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Kahlan hadn’t known what Jagang was doing to her. No matter what he was doing to her, Nicci never screamed. In his bed she always seemed to simply go numb, staring unblinking at nothing in this world as he went about his business. Kahlan understood what Nicci was doing. It was the only defense she had. As she drew inward, her outward indifference was her protection for her sanity. It would do her no good to let herself pay attention to everything that the brute was doing to her. On the other hand, her indifference enraged Jagang, often sending him into fits of violence.
Kahlan wondered if, when he started in on her, she would have the strength Nicci had.
That morning, Kahlan had wondered if the Sisters were going to have to be called yet again to save Nicci, or to heal her at least. When Jagang had emerged from the bedchamber, though, he had Nicci by her hair. He tossed her to the floor in front of him, looking pleased with himself, with her helplessness. Kahlan had been relieved that, while she looked a bit battered and bruised, at least she hadn’t appeared grievously injured.
Out on the field Richard’s team gathered, preparing for the next play. Kahlan glanced around as legions of men still cheered their satisfaction at the man’s death. Others, though, yelled in anger, shaking fists at the emperor’s team. The air fairly crackled with tension. As the game quickly went back into action, the crowd began to settle down, at least to a degree.
Kahlan could sense, though, that the mood of the onlookers had changed. What had been universal approval of the match at hand finally getting under way had turned restless and was even in some ways beginning to look malcontent. It had started to change when Jagang had intervened over the last point Richard had scored. Jagang had overruled the referees, saying the goal had been made after the horn blew. The referees had acquiesced and voided the point, but everyone knew that the broc had clearly gone in before the horn.
None of that mattered, though. The emperor had made the call.
The red team seemed determined to play on as if they hadn’t just lost their biggest man. Out on the field they muscled their way through a line of blockers. Richard deftly sidestepped several attempts to snare him. A number of other men, though, were closing in.
Richard abruptly halted on the safe square, a place that was rarely used, preventing the man who had been about to tackle him from doing so. It was the man who had broken the wing man’s neck.
Kahlan couldn’t imagine what Richard was up to. Being on that square prevented him from being attacked as long as he remained there, but it also trapped him on an island that was swiftly being surrounded by opponents. While temporarily safe, he couldn’t score from that spot. He would eventually have to move, but with every passing moment the territory all around him was becoming ever more unhealthy.
As the man turned to check on his teammates, who were quickly closing in, Richard shouted something to get his attention. The man turned back.
Richard, holding the broc pressed back against his chest, with his hands on either side of it, suddenly released it in an explosive throw. The heavy broc smashed squarely into the man’s face so hard that it rebounded back into Richard’s hands.
The blow had been powerful enough to partially cave in the man’s face. With his nose completely driven back into his skull, the man went limp and dropped straight down in a heap.
The crowd gasped at the unexpected turn of events.
In a rage, another man to Richard’s right lunged, even though Richard was on the safe square. The referee didn’t look inclined to step in to call a foul. Richard rolled the broc back under his left arm as he ducked to that side a little. Turning all the while to keep faced to the attack, he swung his right arm. The thick bone of his forearm chopped the man across the throat. The man grabbed for his throat as he stumbled back and collapsed. One leg kicked reflexively as he desperately gasped for air. His windpipe apparently crushed, his face began turning from red to blue.
Without pause, another towering man charged in from the left with a fist raised. Richard twisted toward him, going inside the punch and the opening in the man’s defenses, and used his momentum to help him thrust straight in with lightning speed. The powerful strike focused in the heel of his hand hit the man right over his heart. The blow was enough to stagger him back. The big man clutched his chest, looking dazed and confused, and then, as his eyes began to roll back, he crumpled to the ground.
Without any help, Richard had taken out three men who were all considerably bigger than him. She could easily see why there were so many arrows around the field pointed at him at all times.
Kahlan couldn’t begin to imagine what would happen if Richard ever got his hands on a blade.
Richard wasted no time. He bolted through the opening he had just created and headed for the goals. His men looked to have been prepared for the move. They were already stationed along his route, ready to block the tacklers going after him. Everywhere across the field men crashed together.
Kahlan could see all the faces on the entire hillside across on the other side of the field turn in unison as they watched Richard running toward the opponent’s goals, dodging some men, his blockers knocking others out of his way.
