Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

Chapter 8

When her horse whinnied and stamped its hooves, Kahlan slipped her hand farther up the reins, closer to the bit, to hold the nervous animal in place. The horse didn’t like what it smelled any more than Kahlan did. She reached up and gently stroked the underside of the horse’s chin as she waited behind Sisters Ulicia and Cecilia.

Light gusts ruffled the cottonwood leaves overhead, making the glossy leaves shimmer in the midday light. In the shade of those huge cotton-woods, dappled sunlight danced over the grassy hilltop, while overhead a few cottony white clouds dotted the blindingly bright blue sky. When the breeze shifted around and came in from their backs, it brought relief not only from the sweltering heat. Kahlan allowed herself a deeper breath.

She used a finger to wipe sweat and grime from under the metal collar locked around her neck. She wished she could have a bath, or at least jump in a stream or a lake. The summer heat and dusty traveling had conspired to turn her long hair into an itchy, tangled mess. She knew, though, that the Sisters didn’t care how uncomfortable she was and that they wouldn’t be pleased if she were to ask if she could have a chance to wash up, the way they often did. The Sisters didn’t care in the least about Kahlan’s wants, much less her comfort. She was their slave, no more; it mattered not if the collar she wore around her neck chafed and rubbed her skin raw.

As Kahlan waited, her mind wandered to the statue she had given up, the statue she’d had to leave in Lord Richard Rahl’s palace. While she had no memory of her past, she had memorized every line of that figure of a woman with flowing hair and robes. There was something quietly noble about her spirit, about the way the figure stood with her back arched, her hands fisted, and her head thrown back as if in defiance of invisible forces that would subdue her.

Kahlan knew all too well what it felt like to have invisible forces subduing her.

From the quiet hilltop they watched as Sister Armina made her way across the open landscape below. There was no one else in sight. The long grasses looked almost liquid as they waved and bowed in the breeze. Sister Armina finally trotted her bay mare up the hill. She circled her horse around and came to a halt beside the rest of them.

“They’re not there,” she announced.

“How far ahead are they?” Sister Ulicia asked.

Sister Armina lifted an arm to point. “I didn’t go much beyond those hills there. I didn’t want to take a chance on being spotted by any of Jagang’s gifted. As near as I can tell, though, the stragglers and camp followers have only moved on a day or two ago.”

When the breeze at their backs slackened, it allowed the smell to drift up the hill again. Kahlan wrinkled her nose. Sister Ulicia noticed but didn’t comment. The Sisters didn’t seem to be at all bothered by the stench.

Sister Ulicia abruptly turned and stuffed a boot in a stirrup. “Let’s go have a look over the hills beyond,” she said as she swung up into her saddle.

Kahlan mounted up and followed after the other three women as they trotted their horses down the hill. She thought it odd how the Sisters seemed unusually jumpy. They tended to be arrogantly bold in whatever they did, but now they were being cautious.

To the left towered the rugged, blue-gray shapes of lofty mountains. The rock slopes and cliffs were so imposing that there were few places where trees could gain a foothold. Some of the peaks were so high that they had snow atop them despite it being summer. Kahlan and the Sisters had followed those mountains south since finding a place to cross over them after leaving the People’s Palace. In those travels, the Sisters had avoided going near people whenever they could.

Kahlan gave her horse’s reins a little more slack. The hills they rode across were rutted with gullies that made it difficult traveling at times. Kahlan knew that there would probably be roads down out of the hills, but the Sisters didn’t generally like to travel on roads and kept off them whenever possible. As they moved through the tall grass among the scattered trees, they stayed in the concealing shelter of the folds of land between hills.

Before Kahlan could see any of what lay ahead, the unmistakable, gagging stench of death grew so terrible that she could hardly breathe. Cresting a hill, she finally saw the city spread out below. They all paused, gazing down at the empty roads, the burned buildings, and the carcasses of what looked to be horses.

“Let’s be quick,” Sister Ulicia said. “We’ll take the main road on the other side for a ways and get close enough to be sure of where they are and exactly the direction they’re headed.”

