Faith of the Fallen (36 page)

He made an effort to go after the lot of them, but Nicci held his wrists down. “Richard, no!”

The people vanished like mice before a hissing cat.

Nicci let Richard’s fists drop. He saw then that she had blood on her mouth.

“What’s the matter with you? Giving money to people who would rather rob you than wait for you to hand it to them willingly? Why would you give money to such vermin?”

“That’s enough. I’ll not stand here and listen to you insult the Creator’s children. Who are you to judge? Who are you, with a full belly, to say what’s right? You have no idea what those poor people have been through, and yet you are quick to judge.”

Richard took a purging breath. He reminded himself yet again of what he had to keep uppermost in his mind. It was not really Nicci he had been protecting.

He pulled a shirtsleeve from the corner of his pack, wet it with water from a waterskin hanging around his waist, and carefully wiped her bloody mouth and chin. She winced as he worked but without protest let him inspect her injury.

“It’s not bad,” he told her. “Just a cut in the corner of your mouth. Hold still, now.”

She stood quietly as he held her head in one hand while he cleaned the blood off the rest of her face with the other.

“Thank you, Richard.” She hesitated. “I was sure one of them was going to cut my throat.”

“Why didn’t you use your Han to protect yourself?”

“Have you forgotten? To do that, I would have to take power from the link keeping Kahlan alive.”

He looked into her blue eyes. “I guess I forgot. In that case, thank you for restraining yourself.”

Nicci said nothing as they walked out of the town of Ripply, carrying everything they owned on their backs. As cold as the day was, it wasn’t long before his brow was dotted with sweat.

Finally he could stand it no longer. “Do you mind telling me what that was all about?”

Her brow twitched. “Those people were needy.”

Richard pinched the bridge of his nose, pausing in an effort to remain civil to her. “And so you gave them all our money?”

“Are you so selfish that you would not share what you have? Are you so selfish that you would ask the hungry to starve, the unclothed to freeze, the sick to die? Does money mean more to you than people’s lives?”

Richard bit the inside of his cheek to check his temper. “And the horses? You virtually gave them away.”

“It was all we could get. Those people were in need. Under the circumstances, it was the best we could do. We acted with the most noble of intentions. It was our duty to not be selfish and to joyfully give these people what they needed.”

There was no road going their way as they walked on into what had not long ago been the wasteland from which no one returned.

“We needed what we had,” he said.

Nicci glanced up into his eyes. “There are things you need to learn, Richard.”

“Is that right.”

“You have been lucky in life. You have had opportunities ordinary people never have. I want you to see how ordinary people must live, how they must struggle just to survive. When you live like them, you will understand why the Order is so necessary, why the Order is the only hope for mankind.

“When we get to where we’re going, we will have nothing. We will be just like all the other miserable people of this wretched world—with little chance to make it on our own. You don’t have any idea what that’s like. I want you to learn how the compassion of the Order helps ordinary people live with the dignity they are entitled to.”

Richard returned his gaze to the empty land stretching out before them. A Sister of the Dark who couldn’t use her power, and a wizard who was forbidden from using his. He guessed they couldn’t get any more ordinary than that.

“I thought it was you who wanted to learn,” he said.

“I am also your teacher. Teachers sometimes learn more than their students.”

Zedd lifted his head when he heard the distant horns. He struggled to regain his senses. He was well past dread, into a world of little more than numb awareness. The horns were those meant to signal the approach of friendly forces. Probably some of the scouting patrols, or perhaps yet more wounded being brought in.

Zedd realized he was slumped on the ground, his legs sprawled out to the side. He saw that he had been sleeping with his head on the burly chest of a cold corpse. In despair, he recalled that he had been trying everything he knew to heal the horribly wounded man. In mournful revulsion, he pushed away from the cold body and sat up.