Richard, with no one close enough to bring him down, raced into the scoring zone. In the clear, he heaved the broc into the net, scoring another point. His team was once again ahead.
The crowd was swept up in the frenzy of the fast-paced action. Even Jagang had stepped forward, closer to the edge of the field, to watch, one hand fisted in anxiety at his side. His guards, too, all leaned out to watch as Richard’s team, still with time on their turn, got the broc from the referee and started another charge.
As they made it into their opponent’s territory, Richard cut left, only to be tackled. Kahlan thought that it almost looked deliberate. It reminded her of the way he had fallen in the mud so that no one would recognize him that first time they had gone to see his team.
When Richard hit the ground the broc shot from his arms. This, too, looked to her to be a little less than natural. It struck her that it looked to be part of a scheme. His left wing man, who was racing up the field, just happened to be in the right place at the right time. He dipped and scooped up the broc as it rolled past. In an instant he was in the scoring zone and took the throw. With Richard down, it was a legal play for a wing man to attempt a score.
The broc went in the goal, setting off thunderous cheers.
The wing man threw his arms up in joy at having scored. It was something that wing men rarely had the chance to attempt, and even more rarely accomplished. While Kahlan knew that it was permitted, she’d never actually seen it done before today.
As the horn blew, signaling the end of the timed turn, Richard caught up with his left wing man and, with a proud smile, clapped him on the back. Judging by the way the wing man looked at Richard, Kahlan thought that recognition from Richard had meant just as much to the man as the goal.
The wing man was an Imperial Order soldier, not a captive like some of the other members of Richard’s team. She wondered why Richard would be so amiable with an Order soldier. Every time she started to have hopeful confidence in the man, something would happen that made her caution return.
Since the last game they had attended, when Nicci had seen the man called Ruben and spoken the name Richard, Kahlan knew that Richard was his real name. She hadn’t been able to speak a word with Nicci since then, though, so she couldn’t ask, but she suspected that Richard was really Richard Rahl—Lord Rahl.
She didn’t know if it was true, but it would certainly explain a lot, like why the man fell in the mud that first day, and why he painted his face with wild designs meant to disguise who he was, and why he told people that his name was Ruben.
It just seemed impossible, though—the Lord Rahl himself being a captive of the Imperial Order, playing on a Ja’La team against the emperor’s team.
What really troubled her, though, was that he knew her. He had called out her name that first day he had been in a ca
ge on a wagon in the supply train rolling into camp. She supposed it was possible that the Order had captured him without realizing who they had. The coincidence of it all, though, struck her as pretty far-fetched. She knew, though, there was likely more to it than she realized. Maybe Richard had gotten himself caught, somehow, in order to get close to her. To rescue her.
Now, she told herself, she was just being silly.
Still, she wondered why she kept finding herself at the center of so many things.
She wished she could get a chance to talk with Nicci again so that she could ask if it really was Richard Rahl.
But then, by Nicci’s reaction, by her tears at seeing him, Kahlan didn’t need to ask. Kahlan could see it written on her face.
This was the man Nicci loved.
Out of the corner of her eye, Kahlan kept track of her special guards as they looked between her and the Ja’La field. When the crowd roared, jamming fists in the air with expectant excitement, her guards leaned this way and that to see between the royal guard and out to the field as the emperor’s team took the broc for their turn to try to score. Three of their players, who had just been dragged to the sidelines, had been replaced by substitute players. By the way the three were abandoned off to the side, Kahlan knew that all three had died. Richard had killed three men in a heartbeat without any help.
She didn’t think that was going to be the end of it, either.
The emperor’s team looked to be in a blind rage as they began their charge. Bunched into a gang, they went straight up the middle, determined to mow down anyone who got in their way. Richard’s team parted for them, then from both sides swiftly moved in behind and attacked from the rear, seizing men’s legs. Tackled in that fashion, they fell face-first in the direction they were running, making the impact all the more jarring.
One of the tackles was violent enough to break the ankle of the man on the emperor’s team. He screamed in pain. The point man, hearing the scream, was distracted for a split second. It was just long enough for him to get hit from the side by two men. He was thrown to the ground so viciously that it knocked the wind out of him and rattled his teeth. A brawl broke out over possession of the broc.
