Stone of Tears

Chapter 38

The snow-crusted trees loomed all about her in the eerie light. The moon would be down soon, but for the time being it gave the snow a luminescence that made the way easy to see. As she trotted her horse into the open valley, she was almost glad to be free of the pressing trees that could hide anyone intent on ambush. She made no attempt to conceal her approach, and the sentries saw her, but they made no move to stop a lone rider.

Ahead, the army’s camp was alive with fires, men, and noise. As large as a small city, it could be spotted easily and heard from miles away. Confident in their numbers, they feared no attack.

With the hood of her fur mantle pulled up and drawn close around her face, Kahlan walked Nick among the confusion of men, wagons, horses, mules, tents, gear, and roaring fires. She sat tall on her horse, and above the din she could almost hear her heart thumping. The strong aroma of roasting meat and woodsmoke filled the still air. The snow had been trampled and packed flat by tens of thousands of feet, both man and beast, and by wagons of every sort.

Men were gathered around fires, drinking and eating and singing. Pikes were stacked upright in circles, leaning in, with their heads all resting together in bristling cones. Lances were everywhere, sticking up from snowbanks, looking like forests of stripped saplings. Tents sprouted all about without any order to their layout.

Men roamed far and near, stumbling from one fire to another to try the food, to join in song around men with flutes, to gamble at dice, or to share the drink. Sharing the drink seemed to be what occupied most of them.

No one paid any attention to her. They seemed too preoccupied to notice her. She kept her horse at a trot, and passed the ones who did stare up before they had a chance to wonder at, or confirm, what they had seen. The whole place seemed to be in an uproar of activity. Her warhorse didn’t so much as flinch at the pandemonium all about.

From some of the tents in the distance she heard the screams of women, followed by the raucous laughter of men. Despite her attempt to stop it, a shiver ran down her spine.

Kahlan knew that armies like this one were accompanied by prostitutes who rode along in the supply wagons with other camp followers. She also knew that armies like this one took women as part of their plunder, considering them a simple privilege of victory, much as taking a ring from a dead man, and worth little more. Whatever the reasons for the screams, feigned delight or true terror, she knew she could do nothing about it, and so tried not to hear them, turning her attention instead to the men she passed.

At first she saw only D’Haran troops. She knew their leather and mail and armored uniforms all too well. Each of the breastplates bore an ornate, embossed letter R, for the House of Rahl. Soon though, she was able to pick out Keltans among the D’Harans. She saw one group of a dozen men from Westland, each with an arm around the next fellow’s shoulders as they danced in a circle and at the same time drank from mugs. She saw men of other lands, too; a few from Nicobarese, some Sandarians, and to her horror, a handful of Galeans. Maybe, she thought, they were simply D’Harans in the uniforms of men they had killed. Somehow, she didn’t believe that.

Sporadic quarrels were going on throughout the camp. Men argued over a lay of the dice, food, casks, or even bottles of drink. Some of the disputes erupted into fights with fists and knives. She saw one man stabbed in the gut, to the uproarious laughter of onlookers.

At last she spotted what she was looking for: the tents belonging to the commanders. Though they hadn’t bothered to put up their flags, she knew by their size what they were. Outside the largest, a small table had been set up next to a roaring fire with spitted meat over it. Lanterns on poles surrounded the group of men gathered there.

As she approached, a huge man who sat with his feet up on the table was yelling, “. . . and I mean right now, or I’ll have your head! A full one! You bring a full cask or I’ll have your head on a pike!” When the soldier scurried off, the table of men erupted in laughter.

Kahlan brought her huge warhorse right up to the edge of the table. She sat tall and still as she appraised the half-dozen men sitting around the table. Four were D’Haran officers; the one with his boots resting on the table had been the man who had been yelling; one was a Keltish commander in an ornate uniform unbuttoned to reveal a filthy shirt soaked with wine and meat drippings; and one man wore plain, tan robes.

With a large knife, the man with his feet up on the table carved a long strip of meat from a bone. He tossed the bone over his shoulder to a snarling pack of dogs behind him. He tore the strip of meat in half with his teeth and pointed with the knife to his right, to the young man in plain robes, as he added a swig from a mug to the meat already in his mouth. He spoke around it all.

“Wizard Slagle here told me he thought he smelled a Confessor.” He peered up with bloodshot eyes. “And where is your wizard, Confessor? Huh?” Everyone at the table laughed with him. Ale ran down his thick, blond beard. “Bring anything to drink, Confessor? We’re nearly out. No? Well, not to mind.” With the knife, he pointed over to the Keltish commander. “Karsh here tells me there’s a nice city a week or so down the mountains, and they’re bound to have some ale for us thirsty boys, after they welcome us to their town and swear allegiance.”

