Chainfire (28 page)

Nicci crushed the message in her fist. “Let’s go.”

Ishaq replaced his hat and scrambled to catch up with her as she marched toward the wagon. “You don’t seriously intend to do as this brute demands, do you?”

Nicci put a foot on the iron step and climbed up onto the wagon’s wooden seat. “Let’s go, Ishaq.”

He muttered to himself as he climbed into the wagon beside her. He threw off the brake and flicked the reins, yelling for people to get out of the way as he swung the wagon around. Dirt and dust spiraled up off the wheels as he turned the wagon around in the road. He cracked his whip above the horses’ flanks, crying out to urge them away. The wagon slid around and finally straightened as the horses threw their weight against the hames.

Nicci held on to the side rail with one hand as the wagon lurched ahead, letting her other hand, with the message crumpled in her fist, rest in the
lap of her red dress. She watched without seeing as they raced through the streets of Altur’Rang, past buildings and storefronts, other wagons, horses, and people on foot. Low sunlight flickered through rows of trees to the left as they raced north along the wide boulevard. At vegetable, cheese, bread, and butcher stands under awnings, some drab and some striped, a press of people were buying up all the food they could before the impending storm.

The road narrowed as it passed into ancient sections of the city, becoming clogged with wagons, horses, and people. Without slowing much at all, Ishaq swung his two big draft horses off the main road and took shortcuts through alleyways behind tightly packed rows of buildings where entire families lived in a single room. Laundry stretched on lines that crisscrossed small yards and in a number of places, strung between opposing second-story apartments, stretched across the alleyway over their heads. Nearly each tiny plot in the back of the crowded buildings was used for growing food or keeping chickens. Wings flapped and feathers flew as the birds panicked at the sight of the wagon thundering past their yard.

Ishaq deftly handled the team as it raced at a frightening speed, guiding them around obstacles of shacks, fences, walls, and random trees. He called out warnings as he charged across busy roads. Startled people drew back, letting him pass.

The wagon turned up a street Nicci remembered all too well, following beside a short wall that eventually curved it along the entrance road to the warehouse doors of Ishaq’s transport company. The wagon bounced into the rutted yard outside the building and came to a crooked halt in the shade of huge oaks rising above the wall.

Nicci climbed down as she saw one of the double doors opening. Apparently having heard the noise Victor emerged from the building, glowering like he intended to murder the next person he could get his hands on.

“Have you seen the message?” He demanded.

“Yes, I have. Where’s the horse I asked for?”

He pointed a thumb back over his shoulder toward the open door. “Well, what are we going to do now? The attack will probably come at dawn. We can’t allow those soldiers to take you back with them to the army. We can’t let them leave and report that we won’t do as Kronos demands. What are we going to tell them?”

Nicci tilted her head toward the building. “Ishaq, would you go get the horse, please?”

He made a sour face. “You ought to marry Richard. You make a good pair. You are both crazy.”

Startled, Nicci could only stare at the man.

She finally found her voice. “Ishaq, please, we don’t have a lot of time. We don’t want those fellows to go back empty-handed.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” he mocked, “allow me to get your royal mount for you.”

“I’ve never seen Ishaq act like that,” she said to Victor as she watched the man stalking toward the door, muttering curses under his breath.

“He thinks you’re crazy. So do I.” Victor planted his fists on his hips. “Has that ruse back at the stables with the spy gone bad? Or is this what you planned all along?”

In no mood to discuss it with the man, Nicci returned the glare in kind. “My plan,” she said through gritted teeth, “is to get this over with as soon as possible and to keep the people of Altur’Rang from being slaughtered.”

“What’s that got to do with turning you over to Brother Kronos as a gift?”

“If we allow them to attack at dawn, they will have the advantage. We need them to attack today.”

“Today!” Victor glanced west, toward the low sun. “But it will be dark soon.”

“Exactly,” she said as she leaned in the back of the wagon and retrieved a length of rope.