They spurred their horses into canters as they rode in silence down out of the hills and into the fringes of the city. The place looked to have been built up around a meandering bend in a river and the crossings of several roads that were probably trade routes. The larger of two timber bridges had been burned. As they crossed a narrow second bridge in single file, Kahlan glanced down at the water. Bloated bodies floating facedown had collected in the reeds. Even before she had seen them, the stench of death had been so heavy in the air that she had lost her interest in going for a swim. She just wanted to be away from the place.

As they rode in among the buildings, Kahlan held a scarf over her nose and mouth. It didn’t help much. She thought she might vomit from the fetid smell of rotting flesh. It seemed peculiar that it was so strong.

She soon discovered why.

They rode past side streets where corpses were piled in the hundreds. A few dogs and mules lay dead among them, the legs of the mules standing out straight and stiff. From the way the bodies were jammed into the narrow side streets, Kahlan thought that the people must have been herded into confined spaces from which escape was impossible and then slaughtered. Most of the dead, animal and human, were ripped open with ghastly wounds. Some of the dead had broken lances jutting from them, while others had been killed by arrows. Most, though, appeared to have been hacked to death. Kahlan noticed one other thing about them: they were all older people.

Many of the buildings in one section of the city were burned down. Only in a few places did wisps of smoke still curl up from some of the thicker piles of rubble. The charred wooden beams looked like the scorched skeletons of monsters. It appeared to be a day or two since the fires had burned themselves out.

Stepping their horses along the narrow cobbled street between two-story buildings looming up to either side of the road, they peered about in silent appraisal of the destruction. The buildings still standing had all been looted. Doors were broken in, or lay in the street nearby. Kahlan didn’t see a single window that hadn’t been broken. Curtains lay draped over a few of the tiny balconies overlooking the street. A few of those balconies held a body. Besides the fragments of wood from doorframes and the broken glass, the streets were littered with trivial items: random articles of clothing; a bloody boot; pieces of broken furniture; broken weapons; broken pieces of wagons. Kahlan saw a doll with yellow yarn for hair lying facedown, its back flattened by a hoofprint. All of the items had the look of having been picked over by a number of hands and, after being judged to be worthless, discarded.

Daring to look into the dark buildings they passed, Kahlan saw the real horrors. They were not merely the bodies of murdered townspeople. There were the bodies of people who looked to have been murdered for sport, or out of a sheer brutality. Unlike the bodies heaped in the side streets, these people were not older. They looked like they might have been people trying to protect their shops or homes. Through one broken shopwindow she saw that a man, wearing the kind of apron used by cobblers, had been nailed to a wall by his wrists. From the center of his chest protruded dozens of arrows, making him look like a grotesque pincushion. His mouth and each eye had been penetrated by an arrow. The man had not only been used for target practice, but as an object of monstrous humor.

In other dark buildings, Kahlan saw women who had all too obviously been raped. A shirtsleeve still on one arm was all that covered one woman on a floor. Her breasts had been mutilated. In another place, a girl, looking not to yet have grown into womanhood, lay sprawled on a table, her dress pushed up past her waist. Her throat had been cut through to her spine. Her legs lay splayed out, a broomstick left shoved in her as a final act of disdain. Kahlan felt numb as she saw one horrifying sight after another, each of such lurid cruelty that she could not imagine the kind of men who could have committed such acts.

By the manner of dress of many of the dead, the men appeared to be simple working people. They were not soldiers. For the crime of trying to protect their homes and businesses they had been butchered.

As Kahlan passed one small building she saw, in a back corner against a brick wall, a pile of small children—mostly babies. It was reminiscent of the way autumn leaves collected in a corner, except these all had once been living people with a life ahead of them. The gore on the brick wall betrayed where their heads had been bashed in. It was apparent that the killers had wanted to dispatch them as efficiently as possible. On the silent ride through the city, Kahlan saw several more places where the very young had been cast into piles after being murdered in a fashion that could only be described as entertainment for the most monstrous of men.