Kahlan’s eyes slid to the wizard. It was for him she had come. She coolly calculated whether or not she could make the jump from the horse to the wizard and touch him with her power before she was caught by that big knife. The man wielding the knife didn’t look to be able to react too quickly. Still, she judged it to be poor odds. She was willing to give her life to the task, but only if she could be reasonably sure of success.

But it was for him she had come. The wizard was this army’s eyes. He saw things before they could, and things they couldn’t see, like her. And D’Harans feared things magic, and spirits. A wizard was their defense against magic and those spirits.

Her gaze moved from the wizard’s deep-set eyes and drunken, leering smirk to what he was doing with his hands. He was whittling. Before him on the table was a pile of shavings. She remembered the piles of wood shavings in the palace at Ebinissia, outside the girls’ rooms.

The wizard waggled the stick he had whittled. For the first time, she noticed what it was. It was a larger-than-life phallus. His smirk grew.

The man with the knife pointed it to the wizard. “Slagle’s got something for you, Confessor. Been working on it for two hours, since he realized you were coming for a visit.” He made a feeble attempt to hold back his laughter, but it came in fits through his restraint and he finally gave in to it.

Two hours. They had just told her the limits of this wizard’s power. She had left the Galeans four hours ago, but nearly an hour of that had been spent at her task up on the ridges. That meant the Galean boys weren’t yet close enough for the wizard to know of them, but were only concealed from discovery by a dangerously thin margin. Any closer, and the wizard would know of them. Long before they could bring any surprise to bear.

She waited for the D’Haran man’s laughter to sputter out before she spoke. “You have me at a disadvantage.”

“Not yet! But I will!” The men roared and hooted again.

With every beat of her heart, she became more calm. She pushed her hood back. She wore her Confessor’s face. “What is your name, soldier?”

“Soldier!” He lurched forward and stuck the knife in the table. “I’m no soldier. I’m General Riggs. I’m supreme commander of all our troops. All our men, old and new, answer to me.”

“And in whose name are you fighting, General Riggs?”

He swept his hand around. “Why, the Imperial Order is fighting a war on behalf of those who join us. A war against all the oppressors. Against all who fight us. Those who don’t join us are against us, and will be crushed. We fight to bring order.

“Under the Imperial Order, all who join us will find protection, and in turn they will help protect all. All the lands will join with us, or they will be swept aside. It is a new order for which we struggle. The Imperial Order. They command all the lands, and I command them.”

Kahlan frowned, trying to make sense of what she was hearing. “I am the Mother Confessor, and I command the Midlands, not you.”

“Mother Confessor!” He clapped the wizard on the back. “You didn’t tell me she was the Mother Confessor! Well, you don’t look like any mother I’ve seen. But after tonight, you’ll be a mother sure enough. You have my word on that!” He roared with laughter.

“Darken Rahl is dead.” That brought the laughter to an end. “The new Lord Rahl has declared the war ended and called all the D’Haran troops home.”

General Riggs rose to his feet. “Darken Rahl was a man of limited foresight, a man too much concerned with his ancient magic and too little concerned with order. He was too preoccupied with his own quests, his old religions. Magic, until it is eradicated, is a tool of men, not a master of them.

“Darken Rahl failed to use the opportunity he had. We will not fail. Darken Rahl himself, in the underworld, knows this, and repents. He is allied to our struggle, now. The good spirits have declared it! We no longer bow to the house of Rahl, but they, as all houses, districts, and kingdoms, to us. The new Lord Rahl will join us, too, or we’ll crush him and any heathen dogs who follow him. We will crush all the heathen dogs!”

“In other words, General, you fight for no one other than yourself. Your purpose is simply to murder people.”

“I do not fight for myself! This is a larger purpose than one man. We offer all the opportunity to join with us. If they don’t join with us, it’s because they’re aligned with our enemies, and we must kill them!” He threw his hands up. “It’s useless trying to explain such matters of state and canon to a woman. Women have no intellect for rule.”

“Men have no exclusive talent to rule, General.”

“It’s profanity for men to bow down to a woman for protection! Right men concern themselves only with getting under a woman’s skirts, not with hiding behind them! Women rule from their nipples, offering only their sympathetic pap. Men rule from their fist. They make and enforce the law. They provide and protect.