Victor stared off at the heart of the city as he thought about it. “Well, all things considered, I guess it would be better not to face them in the day, on their terms. If we could somehow get them to attack today, they would soon run out of daylight. That would work to our advantage.”

“I will bring them to you,” she said. “You just be ready.”

The creases across Victor’s forehead deepened. “I don’t know how you’re going to get them to attack today, but we’ll be ready if they do.”

Ishaq came out of the warehouse leading a white stallion covered with mottled black spots. The mane, tail, and legs below the hocks were black. The horse looked not only elegant, but had a tough demeanor about him, as if it would have boundless endurance. Still, it wasn’t what she had been expecting.

“He doesn’t look all that big,” she said to Ishaq.

Ishaq gave the horse an affectionate rub on its white face. “You did not say big, you said that you wanted a steady horse that would not spook easily, one that had a fearless spirit.”

Nicci took another look at the horse. “I just assumed that such a horse would be big.”

“She’s a crazy woman,” Ishaq muttered to Victor.

“She’s going to be a dead crazy woman,” Victor said.

Nicci handed Victor the rope. “This will be easier if you stand on the wall, after I’m mounted.”

She stroked the horse under his jaw and then his silky ears. The animal nickered his appreciation and nudged his head against her. Nicci held his head and trickled a thin thread of her Han into the creature, giving him a bit of calming introduction. She ran a hand over his shoulder and then along the side of his belly as she inspected him.

Without comment, Victor climbed up the wall and waited until she boosted herself up and was seated in the saddle. Nicci arranged the skirts of her red dress and then unbuttoned it to the waist. She pulled her arms out of the sleeves one at a time, holding the front of the dress against her chest and then holding it up with her elbows as she lifted her hands toward Victor, her wrists pressed together.

Victor’s face went as red as her dress. “Now what are you doing?”

“These men are experienced Imperial Order troops. Some will be officers. I spent a lot of time in the Order’s camp. I was widely known—to some as the Slave Queen, and to others as Death’s Mistress. It’s possible that certain of these men may have served in Jagang’s army during that time and so they very well may recognize me, especially if I were to wear a black dress. Just in case, I’m wearing a red dress.

“I also need to give these men something to stare at to keep them off guard and hopefully from recognizing me. It will disrupt the usual calculating judgment of soldiers such as these. It will also get Kronos’s attention and make him think that the ‘mayor’ is desperate to appease him. Nothing rouses the blood lust in these kind of men more than weakness.”

“It’s going to get you in trouble before you even get to Kronos.”

“I’m a sorceress. I can take care of myself.”

“Seems to me that Richard is a wizard and carries a sword charged with
ancient magic and even he got into trouble when he was greatly outnumbered. He was overpowered and nearly killed.”

Nicci again lifted her hands out toward Victor, wrists together.

“Tie them.”

Victor glared at her a moment before finally giving in. With a growl he set about binding her wrists. Ishaq held the reins just under the horse’s bit as he waited.

“Is this horse fast?” she asked as she watched Victor wrapping rope around her wrists.

“Sa’din is fast,” Ishaq told her.

“Sa’din? Doesn’t that mean ‘the wind’ in the old tongue?”

Ishaq nodded. “You know the old tongue?”

“A little,” she said. “Today, Sa’din will need to be as swift as the wind. Now listen to me, both of you. I don’t intend on getting myself killed.”

“Few people do,” Victor griped.

“You don’t understand; this will be my best chance to get near Kronos. Once the attack begins it would be difficult not only to find him, but, even if we did know where he was, it would be next to impossible to get close to him. He would be dealing death against the innocent in ways you cannot even imagine, spreading fear, panic, and death. That makes him valuable to them. In battle their soldiers will be looking for anyone trying to take out their wizard. I have to do it now. I intend to end it tonight.”

Victor and Ishaq shared a look.

“I want everyone to be ready,” she said. “When I come back I expect there will be some very angry people behind me.”

Victor looked up after yanking the knot tight. “How many angry people?”

“I intend to have their entire force right on my heels.”

