainty about this among moral men. This is about rape, torture, murder.”

Richard turned and faced the men. “Think about that, when you face these beasts.” He tapped a fist to his chest as he ground his teeth. “And when you face these men, men who have done all these things to you and your loved ones, face them with hate in your hearts. Fight them with hate in your hearts. Kill them with hate in your hearts. They deserve no better.”

The woods were silent as the men considered his chilling words. Richard knew that he had rage enough, and hate enough, to be eager to get at the men of the Imperial Order.

He didn’t know where Kahlan was, but he intended to find out and to have her back. She had done as she had to in order to get the antidote to save his life. He understood what she had done, and couldn’t fault her for it—that was the kind of woman she was. She loved him just as fiercely as he loved her. She had done what she had to do. But he was not going to let her down. She was depending on him to come for her.

The terrible irony was that it had all been for nothing. The antidote she had made such a sacrifice to obtain was no antidote at all.

Richard looked out at all their faces, so intent on what he had to tell them on the eve of such a momentous battle, and remembered, then, the words on the statue at the entrance to this land, the words of the Wizard’s Eighth Rule: Taiga Vassternich.

“There is one last thing to tell you,” he said. “The most important thing of all.”

Richard faced them as the leader of the D’Haran Empire, an empire struggling to survive, to be free, and told them those two words in their language.

“Deserve Victory.”

It was just turning light as they charged into the city. Only one of them had remained behind: Jennsen. Richard had forbidden her from joining the fight. Besides being young and not nearly as strong as the men they would come up against, she would only create a tempting target. Rape was a sacred weapon of the wicked, and one this enemy used religiously. The men of the Imperial Order would rally for such a prize. Cara was different; she was a trained warrior and more lethal than any of them except Richard.

Jennsen hadn’t been pleased to be left behind, but she had understood Richard’s reasons and hadn’t wanted to give him anything else to worry about. She and Betty had remained behind in the woods.

A man they had sent out to scout because he knew the area well emerged from a side alley. As they reached him they all moved up against the wall, trying to remain out of sight as best they could.

“I found them,” the scout said, trying to catch his breath. He pointed to the right of their route into the city.

“How many?” Richard asked.

“I think it must be their main force within the city, Lord Rahl. It’s where they sleep. They seem to still be there, as you expected, and not yet up. The place they’ve taken over contains buildings for city offices and administration. But I bring troubling news, as well. They are being protected by the people of the city.”

Richard ran his fingers back through his hair. He had to concentrate to keep from coughing. He gripped the window frame of the building beside him to help himself stand.

“What do you mean, they are being protected?”

“There are crowds of people from the city surrounding the place occupied by the soldiers. The people are there to protect the soldiers—from us. They are there to stop us from attacking.”

Richard let out an angry breath. “All right.” He turned back to the worried, expectant faces of all the men. “Now, listen to me. We are joined in a battle against evil. If anyone sides with evil, if they protect evil men, then they are serving to perpetuate evil.”

One of the men looked unsure. “Are you saying that if they try to stop us, we might have to use force against them?”

“What is it these people seek to accomplish? What is their goal? They want to prevent us from eliminating the Imperial Order. Because they hate life, they despise freedom more than slavery.”

With grim determination, Richard met the men’s gazes. “I’m saying that anyone who protects the enemy and seeks to keep them in power, for whatever reason, has sided with them. It’s no more complicated than that. If they try to protect the enemy or hamper us from doing as we must—kill them.”

“But they aren’t armed,” a man said.

Richard’s anger flared. “They are armed—armed with evil ideas that seek to enslave the world. If they succeed, you die.

“Saving the lives of innocent people and your loved ones—and having far less loss of life in the end—is best served by crushing the enemy as decisively and quickly as possible. Then there will be peace. If these people try to prevent that, then they are, in effect, siding with those who torture and murder—they help them to live another day to murder again. Such people must not be treated any differently than what they in truth are: servants of evil.

“If they try to stop you, kill them.”

There was a moment of silence; then Anson put a fist to his heart.

“With hate in my heart . . . vengeance without mercy.”

Looks of iron determination spread back through the men. They all put fists to their hearts in salute and took up the pledge. “Vengeance without mercy!”

Richard clapped Anson on the side of the shoulder. “Let’s go.”

They raced out from the long shadows of the buildings and poured around the corner. The people off at the end of the street all turned when they spotted Richard’s force coming. More people—men and women from the city—surged into the street in front of the compound of buildings the soldiers had taken up as barracks and a command post. The people looked like a scraggly lot.

“No war! No war! No war!” the people shouted as Richard led the men up the street at a dead run.