“Every king and patrician will be offered the chance to join with us, to bring his land and his people under our protection. All queens will be offered the chance to ply their wares in a brothel, or perhaps to be the humble wives of an indentured farmer, but either way make a proper use of themselves.”

He swept his mug up from the table and took a few gulps. “Can’t you see, woman? Are you that stupid, even for a woman? What has your Midland’s alliance accomplished under the rule of women?”

“Accomplished? The alliance is to accomplish nothing but to let all the lands live in peace, to leave their neighbors’ lands to their neighbors, and know that their own is safe from covetous hands, and that all will stand to protect each, even the weak and defenseless, so none will stand alone and naked.”

He smiled in triumph as he looked to his comrades. “Truly spoken from the teat!”

He gestured with disgust. “You provide no leadership, no law; each land proscribes and pronounces as they see fit. What in one place is a crime, in another is virtue. Your alliance shies from bringing order to all. You’re nothing but fragmented tribes, each jealously guarding what’s his, with no thought to the union other than fits their own greed, and in so doing lets all be vincible.”

“You are wrong, that is exactly what the Central Council in Aydindril is for, to bring all lands together for the common defense. The common defense against murderers like you. It is not a feeble union, as you seem to think, but one with teeth.”

“A noble ideal. One, in fact, which I share, but one you only give pap to. You bring them together only timidly, not under common canon.” He held his hand out to her, closing it into a fist as he sneered at her. “In so doing, you leave all lands ripe for the squeezing. You are lost souls in search of true leadership and in desperate need of protection.

“As soon as the boundaries fell, you were ravaged by Darken Rahl, and he was only halfhearted about it, seeking only his magic! Had he let the generals run as they would, there wouldn’t be even a shell of this play alliance of yours left.”

“And who is it we all need protection from?”

He stared off, whispering, almost to himself. “From the horde who will come.”

“What horde?”

He looked up, as if he had just awakened. “The horde spoken of in the prophecies.” He frowned at her as if she were hopelessly thick, and then held his hand out to the wizard. “The good wizard here has counseled us on the prophecies. You are one who spent your life with wizards, and you never sought their knowledge?”

“Your eloquent claim to want to join people in peace and law are high-minded words, General Riggs. But your atrocities in Ebinissia put the lie to them. For all time, Ebinissia will bear mute but irrefutable testimony to your true cause. You, and your Imperial Order, are the horde.” Kahlan glowered to the wizard. “What’s your part in this, Wizard Slagle?”

He shrugged. “Why, to assist and facilitate the joining of all people under the rule of common law.”

“Whose law?”

“The law of the victors.” He smiled. “That would be us. The Imperial Order.”

“You have responsibilities as a wizard. Those responsibilities are to serve, not to rule. You will report at once to Aydindril, to take your place in that service, or you will answer to me.”

“You?” he said with a derisive sneer. “You demand that good and decent men whimper and snivel before you, and at the same time you blindly let banelings have a free run of the land.”

“Banelings?” She glowered at Riggs. “I suppose you would be foolish enough to seek council from the Blood of the Fold.”

“They’ve already joined with us,” General Riggs said, offhandedly. “Our cause is theirs, and theirs ours. They know how to expunge those who would serve the Keeper and thus our enemies. We will cleanse the land of all who serve the Keeper. Goodness must triumph.”

“You mean your cause. It is you who would rule.”

“Are you blind, Confessor? I rule here, now, but this is not about me; it’s about the future. I simply fill the post for now, furrow the field so it may produce. It’s not I who is the focus.

“We offer everyone the chance to serve with us, and every man with me has taken that offer. Others have joined our troops in our battle. We are no longer D’Haran troops. They are no longer troops of their homeland. We are all the Imperial Order. Any of right mind can lead us. If I fall in our noble struggle, another will rise up to take my place, until all the lands are joined under united rule, and the Imperial Order can flower.”

Either the man was too drunk to know what he was saying, or he was mad. She glanced about at the dancing, drunken, singing men at campfires all about. Mad as the Bantak. Mad as the Jocopo.

“General Riggs.” He had been muttering angrily under his breath, but stopped and looked up at her. “I am the Mother Confessor. Like it or not, I represent the Midlands. In the name of the Midlands I call upon you to to halt this war immediately and either return to D’Hara, or come to the council with your grievances. You may petition the Central Council with any dispute you have, and it will be heard, but you may not visit war upon my people. You will not like the consequence if you choose not to heed my orders.”