Although there were not very many women among the dead, Kahlan didn’t see one who was fully clothed. The ones she did see were either older or pretty young. Their treatment had been bestial beyond imagining and their deaths slow.

Kahlan swallowed back the lump in her throat as she wiped her eyes.

She wanted to scream. The three Sisters didn’t seem to be particularly moved by the carnage in the city. They watched down the side streets and gazed at the surrounding hills, apparently concerned about any sign of a threat.

Kahlan had never been so happy to leave a place as she was when they finally made their way out of the city and took a road leading southeast.

The road turned out not to be the escape from the outrages of the city that she thought it would be. Along the way the ditches were here and there filled with the bodies of unarmed young men and older boys, probably executed for trying to escape, resisting the idea of slavery, as lessons to the others, or simply for the sport of murder.

Kahlan felt dizzy and hot. She feared she might be sick. The way she swayed in her saddle only made her nausea worse. The stench of death and charred flesh followed them in the bright sunshine as they rode among the hills on the far side of the city. The smell was so pervasive that it felt as if it had saturated her clothes and was even coming out in her sweat.

She doubted that she would ever again sleep without nightmares.

Kahlan didn’t know what the name of the city had been, but it was no more. There hadn’t been a single person left alive. Anything of any value had either been destroyed or looted. From the number of corpses, as vast as they had been, she knew that many of the city’s inhabitants, mostly the women, the ones of the right age, anyway, had been taken as slaves. After seeing what had happened to the women left dead in the city, Kahlan could vividly imagine what would happen to the women taken away.

The broadening plane and the hills to either side for as far as Kahlan could see had been trampled by what had to be well beyond mere hundreds of thousands of men. The grasses had not simply been flattened by countless boots, hooves, and wagon wheels, but had been ground to dust under the weight of unthinkable numbers. The sight put into perspective the magnitude of the masses that had passed through the city, and in a way was more horrifying than the ghastly scenes of death. A force of men this huge bordered on a force of nature itself, like some terrible storm that cut a swath across the face of the land, mercilessly destroying everything in its path.

Later in the day, as they approached the crest of a hill, the Sisters carefully maneuvered into a position that put the sun low at their backs so that anyone ahead would have to stare into the sun to see them. Sister Ulicia slowed and stood in her stirrups, stretching for a careful look, then signaled the rest of them to dismount. They all tied their horses to the carcass of a scraggly old pine split in two by lightning. Sister Ulicia told Kahlan to stay close behind them.

At the edge of the hill, as they crouched silently in the weedy grass, they finally caught their first glimpse of what had come through the fallen city. In the dim distance, spread across the hazy horizon, was what at first appeared to be a muddy, brown sea, but was actually the dark taint of an army of such numbers that it was beyond counting. Carried on the wind, in the quiet, late-day air, Kahlan could just make out the distant, bloodcurdling sounds of howls, women’s screams, and men’s raucous laughter coming from the massive mob.

The sheer weight of such multitudes would have crushed the defenses of any city. Any armed opposition would hardly have been noticed by an army as vast as this one. Men gathered in such numbers could not be halted by anything.

But as much as this army seemed to be a mass, a mob, a thing, she knew that it was wrong to think of it in those terms; this was a group of individuals. These men had not been born monsters. Each had once been a helpless babe cradled in a mother’s arms. Each had once been a child with fears, hopes, and dreams. While an occasional aberrant individual could, because of a sick mind, grow up to be a remorseless killer, this many individuals had not. Each was a killer by conviction to a cause, a killer by choice, all united under a banner of perverse beliefs that gave sanction to their savagery.

These were all individuals who when confronted with the choice had willfully cast away the inherent nobility of life, and chose instead to be servants of death.

Kahlan had been horrified at the butchery she’d seen back in the city, nauseated by the things she had seen. For a time she’d hardly been able to breathe, not just from the stench of death, but from her tearful despair at such mindless brutality, at such monumental and intentional depravity. She felt a sense of sickening dread for those helpless souls yet to face the horde and a crushing loss of any hope that life could ever be worth living, that it could ever be reasoned and secure, much less joyous.