Ishaq gently rubbed Sa’din’s face. “What are they going to be angry about? If I may ask.”

“Besides trying to take out their wizard, I intend to give the hornets’ nest a good stiff whack.”

Victor sighed irritably. “We’ll be ready for them when they attack, but once you go in there I’m not so sure you will be able to get away.”

Nicci wasn’t either. She remembered a time when she went about her plans not caring if she lived or died carrying them out. Now she cared.

“If I don’t come back, then you will just have to do your best. Hope
fully, even if they kill me, I will be able to take Kronos out with me. Either way, we’ve laid a lot of surprises for them.”

“Does Richard know what you had planned?” Ishaq asked as he squinted up at her.

“I expect he knew. He had the good grace, though, not to make me feel any more afraid by arguing with me about what I know I must do. This is not a game. We are all fighting for our very lives. If we fail, then innocent, decent people are going to be slaughtered in numbers that stagger the imagination. I’ve been on the other end of attacks like this. I know what’s coming. I’m trying to prevent it. If you don’t want to help, then just stay out of my way.”

Nicci looked at each man in turn. Chagrined, they both kept silent.

Victor went back to his work and quickly finished up with binding her wrists. He pulled a knife from his boot and sliced off the excess length of rope.

“Who do you want to take you to the soldiers who are waiting?” Ishaq asked.

“I think you’d better take me, Ishaq. While Victor alerts everyone and sees to the preparations, you will be a representative of the mayor.”

“All right,” he said as he scratched the hollow of his cheek.

“Good,” she said as she picked up the reins.

Before she could say anything else, Victor cleared his throat. “There is one other matter I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. But we’ve both been busy…”

Victor uncharacteristically looked away from her.

“What is is?” she asked him.

“Well, ordinarily I wouldn’t say anything, but I think maybe you ought to know.”

“Know what?”

“People are beginning to question Richard.”

Nicci frowned. “Question him? What do you mean? Question him in what way?”

“Word has gotten around about why he left. People are worried that he is abandoning them and their cause to chase phantoms. They question if they should be following such a man. There is talk that he’s…that he’s, you know, deranged or something. What should I tell them?”

Nicci took a deep breath as she collected her thoughts. This was what she had feared. This was one of the reasons she had thought it important that he not leave—especially the way he did, right before the attack.

“Remind them,” she said as she leaned toward him, “that Lord Rahl is a wizard, and a wizard can see things—such as hidden, distant threats—that they cannot. A wizard does not go around explaining his actions to people.

“The Lord Rahl has many responsibilities other than just this one place. If the people here wish to live free, to live their own lives as they wish, then they must choose to do so for their own sake. They must trust that Richard, as the Lord Rahl and as a wizard, is off doing what is best for our cause.”

“And do you believe that?” the blacksmith asked.

“No. But there is a difference. I can follow the ideals he has shown me while at the same time working to bring Richard back to his senses. The two are not incompatible. But the people must trust in their leader. If they think he is a madman they may fall back on fear and give up. Right now we can’t afford that risk.

“Whether Richard is sane or not it doesn’t change the validity of the cause. The truth is the truth—Richard or no Richard.

“Those troops coming to murder us are real. If they win, then those who are not killed will be enslaved once more under the yoke of the Imperial Order. If Richard is alive, dead, sane, or mad, it does not change that fact.”

Victor, his arms folded, nodded.

Nicci moved her leg back and pressed her heel into Sa’din’s side, moving his rump closer to the wall. She turned the back of her shoulders to the blacksmith standing on that wall beside her. “Pull my dress down to my waist, and be quick about it—the sun will be setting soon.”

Ishaq turned away, shaking his head.

Victor hesitated a moment, then sighed in resignation and did as she had instructed.

“All right, Ishaq, let’s go. Lead the way.” She looked back over her shoulder at Victor. “I will bring you the enemy, chasing the setting sun.”

“What should I tell the men?” Victor asked.