He sneered up at her. “We make no compromises. We’ll annihilate all who don’t join us. We fight to stop the killing, to stop the murdering, as the good spirits have called upon us to do. We fight for peace! Until we win peace, we will have war!”

She frowned. “Who told you this? Who told you that you must fight?”

He blinked at her. “It’s self-evident, you stupid bitch!”

“You cannot possibly be so stupid as to think the good spirits tell you to wage war. The good spirits do not act in such overt ways.”

“Ah, well then, we have a disagreement. That is the purpose of war, is it not? To settle such matters? The good spirits know us to be in the right, else they would easily join against us. Our victory will prove they side with us or we could not win in our struggle. The Creator Himself wishes to see us triumph, and our victory will be proof of that.”

The man was a lunatic. She redirected her attention to the Keltish commander. “Karsh . . .”

“General Karsh.”

“You demean the rank, General. Why did you slaughter the people of Ebinissia?”

“Ebinissia was given the opportunity to join us, as will all be given the opportunity. Ebinissia chose to fight. We had to make an example of her heathen people, to show others what awaits them if they fail to join us in peace. It cost us nearly half our men, but it was a goal worth the cost. Even now, those lost are being replaced by others joining with us, and we will swell in rank to take in all the known lands.”

“This, you call leadership? Extortion and murder?”

General Karsh slammed his mug down on the table. His eyes were fire. “We visit upon them what they visit upon our people! They raid our farms, our border towns. They kill Keltans as if we were bugs to be stepped on!

“Yet we offered them peace. It is they who chose to shun our mercy. They were offered a chance at peace, a chance to join us; they chose war. In that way, they chose to aid us; they’ve made an example for others of the folly of fighting us.”

“And what have you done with Queen Cyrilla? Did you slaughter her, too, or is she back there in your whores’ tents?”

They all laughed. “She would be,” Riggs put in, “if we’d found her.” Kahlan almost sighed aloud with relief.

She looked back to Karsh, who was taking another swig. “What has Prince Fyren to say of this?”

“Fyren’s in Aydindril! I’m here!”

So, perhaps the Crown wasn’t a part of this. Perhaps this was little more than a band of murdering outlaws who fancied themselves as more.

Kahlan knew Prince Fyren, knew him to be a reasonable man. Of the Keltish diplomats assigned to Aydindril, he was the one who had done the most to bring Kelton forward into the alliance of the Midlands through the Central Council. He cajoled and persuaded his mother, the queen, to go the route of peace rather than conflict. Prince Fyren was a gentleman, in every sense of the word.

“Besides being a murderer, General Karsh, you are also a traitor to your own land and Crown. To your own queen.”

He hammered his pewter mug down on the table. “I’m a patriot! A protector of my people!”

She leaned the slightest bit forward. “You’re a treasonous bastard and an outlaw cutthroat without conscience. I leave to Prince Fyren the honor of condemning you to death. It will, of course, be a posthumous sentence.”

Karsh pounded his fist. “The good spirits know of your treachery against the people of the Midlands! This proves their words true! They’ve told us we cannot be free as long as you live! They’ve called upon us to kill all those like you! All those who blaspheme! The good spirits will not abandon us in our struggle. We shall defeat all who do the Keeper’s bidding.”

“No real officer,” she said, contemptuously, “would listen to the babbling of the Blood.”

The wizard had made an angry-looking ball of liquid fire, and was slowly juggling it back and forth between his hands while he watched her. The flames spit and hissed, dropping little sparks. General Riggs belched and then put his knuckles on the table as he leaned toward her.

“Enough talking. Get down here, you little wench, so we can start the party. Us brave freedom fighters need a little fun.”

General Karsh at last smiled . . . “And then tomorrow, or perhaps the next day, you will be beheaded. Our men, our people, will rejoice at your death. They will exult in our triumph over the Mother Confessor, the symbol of oppression by magic.” His smile left as he turned red-faced once more, “The people must see your punishment to know that good can prevail! To have hope! When we have your head, our people can rejoice!”

“Rejoice that all you brave freedom fighters are strong enough to kill a single woman?”

“No,” General Riggs said. He appeared for the first time sober as he looked up at her. “You miss the true meaning of what we do. You fail to see its significance.”

His voice lowered, his tone softened. “It’s a new age we enter, Confessor. An age that has no place for your old religions. The line of Confessors and their wizards is at an end.