He rubbed his eyes against the darkness from within, as well as the night. He was beyond aching. Acrid smoke hung thick as fog. The air reeked with the heavy, throat-clenching stink of blood. From various places around him, he could see the drifting haze illuminated around glowing orange fists of firelight. The moans of the wounded lifted from the blood-soaked ground to drift through the frigid night air. In the distance, men cried out in pain. When Zedd wiped a hand across his brow, he realized he wore gloves of crusted blood from those he had been trying to heal. It was an endless task.

Not far away, the ground was littered with shattered tree trunks, blasted asunder by the enemy gifted. Men lay sprawled, torn apart or impaled by huge splintered sections of those trees. It had been two of Jagang’s Sisters who had done it, just before dark, as the D’Haran forces were all collecting into the valley, thinking the battle had ended. Zedd and Warren had ended it by taking those two Sisters down with wizard’s fire.

By the dull ache in his head, Zedd knew he hadn’t been asleep for more than a couple of hours, at most. It had to be the middle of the night. People passing by had let him sleep—or maybe they thought him one of the dead.

The first day had gone as well as could be expected. The battle had dragged on sporadically throughout the first night with relatively minor skirmishes, and then had erupted with full force at dawn of the second day. As night had fallen on the second day, the fighting had finally ended. Looking around, Zedd thought it seemed to be over—at least for the time being.

They had made the valley and succeeded in drawing the Order after them, away from other gateways up into the Midlands, but at a terrible price. They had little choice, if they were to engage the enemy with any chance of success, rather than allow them unhindered access into the Midlands. For the moment, anyway, the Order was stalled. Zedd didn’t know how long that would last.

Unfortunately, the Order had gotten the better of the battle, by far.

Zedd peered about. It was not so much a camp as simply a place where everyone had dropped in exhaustion. Here and there, arrows and spears stuck up from the ground. They had fallen like rain as Zedd had worked throughout the night, the night before, trying to heal wounded soldiers. During the day, in the battles, he had unleashed everything he had. What had started out as skillful, calculated, focused use of his ability had in the end degenerated into the magic equivalent of a brawl.

Zedd staggered to his feet, worried about the distant thunder of horses. Horns closer into camp repeated the warning to hold arrows and spears, that it was friendly forces. It sounded like too many horses for any patrol they had out. In the back of his mind, Zedd tried to recall if he felt the twinge of magic that would tell him the horns were genuine. In the fog of fatigue, he had forgotten to pay attention. That was how people ended up dead, he knew—inattention to such details.

Men were rushing all about, carrying supplies, water, and linen for bandages, or messages and reports. Here and there Zedd saw a Sister working at healing. Other men struggled with repairs to wagons and gear in case they had to depart in a hurry. Some men sat staring at nothing. A few wandered as if in a daze.

It was difficult to see in the poor light, but Zedd was able to see well enough to tell that the ground was littered with the dead, the wounded, or the simply spent. Fires, both the common orange and yellow flames of burning wagons and the unnatural green blazes that were the remnants of magic, were left to burn out on their own. Horses as well as men lay everywhere, still and lifeless, torn open by ghastly wounds. The battlefields changed, but battle didn’t. Now was a time of helpless shock. He remembered from his youth the stench of blood and death mingled with greasy smoke. It was still the same. He remembered in battles past thinking the world had gone mad. It still felt the same.

The rumble of horses was getting closer. He could hear quite a commotion, but he couldn’t tell what sort of ruckus it was. Off to his right, he spotted a stooped woman shuffling toward him. He recognized Adie’s familiar limp. A woman more distant, catching up to Adie from behind, was probably Verna. A little farther off, Zedd saw Captain Meiffert being lectured to by General Leiden. Both men turned to look toward the clatter of hooves.

Zedd squinted into the murk and saw in the distance soldiers scattering before a mass of approaching riders. Men waved their arms, as if in greeting. A few offered weak cheers. Many pointed in Zedd’s direction, funneling the horsemen his way. As First Wizard, he had become a focal point for everyone. The D’Harans, in Richard’s absence, relied on Zedd to be their magic against magic. The Sisters relied on his experience in the nasty art of magic in warfare.