“Out of the way!” Richard yelled as he closed the distance. This was no time for subtlety or discussions; the success of their attack depended in large part on speed. “Get out of the way! This is your only warning! Get out of the way or die!”

“Stop the hate! Stop the hate!” the people chanted as they locked arms.

They had no idea how much hate was raging through Richard. He drew the Sword of Truth. The wrath of its magic didn’t come out with it, but he had enough of his own. He slowed to a trot.

“Move!” Richard called as he bore down on the people.

A plump, curly-haired woman took a step out from the others. Her round face was red with anger as she screamed. “Stop the hate! No war! Stop the hate! No war!”

“Move or die!” Richard yelled as he picked up speed.

The red-faced woman shook her fleshy fist at Richard and his men, leading an angry chant. “Murderers! Murderers! Murderers!”

On his way past her, gritting his teeth as he screamed with the fury of the attack begun, Richard took a powerful swing, lopping off the woman’s head and upraised arm. Strings of blood and gore splashed across the faces behind her even as some still chanted their empty words. The head and loose arm tumbled through the crowd. A man made the mistake of reaching for Richard’s weapon, and took the full weight of a charging thrust.

Men behind Richard hit the line of evil’s guardians with unrestrained violence. People armed only with their hatred for moral clarity fell bloodied, terribly injured, and dead. The line of people collapsed before the merciless charge. Some of the people, screaming their contempt, used their fists to attack Richard’s men. They were met with swift and deadly steel.

At the realization that their defense of the Imperial Order’s brutality would actually result in consequences to themselves, the crowd began scattering in fright, screaming curses back at Richard and his men.

Richard’s army did not pause as they tore through the ring of protectors, now on the run, but continued on to the maze of buildings among grassy open spaces dotted with trees. The soldiers who were outside began to realize that this time they would have to protect themselves, that the people of the city could no longer do it for them. These were men used to slaughtering defenseless, docile victims. For more than a year of occupation they had not had to fight.

Richard was the first on them, taking down men on his way into their midst. Cara charged in at his right, Tom at his left, the deadly point of a spear driving into soldiers only now pulling free their weapons. These were men used to overwhelming their cowering opponents with sheer numbers, not with fighting resolute opposition. They did so now, and for their lives.

Richard moved through them as if they were statues. They thrust a blade at where he had been, while he cut where they were going and met them there with razor-sharp steel. He came up behind others as they looked both ways, losing track of him, only to have him reach around and draw his sword across their throats. Others he beheaded before they realized he was about to strike.

He wasted no effort with exaggerated movements and wild slashes. He cut with deadly proficiency. He didn’t try to best men to show them he was better; he simply killed them. He didn’t give them any chance to fight back; he cut them down before they could.

Now that he was committed to the fight, he was committed to the dance with death, which meant one thing: cut. It was his duty, his purpose, his hunger to cut the enemy down quickly, resolutely, and utterly.

They were not prepared for this level of violence unleashed.

As his men fell on the soldiers, a great cry rose up. As men fell, their screams filled the morning.

Seeing a man who looked like an officer, Richard wheeled around him and laid his blade across the man’s throat.

“Where is Nicholas and the Mother Confessor?”

The man answered by trying to grab Richard’s arm. He wasn’t nearly quick enough. Richard pulled his sword across the man’s throat, nearly severing his head, as he spun to a man coming at him from behind. The man skidded to a stop in an effort to avoid Richard’s blade, only to be stabbed through the heart.

The battle raged on, moving back between the buildings as they took down those men who met the attack. Yet more men, layered in leather, mail, hides, and weapon belts, came out of the barracks at hearing the clash. They were fierce-looking men looking better suited to murder than any men Richard had ever seen.

As they came onward, Richard seized anyone who looked like an officer.

None of them were able to give him an answer. None of them knew the whereabouts of either Nicholas or Kahlan.

Richard had to fight off the dizziness as well as the soldiers. By focusing on the dance with death and the precepts the sword had taught him in the past, he was able to surmount the effects of the poison. He knew that such efforts couldn’t long replace the required strength of endurance, but for the moment he was able to do as he had to.

It was somewhat surprising to see how well his men were doing. They helped one another as they moved deeper into the enemy lines. By fighting in that way, using one another’s strengths, they were often able to survive together where one alone would not have.

Some of his men had not survived; Richard saw several lying dead. But the surprised enemy was being slaughtered. The Imperial Order soldiers were not charged with righteous, resolute determination. Richard’s men were. The Order soldiers were little more than a gang of thugs allowed to run loose.

They now faced men calling them to account. The men of the Order fought a disorderly attempt to spare their own individual lives, without thought to a coordinated defense, while Richard’s men fought to a singular purpose of exterminating the enemy’s entire force.