Nicci shrouded herself in the cold exterior she had used so often throughout her life, the cold calm of Death’s Mistress.

“Tell them to think dark and violent thoughts.”

For the first time, Victor’s glower twisted into a grim smile.

The soldiers atop huge warhorses peered down at Nicci as Ishaq led her horse to a stop beside the community well in the small square at the eastern edge of the city. Her stallion, Sa’din, felt small in the presence of such huge beasts. Armored plate down the front of their heads lent them a threatening appearance. These were cavalry horses and the armor helped protect them from arrows as they charged enemy lines. They pawed the ground and snorted their disdain for the smaller horse come among them. Sa’din backed a step, just out of range of one of the warhorse’s teeth when it snapped, but he didn’t shy away.

If the horses looked to be frightening animals, the men were clearly their masters. Dressed in dark leather armor plates and shirts of chain mail and carrying an array of sinister weapons, these men were not merely brutish-looking but larger than any of the men defending the city. Nicci knew that they would have been selected for the mission because of the way they looked. The Order liked sending such intimidating messages to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies.

From dark windows, recessed doorways, narrow streets, and the shadows in alleyways people who had retreated out of the open watched the woman stripped to her waist, her wrists bound, being handed over to the soldiers. Nicci had endured the ride through the city by not thinking about it and instead focusing on her need to get this over with so she could catch up with Richard. That was what mattered. So people looked at her—what difference did it make? She had had to endure far worse at the hands of the men of the Order.

“I am an aide to the mayor,” Ishaq said in a subservient tone to the powerfully built man atop a towering, brown, bull neck gelding. The butt of the pole with the white flag rested on the man’s saddle between his legs, his meaty fist gripping it halfway up the length of the stout shaft. The man sat mute, waiting. Ishaq licked his lips as he bowed before going on. “He sent me in his place with his woman, his wife…as
a gift to the great Kronos to show our sincerity in agreeing with his wishes.”

The soldier, a midlevel officer of some sort, smirked at Nicci after taking a long and deliberate look at her breasts. Broad leather belts held several knives, a flail, a short sword, and a crescent-bladed axe. The mail and metal rings along studded straps crossing his broad chest jangled when his horse stomped its hooves. She was relieved not to recognize the man and kept her head turned down to hide her face from the men with him.

Still, the officer said nothing.

With one hand Ishaq swept his hat off his head. “Please relay our message of peace to—”

The officer tossed the pole with the white flag down to Ishaq. Ishaq swiftly replaced his hat in order to catch the pole with one hand, his other still tightly gripping the reins just below Sa’din’s bit. The pole looked heavy, but Ishaq had been loading wagons for most of his life and had no trouble with it.

“Kronos will let you know if the offering is satisfactory,” the officer growled.

Ishaq cleared his throat, rather than say anything else, and again bowed politely. The soldiers all snickered at him before taking another knowing look at Nicci’s exposed condition. They obviously greatly enjoyed exerting their dominance over others.

Most of them had metal rings or pointed metal rivets pierced through their noses, ears, and cheeks in an attempt to make them look more fierce. Nicci thought that it simply made them look silly. Several of the dozen men had wild, dark, tattooed designs sweeping across their faces, also intended to intimidate. These were men who had risen to their highest ideal in life: to be savages.

It was somewhat common for many of the women in the cities surrendering to advancing Imperial Order troops to come out stripped to the waist as a petition for leniency. Because it was such a common form of submission, the soldiers were not at all surprised by the manner in which the wife of the mayor was being surrendered. That, of course, was one of the reasons why Nicci had done it. Such bids for mercy and gentle treatment were never honored, but the women who offered themselves in such a manner didn’t know that.

Nicci knew because she had often been with the Order troops when
they took such women captive. Such obliging people imagined that surrender in such a subservient manner would be ingratiating and elicit reasonable treatment. They had no idea that they had willingly given themselves over to incomprehensible horrors. The soldiers’ treatment of women captives was dismissed by the intellectuals of the Order as a trivial matter compared to the greater good the Order was bringing to the nonbelievers.

