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Without an alarm to warn them, they paid the added noise and screaming little attention. Above the noise of their own business, trading, stories, laughter, drinking, gambling, fighting, and whoring, the unheralded battle a short distance away went largely unnoticed. The officers would call them if needed. Without that call to duty, their life was their own, and someone else's troubles were not theirs. They were unprepared when the white death materialized.
The sight of white spirits appearing among them was a paralyzing force. Many a man wailed in fear of the Shahari spirits. Many envisioned that the separation between the world of the living and the world of the dead had evaporated. Or that they had somehow been suddenly cast into the underworld.
Without the ale, both poisoned and unadulterated, it might not be so. As it was, the drink, and their confidence in their numbers and strength, left them vulnerable as they would never be again. But not all were drunk, or dull. Some rose up fiercely.
Kahlan watched it all from atop her dancing warhorse. In a sea of raw, unbridled emotion, she wore her Confessor's face.
These men were neither moral nor ethical; they were animals who lived by no rule but might. They had raped the women at the Palace and had mercilessly butchered the people of Ebinissia, from the aged, down to newborn babes.
A man lunged through the ring of steel around her, grabbing at her saddle for support. He gaped at her, crying a prayer for mercy from the good spirits. She split his skull.
Kahlan wheeled her horse to face Sergent Cullen. "Have we captured the command tents?"
The Sergent signaled, and one of the white, naked men ran off to check as they drove deeper into the camp of the Order. When she spotted the horses, she gave the signal. From behind she heard the sound of galloping hooves, and the sharp rattle of chains: scythes of death, come to reap a crop of the living.
With a sound like a boy running past a picket fence with a stick in hand, the chain scythes being pulled at a full charge reaped a snapping of bone that meshed into a long, clacking roar. The beasts' screams and the dull thuds as they slammed the ground drowned out the sound of galloping hooves and breaking bone.
Even the drunken enemy turned from the white spirits to stare at the ghastly spectacle. It was the last thing they saw. Men stumbled from their tents, to watch without understanding what it was that was occurring before their eyes. Others wandered aimlessly, mugs in hand, as if at a fair, drunkenly looking from one sight to another. There were so many, some had to wait a bit for their turn to die.
Some were not drunk and saw not spirits, but men painted white. They saw an attack, and understood well honed blades coming for them. A pocket of fierce counterattack was surrounded and broken, but not without cost. Kahlan rallied her men and drove her wedge of white steel deeper into the heart of the enemy's camp.
She saw two men on huge draft horses, she couldn't see who they were, having cut down all the horses they could find, take to charging down a line of tents, reaping havoc as well as helpless men. The chain caught something as solid as bedrock. It whipped the horses around into a brutal collision. The riders went down. Men with swords and axes swarmed over them.
A man with sword to hand, and sober, she was alarmed to note, appeared suddenly next to her leg. He looked up with a fierce glare. His sharp eyes made her feel suddenly nothing more than a naked woman sitting on a horse.
He took all of her in. "What the..."
A foot of steel erupted from his breastbone, driving a grunt from his lungs.
"Mother Confessor!" The naked man behind yanked his sword free and pointed with it. "The command tents are over there!"
A movement to the other side caught her attention. With a backhanded swing, she caught the side of a stumbling drunk's neck.
"Let's go! To the command tents! Now!"
Her men abandoned the enemy they were decimating to follow her as she jumped Nick over men and fires and crumpled wagons. As they followed, they didn't stop to slaughter the confused, panicked, and drunken D'Harans everywhere, but cut down those they could if it didn't slow their pace. Where necessary, they engaged the sporadic resistance.
The large command tents were surrounded by her white Galeans. They held a small group of about fifteen men at sword point. Before them lay a neat row of at least thirty bodies lying on their backs in the snow.
Other of her men were throwing battle standards and flags atop a large pile already smoldering and burning in the fire. Empty casks lay scattered in the snow. When their army had come under attack, the commanders had issued no orders. The army of the Imperial Order was without benefit of direction.
Lieutenant Sloan pointed with his sword to the line of bodies. "These officers were already dead. The poison did its work. These others were still alive, although not in the best of health. They were all lying about in their tents. We could hardly get them up. They asked us for rum, if you can believe it. We've held them, like you said."
Kahlan surveyed the faces of the bodies in the snow. She didn't see what she wanted. She looked to the faces of the captured officers. He wasn't there either.
She directed her Confessor's face to a Keltish officer at the end end of the line. "Where's Riggs?"
He glared at her, and then spat. Kahlan lifter her gaze to the man holding him. She drew her finger across her throat. He didn't hesitate. The officer went down in a heap.
She looked to the next officer. "Where's Riggs?"
His eyes darted about. "I don't know!"
Kahlan drew her finger across her throat. As he went down, she looked to the next man, a D'Haran commander.
"Where's Riggs?"
His eyes were wide, but not at the two bleeding bodies beside him. His horror was for her. A spirit before him. He wet his lips.
"He was hurt, by the Mother Confessor. I mean, by you. Before." His voice trembled. "When you were... alive."
"Where is he!"
He winced, shaking his head vigorously. "I don't know, great spirit! He was hurt, his face was cut by the horse. He is being tended to by the surgeons. I don't know where their tents are."
"Who knows where the surgeons tents are?"
Most trembled and shuddered as they shook their heads. Kahlan stepped her horse down the line of officers. She stopped before one she knew.
"General Karsh. I am very pleased to see you again. Where's Riggs!"
"Wouldn't tell you if I knew." He grinned as he leered up from under his eyebrows. "You look better naked than I fancied. Why are you whoring with this lot? We could do you better than these boys."
The man holding him twisted his arm until he cried out. "Show respect for the Mother Confessor, you Keltish pig!"
"Respect! For a whore holding a sword? Never!"
Kahlan leaned toward him. "These 'boys' have you under their blades. Every one is a better man that you, I would say.
"You wanted war, Karsh. You have your wish. You have war, now. A real war, not a slaughter of women and children, but a war led by me—the Mother Confessor. A woman. War without quarter."
She sat up straight in her saddle, letting his eyes linger on her breasts. "I have a message, Karsh. A message for the Keeper. You will be with him presently. Tell him I said to make plenty of room; I'm sending all his disciples home."
Her gaze swept down the line of men holding the officers. She drew her finger across her throat in a quick gesture. The response was just as quick.
As the bodies tumbled forward, she cried out, her hand darting to her neck. A stinging pain jolted her in the exact same place...
It was the pain of Darken Rahl's lips on her neck, the pain she had felt when he had come to them in the spirit house, when he had burned Richard with his hand. When he had kissed her neck and silently promised her unimaginable horrors.
Men rushed forward. "Mother Confessor! What is it!"
She took her hand away. Blood coated her white fingers. She couldn't say how she knew, but she knew without doubt that the blood was drawn by the perfect, snow white tee
th of Darken Rahl.
"Mother Confessor! There's blood on your neck!"