Richard heard Cara calling urgently for him from the narrow space between two buildings. At first, he thought she was in trouble, but when he rounded the corner he saw then that she had a husky man on his knees. She held his head up by a fistful of his greasy black hair. One ear displayed a row of silver rings. Cara had her Agiel at his throat. Blood ran down his chin.

“Tell him!” she yelled at the man when Richard ran up.

“I don’t know where they are!”

In a fit of fury, Cara slammed the tip of her Agiel to the base of the man’s skull. He flinched, his arms shaking with the shattering shock of pain that brought a gasp rather than a scream. His eyes rolled back in his head.

Holding him by his tangled hair, Cara bent him back over her knee to hold him upright.

“Tell him,” she growled.

“They left,” he mumbled. “Nicholas left last night. They carried a woman away with them, but I don’t know who she was.”

Richard went to a knee and grabbed the man’s shirt. “What did she look like?”

The man’s eyes were still rolling. “Long hair.”

“Where did they go?”

“Don’t know. Gone. In a hurry.”

“What did Nicholas tell you before he left?”

The man’s eyes slowly came into focus. “Nicholas knew you were going to attack at dawn. He told me the route you would take into the city.”

Richard could hardly believe what he was hearing. “How could he possibly know that?”

He hesitated. The sight of Cara’s Agiel made him talk.

“I don’t know. Before he left, Nicolas told me how many men you had, told me when you would attack, and by which route. He told me to get people from the city to shield us from your attack. We gathered our most fanatical supporters and told them that you were coming to murder us, that you wanted to make war.”

“When did Nicholas leave? Where did he take this woman?”

Blood dripped from the man’s chin. “I don’t know. They just left in a hurry last night. That’s all I know.”

“If you knew we were coming, why didn’t you make a better defense?”

“Oh, but we did. Nicholas told me to take care of the city. I assured him that such a small force as yours cannot possibly defeat us.”

Something was terribly wrong. “Why not?”

For the first time, the man smiled. “Because you don’t know how many men we really have. Once I knew where your attack was coming, I was able to call in all my forces.” The man’s smile widened. “Do you hear that horn in the distance? Here they come.” A belly laugh rolled up. “You are about to die.”

Richard gritted his teeth. “You first.”

With a mighty thrust, he ran his sword through the officer’s heart. The man’s eyes widened in shock. Richard gave the blade a twist as he withdrew it to be sure the job was done.

“We’d better get the men out of here,” Richard said as he took Cara’s arm and ran for the corner of the buildings.

“Looks like we’re too late,” she said when they came out from behind cover and saw the legions of men pouring in all around them.

How did Nicholas know when and where they were going to attack? There had been no one around—no races, not so much as a mouse had been there when they had made their plans as they moved through the countryside. How could he have known?

“Dear spirits,” Cara said. “I didn’t think they had this many men in Bandakar.”

The roar of the soldiers was deafening as they charged in. Richard was already spent. Each deep breath he pulled was agonizingly painful. He knew that there was no choice.

He had to find a way to get to Kahlan. He had to hold out at least that long.

Richard whistled in a signal to gather his men. As Anson and Owen ran up, Richard looked around and saw most of the others.

“We have to try to break out of here. There’s too many of them. Stay together. We’re going to try to punch through. If we make it, scatter and try to make it back to the forest.”

With Cara at one side, Tom at the other, Richard charged at the head of his men toward the enemy lines. Thousands of the Imperial Order soldiers poured out from the city around them and into the open. It was a frightening sight. There were so many that it almost seemed as if the ground itself were moving.

Before Richard reached the soldiers, the morning suddenly lit with blinding blasts of fire. Thunderous eruptions of flame tore through the enemy lines, killing men by the hundreds. Sod, trees, and men were hurled into the air. Men, their clothes, hair, and flesh burning, tumbled across the ground.

Richard heard a howl coming from behind. It sounded somehow familiar.

He turned just in time to see a roiling ball of liquid yellow flame wailing through the air toward them. It expanded as it came, tumbling with seething, deadly intensity.

Wizard’s fire.

The incandescent, white-hot inferno roared by just overhead. Once past Richard and his men, it descended, crashing down among the enemy soldiers, spilling a flood of liquid death out among them. Wizard’s fire stuck to what it touched, burning with ferocious intensity. A single droplet of it would burn down through a man’s leg to the bone. It was horrifyingly deadly. It was said to be so excruciatingly painful that those who lived longed only for death.

The question was, who was it coming from?

To the other side, men of the Order fell as something scythed through their ranks. It almost looked as if a single blade cut them down by the hundreds, ripping them apart with bloody ferocity. But who was doing it?

There was no time to stand around and wonder. Richard and his men had to turn to meet the soldiers who made it through the devastating conjuring.