Nicci sometimes longed for death rather than continue to live with such memories and the knowledge that she had once been a party to such horrors. What she wanted now, though, was to set things right as only she could do. She wanted to participate in wiping the scourge of the Order from existence.

The grim officer who had carried the white flag into Altur’Rang bent down and now took the reins to her horse from Ishaq. He stepped his mount close to her. As he leaned toward her he casually seized her left nipple, twisting it as he spoke intimately to her.

“Brother Kronos tires quickly of a woman, no matter how beautiful she is. I expect it will be no different with you. When he moves on to the next he gives us the one he is finished with. Know that I will be first.”

The men with him chuckled. He flashed her a grin. His dark eyes gleamed with menace. He twisted harder until she gasped in pain and tears stung her eyes. Satisfied with himself and her timid reaction, he released her. Nicci squeezed her eyes shut as she pressed the back of her bound wrists to herself trying to ease the throbbing pain.

When he batted her arms away from her breast, she jumped in surprise, then lowered her gaze in submission. How many times had she seen women do similar things trying to appease such men, praying silently for deliverance as they did so? For those women, deliverance never came. Nicci recalled thinking at the time that the Order’s teachings had to be right, that the Creator really was on their side, for he easily tolerated such behavior from his champions.

Nicci did not bother to pray for deliverance; she intended to create her own.

As the man turned his horse and led her away, Nicci cast one last look over her shoulder at Ishaq, standing with his red hat in both hands, turning the brim around and around in his fingers. His eyes glistened with tears. She hoped that this wasn’t the last time she would ever see him or the others, but she knew that such a possibility was all too real.

The officer kept ahold of the reins, so she rode gripping the horn of the saddle. As they rode east, the company of men closely surrounded her—more to get a good look at her, she thought, than from any worry that she might escape. By the way they swayed easily in their saddles and deftly handled their mounts, these were experienced horsemen who spent the majority of their waking hours in the saddle. They had no fear of her getting away from them.

As they rode east on a dusty road, the men all grinned their silent promises whenever they looked her over. She knew, though, that none of them had enough rank or stature to dare to drag her off her horse for a little sport along the way. Men like Kronos did not appreciate their conquests freshly raped and these men knew it. Besides, they were surely figuring that they would soon enough have their turn at her—and if not her, then their pick once they stormed into Altur’Rang.

Nicci tried to ignore the leering men by concentrating on what she had to do. She knew that such behavior was part of their routine. They could think of nothing more clever than simple innuendo and intimidation, so they used it like a worry stone turned over and over in the fingers. As she rode, her resolve became her refuge.

It would still be a while before the low sun at her back set, but already the cicadas had started in with their endless droning song. They reminded her of Richard and the night he had explained about the creatures that emerged from the ground every seventeen years. It seemed remarkable that the cicadas had come ten times in her life and Nicci had never even realized it. Life under the spell at the Palace of the Prophets had not simply been very long, but had been insulating in ways she had never even realized. While the world went on around her, she had been devoting her time to other worlds. Others, like the Sisters of the Dark who had been Richard’s teachers there, had succumbed to seductive promises from those other worlds. Nicci had, as well, but not because of those promises. She had simply believed that this world held nothing of value to her.

Until, one day, when Richard had shown up.

The air was warm and humid so at least Nicci wasn’t cold as she rode, but the mosquitoes were starting to come out and they were becoming obnoxious. She was glad that her hands weren’t tied behind her back so she could at least keep the biting bugs off her face. The wheat-covered hills they passed through to the east of the city shimmered a greenish gold in the
late light, almost like burnished bronze. She didn’t see any people working in the countryside and the roads remained empty. Everyone had fled before the impending arrival of the army, like animals before a wildfire.

Cresting a hill, Nicci finally saw them, men and horses from the Imperial Order spread out across the broad valley below her like a dark flood. It appeared they hadn’t been there long as it looked like they were only starting to set up camp. Apparently, they wanted to be close to the city so that when they began their attack in the morning they wouldn’t have far to go.

