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Richard saw Nicci slipping effortlessly through the press of people departing. Her flowing blond hair cascaded over the shoulders of a black dress. The dress, cut low with a laced bodice, showed off her shapely form to advantage. But it was her commanding presence that made her stand out like a queen in the throng. Cara, in her red leather, could have been the royal escort.
Richard felt a little uncomfortable at the way they both stared at him as if they hadn’t seen him for a month.
Henden unexpectedly clapped Richard on the back of his shoulder, bringing him out of his thoughts. The man spoke with the pipe clenched in his teeth.
“Safe journey, Lord Rahl. Thank you for everything you’ve done for us. We look forward to your return to the free city of Altur’Rang.”
“Thanks,” Richard said with a smile to the man.
Henden moved in with the flow of the others who were engaged in conversation as they made their way along the aisle and out the door. Richard had been relieved to see that these people understood what their freedom meant, and meant to keep it.
Ishaq, standing near Richard, waved his red hat at Nicci and Cara when he spotted them. “There you are,” he called out. “Are you all right, mistress Cara? Richard told me you were safe, but I’m thankful to see it so with my own eyes.”
Richard followed Ishaq as he rushed to meet the two women, beaming his pleasure at seeing them both.
“We’re fine.” Cara said. “I’m sorry about the damage to your inn.”
Ishaq waved a hand, as if the matter were trivial. “It is nothing. Boards and plaster. Nothing at all. People can’t so easily be fixed.”
“You’re right about that,” Cara said as she met Richard’s gaze.
Richard saw Jamila, standing on the other side of the passageway, scowl at Ishaq’s dismissal of the importance of the damage to the inn, but she didn’t say anything. She held the hand of a little girl as she leaned back against the wall near the big door, watching. By the girls round face, Richard thought that it had to be Jamila’s daughter. The girl beamed an infectious smile at him and he couldn’t help smiling back.
“Ishaq, I said that you should deduct the damage from what you owe me, and I meant it.”
Ishaq replaced his hat. “Why you worry so? I told you, I fix.”
Before Richard could answer, he heard a commotion just outside. Some of the men who had been patrolling the neighborhood came in the door dragging two big men with them. The two men, one with tangled, grimy strands of dark hair and the second with his hair cropped short, were both dressed in brown tunics similar to those worn by many of the people of the city.
Victor leaned closer to Richard and spoke under his breath. “Spies.”
Richard didn’t doubt it. He could see broad belts underneath the tunics that would probably have held weapons. With the Imperial Order soldiers getting close, they would have sent scouts ahead to gauge what they were going to be up against. Now that they were captives, it was possible that they might be prevailed upon to provide valuable information on the nature of the impending attack.
Despite their attempt to dress the part, the two looked out of place among the people of the city. The plain clothes they wore weren’t quite large enough to fit their bulk. Neither was huge, nor were they massively muscular, but they had a well-honed, cool, resourceful demeanor. Both men kept silent, but their eyes were always on the move, surveying everything around them. They looked as dangerous as wolves among sheep.
As the guards pulled the two men into the passageway inside the stable, Richard instinctively lifted his sword a few inches, making sure that it was clear in its scabbard, before letting it drop back.
As one of the guards turned to look at something, the prisoner with the long hair suddenly and savagely kicked the shin of the man holding him from behind. The guard cried out in pain and shock as he crumpled to the ground. The man violently broke the grip of the men holding his arms by twisting and flinging them away. Some of the nearby people were toppled to the ground. Guards pounced on the free man. In the scramble, several crashed to the ground bloodied and another tumbled back over a rail.
In an instant, the subdued mood in the stable changed as the entire place erupted in panic. Women screamed. Children, when their mothers screamed, shrieked. Older children started wailing. Men yelled. The guards cried out orders. Confusion and fear swept through the crowd.
The free enemy spy, a powerful man who knew how to handle adversaries and how to create a break for himself in a relatively confined space where they couldn’t employ the numbers necessary to apply overwhelming force, sprang up with a roar.
He had Jamila’s little girl by the hair.
Somehow, in the scramble, the man had managed to snatch a knife from someone and now had it pressed to the girl’s throat. The child squealed in terror. Jamila dove for the girl, only to be side-kicked in the head. The powerful blow knocked her aside. Another guard on the ground at the other side also received a wicked kick to his head as he tried to use the opportunity to get close.
Richard was already methodically advancing, his attention focused on the threat.
“Everyone back!” the man growled at all the people close in all around him.
He tossed his head to flip his greasy hair back off his face. His eyes darted around at the people trying to back up out of the away. He still panted from the effort of the brief struggle. Sweat ran down his pock-marked face.
“Everyone get back or I’ll slit her throat!”
The girl, a meaty fist holding her aloft by the hair, again shrieked in terror. He held her fast against his stomach. Her feet kicked in the air as she struggled in vain to escape.
“Let him go!” the man ordered the guards holding his partner. “Now! Or she dies!”
Richard was already lost in a rage unleashed. There would be no compromise, no negotiations, no quarter given.
He stood sideways, in a slight crouch, his right side to the man holding the girl, preventing him from seeing his sword. The man kept glancing at the guards to his left who were holding the other man. He wasn’t paying any particular attention to Richard.
The burly man holding the wailing girl didn’t know it, but in Richard’s mind the deed had already been completed. In Richard’s mind the man was already dead.
The fury of the magic from Richard’s sword had been freed before his hand even found the hilt. When it did,
the storm thundered unrestrained up through him, powering his muscles, joining his overwhelming lust to consummate the deadly thought.
In an instant, calm had been swept away by a terrible avalanche of need for action.
In that instant, there was nothing Richard wanted more than the man’s blood. Nothing less would stop him. Conviction burned away all uncertainty. The Sword of Truth was a tool of the Seeker’s intent, and that intent was now simple and clear. Now that Richard’s hand was on the hilt of his sword, nothing else existed but his purpose, and his singular purpose was to bring death raining down on the man before him.
His vision tunneled toward his target. His entire life narrowed down to that singular lethal commitment.
The man with the knife had only to pull it across the tender veil of flesh and the girl would die. But that would take time, brief time to be sure, but time nonetheless because he would first have to decide to do it. At that moment, the man’s life was tied to the life of the girl; if she died, his shield would lose its value. He would have to weigh that choice and decide on killing her before he resolved to it. That decision would take a fleeting glimmer of time.
Richard had already made his decision and had fully charged himself to the task. He now had a sliver of time that gave him an opportunity to alter the nature of the situation, to be the one to control the outcome. He would not let that small slip of time escape him.
But even that no longer mattered to him.
Now, powered by lethal rage, both the sword’s and his own, he wanted the man’s blood. Nothing else would satisfy him, nothing else would stop him, he would accept nothing less.
Richard twisted away from the threat, putting the back of his shoulders to the man with the girl, feigning that he was turning away, that he was backing off as the man had commanded. In so doing, Richard knew that, with so many things pulling for his attention, the man would discount Richard and direct his concern to the more obvious threat of the men to his sides and back.