Now that their numbers had been so thinned, the Imperial Order soldiers were unable to mount an effective attack. Their charge fell apart on the blades of Richard’s men.

As they fought, more deadly fire came in to catch those trying to run, or those who massed to attack. In other places, Order soldiers fell without Richard or his men touching them. They gasped in great agony, clutching their chests, and fell dead.

Before long, the morning fell silent but for the groans of the wounded.

Richard’s men rallied around him, unsure of what had happened, worried that whatever had befallen these men might suddenly turn and befall them as well.

Richard realized that they didn’t see the attack of wizard’s fire and magic in the same way as he did; to them it must seem a miracle of salvation.

Richard spotted two people beside one of the buildings off to the side of the grounds. One was taller than the other. He squinted, trying to make them out, but he just couldn’t see who they were. With a hand on Tom’s shoulder for support, they headed toward the two figures.

“Richard, my boy,” Nathan said when Richard made it over to him. “So good to find you well.”

Ann, a squat woman in a plain gray dress, smiled that knowing smile of hers, so filled with joy, satisfaction, and at the same time a kind of knowing tolerance.

“I doubt you two could imagine how glad I am to see you,” Richard said, still catching his breath, trying not to breathe too deeply. “But what are you doing here? How in the world did you find me?”

Nathan leaned in with a sly smile. “Prophecy, my boy.”

Nathan wore high boots and a ruffled white shirt with a vest and an elegant green velvet cape attached at his right shoulder. The prophet cut quite the figure.

Richard saw then that Nathan was wearing an exquisite sword in a polished scabbard. It seemed to Richard rather odd for a wizard who could command wizard’s fire to carry a sword. It seemed even more odd to see the man abruptly draw the weapon.

Ann suddenly gasped as someone sprang from behind the building and grabbed her. It was one of the people from the city who had gathered to protect the army—a tall, slender, pinched-faced woman with a formidable scowl and a long knife.

“You are murderers!” she cried, her straight hair whipping side to side. “You are filled with hate!”

The ground around Ann and the woman erupted, chunks of dirt and grass flying up into the air. Ann, a sorceress, was apparently trying to fight off her attacker. The woman was unaffected. Against a pristinely ungifted person, magic wasn’t working.

Nathan, not far to the side of Ann, stepped in and without ado ran the tall woman through with his sword. The woman staggered back, his sword through her chest, her face a picture of surprise. She dropped, sliding off the red blade.

Ann, free of her attacker, glanced at the dead woman. She fixed Nathan in a scowl. “Dashing indeed.”

Nathan smiled at her private joke. “I told you, they aren’t touched by magic.”

“Nathan,” Richard said, “I still don’t understand—”

“Come here, my dear,” Nathan said, signaling off behind him.

Jennsen ran out from behind the building. She threw her arms around Richard.

“I’m so glad you’re all right,” she said. “I hope you aren’t angry with me. Nathan showed up in the woods not long after you and the men left. I remembered seeing him before—at the People’s Palace in D’Hara. I knew he was a Rahl, so I told him the trouble we were in. He and Ann wanted to help. We came as fast as we could.”

Jennsen looked expectantly up at Richard. He answered her worry with a hug.

“You did the right thing,” he told her. “You used your head for something the orders didn’t anticipate.”

Now that the heat of battle had ended, Richard was dizzier than ever.

He had to lean on Tom for support.

Nathan put a shoulder under Richard’s other arm. “I hear you’re having trouble with your gift. Maybe I can help.”

“I don’t have time. Nicholas the Slide has Kahlan. I have to find her or—”

“Don’t play a fool when you aren’t,” Nathan said. “It won’t take long to bring your gift into harmony. You need the help of another wizard to get it under control—like the last time I helped you—or you won’t be of any use to anyone. Come on, let’s get you inside one of these places where it’s quiet. Then I can take care of that much of your troubles.”

Richard wanted nothing more than to find Kahlan, but he didn’t know where to look. He felt like falling into the man’s arms and surrendering his destiny to him, to his experience, to his vast knowledge. Richard knew Nathan was right. He felt like crying with relief that help was finally at hand. Who better to help him get his gift back under control than a wizard?

Richard had never even dared to hope to have this opportunity; he had planned on trying to get to Nicci because she was the only one he could think of who might know what to do. This was infinitely better than a sorceress helping him.

A wizard was the only one really meant to help with this kind of trouble with another wizard’s gift.

“Just make it quick,” he told Nathan.

Nathan smiled that Rahl smile of his. “Come on, then. We’ll have your gift back to right in no time at all.”

“Thank you, Nathan,” Richard mumbled as he let the big man help him through a nearby doorway.