“There was a time, three thousand years ago, when nearly everyone was born with the gift. Magic held sway over all things. That magic was used to vie for power. Wizards abused their power. In their greed, they killed one another. They killed others who had the gift, and so fewer lived to pass it on. Over time, those with the gift were culled from the race of men.

“Yet those left still contested for rule, and further thinned the ranks of those born with the gift. The magic, the other creatures of magic who were their charges, such as you, have been steadily stripped of their protection and fount of magic. Today there are almost none born with the gift. Magic itself is dying with them. They have had their chance to rule, just as did Darken Rahl with his magic, and they have failed. Their time, the time of wizards, is past.

“Their protection of the twilight beings is at an end, and so the age of magic is at an end. The time of man is upon us now, and there is no place in that world for the ancient, dying religion you call magic. It is time for man to take his place as inheritor of the world. The Imperial Order is upon the world, now, and if it were not them, it would be man by another name. It is time for man to rule, for magic to die.”

Kahlan felt a sudden hollowness. An unexpected tear ran down her cheek. A choking feeling of true panic clawed at her throat.

“Do you hear that, Slagle?” she whispered hoarsely. “You have magic. The ones you aid would put an end to you, too.”

He tossed the little ball of fire to his other hand, the light of its flames dancing across his grim face. “It is as it must be. Magic, chaste or foul, is the Keeper’s conduit to this world. When I have helped extinguish magic in all its forms, then I, too, must die. In that way, I will serve the people.”

Riggs gazed up to her, almost sorrowfully, as he went on.

“Our people must see the last living embodiment of that religion die. You are its symbol, the last creature of magic created by wizards. With your death, they will be filled with hope for the future, and be emboldened to extinguish all the remaining pockets of filth and perversion that are magic.

“We are the plowshare. Those lands now infested with magic will be freed of its taint, and can be resettled by pious people. Then, at last, we shall all be free of your dogmas, which have no part in the glory of the future of man.”

He straightened, taking a drink from his mug. The harshness returned to his voice. “After we finish with you, then we’ll bring Galea to heel, and the rest of the lands.” He slammed the mug down. “Until complete and total victory is ours, we demand war!”

Rage swelled in her, banishing the momentary sensation of loss and panic, swelled on behalf of all those beings, the twilight beings, who depended upon her for voice and protection.

She nodded slowly as she held the general’s gaze.

“In my capacity as Mother Confessor, the highest rank of authority in the Midlands, to whose mandate all must bow, I grant your wish.” She leaned forward and spoke in a hiss. “Let there be war. On my word and office, not one of you shall be granted quarter.”

Kahlan’s fist came up to the wizard. It was for him she had come.

Her chest heaved with wrath, and with terror at the madness of these men. She let the magic surge within her, demanding release, demanding this wizard’s death.

It was for him she had come. She must not fail. The Blood Rage screamed through her.

She called the lightning forth.

Nothing happened.

She froze for an instant in the panic of the failure of the magic. Then Riggs lunged for her leg.

Kahlan hauled back on the reins. The ferocious warhorse sprang into battle. He bellowed as he reared, kicking his front legs. Kahlan grasped his mane for dear life. A lashing hoof caught Riggs across the face, throwing him back. The thrashing hooves crashed down on the table, shattering it to splinters. Men in chairs toppled backward. Nick’s front hooves crushed the head of one of the D’Haran officers, the leg of another.

The horse spun and kicked at the men. Kahlan gave him her heels, and he leapt into a gallop as the wizard was rising to his feet. Surprised men threw themselves out of the way. She took a quick glance over her shoulder to see the wizard throwing his hands out. A ball of wizard’s fire exploded to life before him, turning in the air, awaiting command. He threw his arms out again, sending the fire on its way toward her.

The warhorse leapt over fires and men, kicking up both snow and flaming firewood. His legs caught tent lines, yanking them down. Kahlan spotted what she wanted, what she wanted more than life itself, and maneuvered the horse for it.

She could hear the wail of the wizard’s fire coming for her. She could hear the screams of men unexpectedly caught up in it. She stole another glance to see the blue and yellow ball of flame tumbling through the tents and men, growing all the time, taking a course as drunken as the wizard. Wizard’s fire had to be guided, and in his state, the wizard was having difficulty controlling what he had wrought. Were he sober, she would be dead by now.

Dear spirits, she prayed, if I’m to die, let me have time enough first to do what I must.

Kahlan reached her goal. As she galloped past, she yanked a lance from a snowbank and wheeled her horse. She dug her heels in, and Nick leapt ahead at a full gallop.