But now, at the sight of the source of the slaughter, the great force of men who had all willingly perpetrated such atrocities, all those desolate feelings melted away. In their place smoldering anger ignited, the kind of inner rage she didn’t think a person very often felt in their life. Remembering the old people who had been hacked apart, the infants dispatched by bashing in their brains, and the savage treatment of the women, Kahlan could think of little else but her burning desire for vengeance for the silent dead.

That sense of rage seethed through her, a rage so terrible that it seemed to forever change something within her. In that moment, she felt a profound affinity with the small statue she’d had to leave in Richard Rahl’s peaceful garden, an understanding of its spirit that she hadn’t had before.

“It’s Jagang, all right,” Sister Cecilia finally said in a bitter voice.

Sister Armina nodded. “And we have to get past him if we’re to get to Caska.”

Sister Ulicia gestured to the wall of mountains to the left. “Their army, with all their horses, wagons, and supplies, can’t cross the narrow passes between those peaks, but we can. As slow as Jagang moves, we can easily get over the passes and then to Caska long before they can travel south to get past the mountains and then move up into D’Hara.”

Sister Cecilia stared off to the horizon. “The D’Haran army doesn’t stand a chance against that.”

“That’s not our problem,” Sister Ulicia said.

“But what about our bond to Richard Rahl?” Sister Armina asked.

“We’re not the ones attacking Richard Rahl,” Sister Ulicia said. “Jagang is the one going after him, seeking to destroy him, not us. We are the ones who will wield the power of Orden and then we will grant Richard Rahl what only we will have the power to grant. That is enough to preserve our bond and protect us from the dream walker. Jagang and his army are not our problem and what they aim to do is not our responsibility.”

Kahlan remembered being at the People’s Palace and wondering what the man was like. Even though she didn’t know him, she feared for him and his people having to face what was coming for them.

“It will be our problem if they get to Caska before us,” Sister Cecilia said. “Besides catching up with Tovi, Caska is the only other central site we can get into for now.”

Sister Ulicia dismissed the notion with a flick of her hand. “They’re a long way from Caska. We can easily cut the distance and outpace them by going over the mountains rather than down, around, and then back up as they will have to do.”

“You don’t think they might quicken their pace?” Sister Armina asked. “After all, Jagang might be eager to finally finish off Lord Rahl and the D’Haran forces.”

Sister Ulicia huffed at the very idea. “Jagang knows the D’Haran army has nowhere else to go—Richard Rahl has no choice now but to stand and fight. The matter is as good as decided. It’s only a matter of time.

“The dream walker is in no hurry, nor could he be—not with an army that huge and unwieldy. And even if they could quicken their pace they have to travel a much greater distance so that still wouldn’t get him to Caska before we can get there. Besides, Jagang’s army is the same now as it has been since they first took over the Old World, decades ago, and as it has been throughout this entire war. They never hurry their pace. They are like the seasons—they move with great force, but very slowly.”

She cast a meaningful look at the other two Sisters. “Besides, they’ve just stripped the city of women. Jagang’s men will be eager to enjoy their new spoils.”

The blood drained from Sister Armina’s face. “Don’t we know the truth of that.”

“Jagang and his men never tire of the use of captive women,” Sister Cecilia said, half to herself.

Sister Armina’s color came back in a red rush. “I’d love to string Jagang up and have my way with him.”

“We’d all enjoy a bit of dealing out lessons to those men,” Sister Ulicia said as she stared off into the distance, “but we have better things to do.” She smirked. “Someday, though . . .”

The three Sisters were silent for a time as they gazed off at the vast horde spread across the horizon.

“Someday,” Sister Cecilia said in a low, rancorous voice, “we will open the boxes of Orden and we will have the power to make that man twist in the wind.”

Sister Ulicia turned and headed back toward the horses. “If we are ever going to open one of the three boxes, then we will first have to get to Tovi and the last box—and to what else is in Caska. Forget about Jagang and his army. This is the last we’ll have to see them—until the day comes when we’ve unleashed the power of Orden and we can have a bit of fun dealing out our own, personal retribution to the dream walker.”