In the wavering glow of fires still burning out of control, Zedd watched the column of horsemen coming relentlessly onward, points of light glinting off row upon row of armor and weapons, shimmering off chain mail and polished boots, as they each in turn passed the burning wagons and barricades. The thundering column slowed for nothing, expecting men to get out of its way. At their fore, long pennons flew atop perfectly upright lances. Standards and flags flapped in the cold night air. The ground thundered with thousands of horses charging over the blood-soaked ground. They rolled onward, like a ghost company riding out of the grave.

Orange and green smoke, lit from behind by the eerie light of fires, curled away to each side as the column of riders charged though the middle of the camp at an easy gallop.

Zedd saw, then, who was leading them.

“Dear spirits…” he whispered aloud.

Sitting tall atop a huge horse at the head of the column was a woman in leather armor with fur billowing out behind her like an angry pennant.

It was Kahlan.

Even at that distance, Zedd could see, sticking up behind her left shoulder, the gleam of light off the silver and gold hilt of the Sword of Truth.

His flesh went cold with tingling dread.

He felt a hand on his arm and turned to see Adie, her completely white eyes transfixed by the sight she beheld through her gift alone. Verna was still weaving her way through the wounded. Captain Meiffert and General Leiden rushed to follow in Verna’s footsteps.

The column stretched out behind Kahlan as far as Zedd could see. They charged onward, collecting cheering men as they came. Zedd waved his arms as they all bore down on him, so that Kahlan would notice him, but it seemed as if she had had her eyes on him the whole time.

The horses skidded to a halt before him, snorting and stamping, tossing their armored heads. Plumes of steam rose from their nostrils when they blew great hot breaths in the icy air. Powerful muscles flexed beneath glossy hides as they pawed the ground. The eager beasts stood at the ready, their tails lashing side to side, slapping their flanks like whips.

Kahlan swept the scene with a careful gaze. Men were rushing up from all directions. Those gathering around stared in wonder. The horsemen were Galeans.

Kahlan had provisionally taken the place of her half sister, Cyrilla, as queen of Galea, until Cyrilla was well again—if that ever happened. Kahlan’s half brother, Harold, was the commander of the Galean army, and didn’t want the crown, feeling himself more fit to serve his land in the soldier’s life. Kahlan had Galean blood in her veins, although, to a Confessor, matters of blood were irrelevant. They were not so irrelevant to Galeans.

Kahlan swung her right leg forward over the horse’s neck and dropped to the ground. Her boots resounded like a hammer strike announcing the Mother Confessor’s arrival. Cara, in her red leather, and similarly cloaked in a fur mantle, likewise jumped down off her horse.

Battle-weary men all around stood in rapt silence. This was not merely the Mother Confessor. This was Lord Rahl’s wife.

For just an instant, as Zedd stared into her green eyes, he thought she might run into his arms and break down in helpless tears. He was wrong.

Kahlan pulled off her gloves. “Report.”

She wore stealth-black light leather armor, a royal Galean sword at her left hip, and a long knife at her right. Her thick fall of hair cascaded boldly over the wolf’s fur mantle topping a black wool cloak. In the Midlands, the length of a woman’s hair denoted rank and social standing. No Midlands woman wore hair as long as Kahlan’s. But it was the hilt of the sword sticking up behind her shoulder that held Zedd’s gaze.

“Kahlan,” he whispered as she stepped closer, “where’s Richard?”

Whatever pain he had seen for that instant was gone. She swept a brief glare Verna’s way, as the young Prelate still hurried toward them between the wounded, then met Zedd’s gaze with eyes like green fire.

“The enemy has him. Report.”

“The enemy? What enemy?”

Again her glare slid to Verna. Its power straightened Verna’s back and slowed her approach.

Kahlan returned her attention to Zedd. Her eyes softened with a vestige of sympathy for the anguish she must have seen on his face. “A Sister of the Dark took him, Zedd.” The respite of warmth in her voice and eyes faded as her countenance returned to the cold, empty mask of a Confessor. “I would like a report, please.”