The ball of fire wailed toward her, setting tents and men afire. It grew and tumbled as the distance closed.

The lance was unexpectedly heavy, made for men who had more muscle than she, and she had to carry it upright to save her strength. The warhorse didn’t flinch as he galloped, not at the noise, the confusion, the running men, or the wizard’s fire. She pulled to one side and then the other, Nick’s hooves digging into the packed snow. She dodged obstacles, weaving her way toward the wizard’s fire at full speed. Toward the wizard.

Slagle tried to change the course of the fire, to block her advance, each time she wove in her headlong rush. His reactions were slow, but as the distance closed, she knew he wouldn’t need to be fast to catch her up in it.

At the last instant, she wheeled her horse around to the right. The fire roared by so close she could smell burnt hair, and then she was racing again.

As she charged the horse ahead, the wizard’s fire exploded behind, cascading across the ground like a burst dam. The horrifying death screams of man and beast caught in the conflagration filled the night air. Dozens of men, all afire, rolled through the snow, trying to put out the flames. But wizard’s fire was not so easy to extinguish; it was alive with purpose.

The howls of pain panicked those around who didn’t know what was happening. Men screamed in fear of spirits they thought were setting upon them. Swords were drawn and wielded, hacking at those running for their lives from the fire. Battle erupted out of nothing. The air carried not only the choking stench of burning flesh, but now blood.

She ignored the screams and sought the silence within.

The wizard stumbled backward and fell. He came to his feet whirling his arms. Fire formed in the air at the arc of his fingertips.

Though there was confusion all about, only one thing filled her vision. The wizard.

She couched the lance, tucking the base under her right armpit, jamming her grip tight against the leather stop. Gritting her teeth, she used all her strength to lift the heavy lance over Nick’s bobbing head, to the left side, so as not to unbalance herself in the saddle.

Nick took her direction as if he could read her mind. She steered him at full speed, but it seemed to her that the last ten yards took hours, a race between her charge and the wizard calling forth fire.

Wizard Slagle looked up to direct the fire just as her lance caught him in the chest. The impact shattered the lance to splinters at midlength and nearly tore the wizard in half. She and her horse flew through a spray of blood.

Kahlan swung the half lance at a man lunging for her, catching him across the head. The impact tore the lance from her grip. She wheeled the horse and leaned forward over his withers as she galloped at full speed back through the confusion around the command tents. Her heart pounded as fast as the horse’s hooves.

One of the D’Haran officers from the table was up and screaming for a horse. Men leapt onto horses bareback. As she began putting distance between them, she could hear him yell that if they failed to catch her they would be drawn and quartered to a man. A quick glance showed a good three dozen riders joining the chase.

Away from the command tents, back the way she had come, men didn’t know what was happening, and saw a galloping rider as simply part of the drunken festivities. None moved to stop her. Men, tents, fires, polearms and lances stuck upright in the snow, stacks of pikes, horses, and wagons all flashed by in a blur.

Nick jumped anything he couldn’t dodge. The threat of him not jumping or dodging had men diving for cover. Men at games tumbled out of the way, coin and dice flying into the air. Tents pulled up when Nick’s legs caught their lines, flew up and billowed in a tangle behind, snaring her pursuers. Horses and riders crashed to the ground. Others ran over their own men in their frenzied attempt to keep her in sight.

Kahlan spotted a sword hanging in a scabbard that was fastened to the side of a wagon, and as she ran past, she pulled it free. Galloping past picket lines, she swung the sword, cutting the lead lines. She hacked the rump of one horse as she charged past. He kicked and screamed in fright and pain, panicking the rest of the horses. They bolted headlong in every direction. Lanterns on poles toppled onto tents, setting them afire.

The horses in pursuit balked at the fires, rearing and bucking, throwing their riders to the ground. A man lunged suddenly into her path, avoiding Nick’s flying hooves and grabbing for her. Kahlan drove the sword home through his chest as she flew by. The hilt tore from her hand. She leaned forward and held on as Nick raced through the endless camp. The men chasing weren’t as close, but they were still coming.

Suddenly, she was free of the camp, galloping through the open snow. Kahlan followed her own tracks across the flat by the waning light of the moon. The muscular horse plowed through the snow almost as if it weren’t there.

She reached the trees at last, and before plunging in and ascending the steep slopes, she checked over her shoulder.

A good fifty men were not three minutes behind. She would be able to open the lead as she went up along the forest trail, but they would still catch her.

She would see to that.