The ground was only just beginning to be churned up by all the men, horses, mules, and wagons. Individual territory had been staked out and small tents erected. Rings of sentries and outposts guarded the sea of men. Every hilltop had lookouts watching all the approaches.

The tents cast long shadows across the trampled wheat. Already a haze of smoke hung over the valley from all the cook fires. Nicci could see that one of the nearby olive groves had been stripped of its valuable fruit trees to be used for firewood. Men cooked for themselves or in small groups—simple things, camp stew, rice and beans, bannock, and fritters. The aroma of the burning wood and cooking mingled uneasily with the smell of all the animals, men, and manure.

Her escort kept a tight formation around her as they trotted into the camp along what was quickly becoming a temporary road among the seething throng. Nicci had expected to see them in a raucous state, drinking and celebrating on the eve of a great battle. They were not. They were going about the business of preparing in earnest for the job ahead; sharpening weapons, working on saddles and other gear, tending to horses. Lances and spears were already sharpened and neatly stacked all over the camp. Blacksmiths at a traveling forge worked with tongs and hammers as helpers feverishly pumped bellows. Farriers shod horses while other men mended leather equipment. Cavalry horses were being fed, cared for, and groomed.

This was not a typical Imperial Order camp where chaos ruled. The army to the north was almost unimaginably vast. Many parts of it were little more than an unruly mob that was periodically unleashed on helpless civilians and allowed to plunder at will. This force, on the other hand, was much smaller, consisting of less than twenty thousand men. This was the camp of a well-honed war machine.

In the main army camp of the Imperial Order, a woman with her breasts exposed as Nicci’s were would already have been dragged from her horse by a rabble and raped. These men were no less lecherous, but they were far better disciplined. These were not just any soldiers sent to do some dirty work; these were experienced, dedicated, handpicked troops sent to vent the emperor’s rage at the insult of his home city rejecting everything for which he stood.

Nicci felt a shiver of dread at again being among such men. These were the cream of the Order’s crop. These were men who gleefully killed all those who opposed them. These were brutes who reveled in violence to further their beliefs. These were the embodiment of the term “bloodthirsty.” These men were the enforcers of the Order’s doctrines.

As Nicci and her escort rode through the camp, the soldiers all ogled her. Every step of the way, hoots, calls, and cheering followed her. Obscene promises were laughingly given as she passed. Nothing was left to the imagination of anyone in earshot. She heard herself described in every lewd term she had ever heard before, and among Jagang’s men she had heard them all. Now they were all directed at her.

She kept her eyes ahead as she rode, thinking of the way Richard treated her and just how much such respect meant.

Near a grove of cottonwood trees along the bank of a creek running through the valley, Nicci spotted lambskin tents that were a little larger than the rest. While by no means elaborate accommodations like the tents of Emperor Jagang’s entourage, these were still luxurious by army standards. The small group of command tents sat atop a hillock that afforded the officers the opportunity to look down on the rest of the camp. Unlike the main army encampment, here there was no ring of guards protecting the elite forces and officers from the common soldiers. Outside the main tent, slabs of meat were being rotated on spits by slaves that always attended the higher ranking officers…or high priests of the Fellowship of Order. For a force such as this, only the most loyal slaves would have been brought along.

As they slowed to a halt, the man who held the reins to Nicci’s horse tilted his head, ordering one of his men to go announce them. The man threw his leg over his horse’s neck and jumped to the ground. With each step, dust lifted from his pants as he strode toward the main tent.

Nicci noticed that all around curious men began wandering closer, com
ing to see the woman being brought as a gift for their leader. She could hear them laughing and wisecracking among themselves as they leered at her. Their eyes were as cold and frightening as any she had ever seen.

What worried her the most, however, was that many of the men held spears or had arrows nocked in their bows. These were not men who took anything casually. Even as they drooled at her they were prepared for any kind of threat her appearance might present.