“Took him? But is he—is he all right? You mean she took him as a prisoner? Do they want ransom? He’s still all right?”

She touched the side of her mouth and Zedd saw then that she had a swollen cut. “He’s all right as far as I know.”

“Well, what’s going on?” Zedd threw up his skinny arms. “What’s this about? What does she intend?”

Verna finally made it up to Zedd’s left side. Captain Meiffert and General Leiden ran up to the other side of Adie, on his right.

“What Sister?” Verna asked, still getting her breath back. “You said a Sister took him. What Sister?”

“Nicci.”

“Nicci…” Captain Meiffert gasped. “Death’s Mistress?”

Kahlan met his gaze. “That’s the one. Now, is someone going to give me a report?”

There was no mistaking the command, or the rage, in her voice. Captain Meiffert lifted an arm to the south.

“Mother Confessor, the Imperial Order forces, all of them, finally moved up from Anderith.” He rubbed his brow as he tried to think. “Yesterday morning, I guess it was.”

“We wanted to pull them up here, into the valley country,” Zedd put in. “Our idea was to get them out of the grassland, where we couldn’t contain them, up into country where we had a better chance to do so.”

“We knew,” Captain Meiffert went on, “that it would be a fatal mistake to let them get by us and stream into the Midlands unopposed. We had to draw them into action to prevent them from unleashing their might against the populace. We had to engage them and bog them down. The only way to do that was to taunt them into following us out of the open, where they had the advantage, into terrain that helped even the odds.”

Kahlan nodded as she scanned the dismal scene. “How many men did we lose?”

“I’d guess maybe fifteen thousand,” Captain Meiffert said. “But that’s just a guess. It may be more.”

“They flanked you, didn’t they.” It didn’t sound like a question.

“That’s right, Mother Confessor.”

“What went wrong?”

The Galean troops behind her formed a grim wall of leather, chain mail, and steel. Officers with incisive eyes watched and listened.

“What didn’t?” Zedd growled.

“Somehow,” the captain explained, “they knew what we planned. Although, I guess it wouldn’t be all that hard to figure out, since anyone would know it was our only chance against their numbers. They were confident they could defeat us, regardless, so they obliged our plan.”

“Like I asked, what went wrong?”

“What went wrong!” General Leiden interrupted heatedly. “We were outnumbered beyond all hope! That’s what went wrong!”

Kahlan settled her cool gaze on the man. He seemed to catch himself and fell to one knee.

“My queen,” he added in formal address before falling silent.

Kahlan’s gaze lost some of its edge as it moved back to Captain Meiffert.

Zedd noticed the captain’s fists tightening as he went on with his report. “Somehow, Mother Confessor, near as we can tell they managed to get a division across the river. We’re pretty sure they didn’t use the open ground to the east—we had preparations should they try that, as we feared they might.”

“So,” Kahlan said, “they reasoned you would think it impossible, so they sent a division across the river—probably a great deal more, willing to bear their losses in the crossing—went north through the mountains, unsuspected, unseen, and undetected, and crossed back to this side of the river. When you got here, they were waiting for you, holding the ground you had planned to hold. With the Order hot on your heels, you had nowhere else to go. The Order intended to crush you between that division holding this defendable ground and their army on your tail.”

“That’s the gist of it,” Captain Meiffert confirmed.

“What happened to the division waiting here?” she asked.

“We wiped them out,” the captain said with a cool rage of his own. “Once we realized what had happened, we knew it was our only chance.”

Kahlan gave him a nod. She knew full well what a mighty effort his simple words conveyed.

“They cut us to pieces from behind as we did so!” General Leiden’s temper was getting frayed around the edges. “We had no chance.”

“Apparently you did,” she answered. “You gained the valley.”

“What of it? We can’t fight a force their size. It was insane to throw men into that meat grinder. What for? We gained this valley, but at a terrible price. We won’t be able to hold a force that huge! They had their way with us from the first until the last. We didn’t stop them, they just got tired of hacking us to pieces for the night!”