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If the crowd had gone wild when Richard had scored, they now went berserk. The entire army watching the game was in turmoil.
Richard, though, didn’t look at all moved by the ruling. In fact, he was already down at his end along with his men, as if he had expected it. His men, looking all business, didn’t seem discouraged, either.
As the referee tossed them the broc, they were ready. In Ja’La, play couldn’t be interrupted. Jagang’s team, however, had been celebrating their sudden turn of fortune and weren’t yet formed up to defend their goals. Richard’s team, having little time left, didn’t waste any and charged away immediately.
As they raced up the field they went to their left this time, to the opposite side of the field from where Kahlan stood watching. Again, they formed into the same tight column, the hand of each man resting on the shoulder of the man in front of him. They were running the same play, but reversing it.
The other difference was that this time they kept well away from the sideline—far enough away that anyone, especially the crowd on that side of the field, could see that they were nowhere near the side boundary.
Jagang’s team saw what was coming but hadn’t yet organized a defense to stop the formation bearing down on them. They realized the jeopardy and raced to block the advancing team.
When Richard’s team plowed through the loose net of blockers and reached the same scoring line as the play before, to the rear of the regular scoring zone, the men again scattered to create a pocket to protect their point man. In that instant, clear of defenders, Richard heaved the broc.
It sailed over the outstretched arms of Jagang’s team and thunked into the net for two points.
The crowd erupted in wild cheering.
The horn blew, hardly heard over the thunderous roar.
The game was over. Richard’s team had won the championship—several times over.
Jagang, his face red with rage, took a long step back, reached out, seized Nicci’s upper arm, and then yanked her forward to his side.
He thrust his other arm into the air to halt the proceedings. The referee and his assistants stood frozen, watching Jagang. The cheering faltered and the dismayed crowd slowly fell to silence.
“Their point man stepped over the boundary line!” Jagang roared into the cold night air. “He ran out of bounds!”
When he had run the play before last, since he had been so close, Kahlan had been able to see that he was not over the boundary line. In fact, people standing right along the boundary line had been reaching out, trying to touch him, and he’d been out of reach. This time, even if Richard really had run out of bounds, there was no way Jagang could have seen it all the way across the field.
“The play was dead!” Jagang yelled. “No points scored! Game over! The royal team wins the championship!”
The hillsides of men stared in disbelief.
“Jagang the Just has spoken!” Nicci shouted out to the crowd, mocking Jagang’s decree.
Richard had just forced Jagang the Just to demonstrate to all that under the Order justice was a meaningless slogan. And Nicci had twisted the knife for him.
Jagang backhanded her hard enough to send her sprawling at Kahlan’s feet.
The supporters of the emperor’s team went crazy with jubilation. Men jumped up and down as they shouted and cheered, as if they themselves had actually accomplished something.
The supporters of Richard’s team went crazy with rage.
Kahlan, holding her breath, gripped the knife tightly in her fist, checking the position of her guards as Jillian bent to help the woman bleeding on the ground at their feet.
Supporters of Jagang’s team shouted taunts at men who shouted back that their team were cheats and had lost. Men started shoving one another. Fists started flying. Men everywhere sided with one group or the other as weapons were drawn.
In an instant the entire camp was in riot.
The hillsides of men seemed to break, then suddenly begin to avalanche down toward the Ja’La field. In the frantic melee it seemed the entire army was unexpectedly caught up in pitched battle.
Kahlan wouldn’t have believed it was possible, but Nicci was right.
Richard had just started a war.
CHAPTER 35
Jagang’s royal guard strained, putting their backs into the struggle to hold back the mob to each side. An enraged emperor watched as a fierce battle broke out all around him. He made no move to retreat to safety. If anything, he looked like he wanted nothing more than to join the battle. His guards did their best to keep that battle as far away from him as possible.
Kahlan spotted Richard on the far side of the field. In the torchlight his red paint stood out like a warning that the underworld itself was about to open up and swallow them all. Behind him and the men of his team the entire hillside was in full riot. The drunken rampage, unleashed hatred, and hunger for blood ran unchecked.
Kahlan began to worry that the red paint Richard wore would mark him as a target of all the supporters of the emperor’s team. All those spectators knew very well who he was and what he had just done. He was the object of both adoration and hatred. She feared that what had started as a way to hide him would end up being the thing that made him easy to spot by those who wanted to kill him.
Taking appraisal of her half-dozen special guards in attendance and seeing that at the moment they were more worried about protecting the life of the emperor than watching her, Kahlan quickly squatted down beside Jillian. Strings of blood lay across Nicci’s face. A line of welts from Jagang’s rings ran at an angle up the side of her cheek. She was dazed but seemed to be awakening.
“Nicci,” Kahlan whispered urgently as she gently lifted the woman’s shoulders and head, “are you badly hurt?”
Nicci’s blue eyes blinked, trying to make out Kahlan’s face. “What?”
“Are you hurt bad?” With a finger, Kahlan lifted a few strands of blond hair back from Nicci’s eyes. “Is anything broken?”
Nicci reached up and felt the side of her face. She moved her jaw side to side, testing how it worked.
“I think I’m all right.”
“You need to get up. I don’t think we’re going to be able to stay here for long. Richard started his war.”
Through obvious pain, Nicci smiled. She had never doubted that he would.
Kahlan stood, helping Jillian pull a still unsteady Nicci to her feet. Jillian put her arm around Nicci’s waist, helping steady her. Nicci draped an arm over the girl’s shoulders for support.
Jagang, glancing back at Kahlan, saw her helping Nicci up. He pointed at Kahlan with one hand while with the other seizing the shirt of one of the special guards. He shoved the man in Kahlan’s direction.
“Keep your eye on her,” he growled. “All of you!”
The men, the only ones there who could see her—besides Jagang and Richard—abandoned their efforts in helping to hold back the droves of brawling soldiers and scrambled to do the emperor’s bidding.
In the confusion and chaos, Jagang’s regular guards, along with a contingent of his ever-present personal bodyguards, were furiously fending off the churning, yelling, battling throng all around them. Jagang’s guards were all big, muscular men, yet it was all they could do to try to keep the regular soldiers pushed back. Inch by inch, though, th
ey were beginning to lose ground.
Those regular soldiers weren’t really interested in battling with Jagang’s guards, or with the emperor for that matter—they were fully occupied with fighting one another, lost to the passions of the drunken brawl—but that fight was nonetheless pressing steadily in toward the emperor.
Jagang shouted at his guards, angry that they were being too indulgent with men who clearly weren’t heeding commands. He ordered the guards to gut the men if they didn’t move back. Kahlan didn’t think that Jagang was at all worried about his safety. It was more a matter of indignation at their lack of veneration for their emperor.
The guards didn’t hesitate. Big, experienced men who had been busy pushing soldiers back switched instead to killing those who pressed in toward them. Jagang snatched up a short sword when one of his bodyguards, concerned that it might come to a matter of self-defense, offered it to him. Jagang vented his rage by hacking at men to either side. Over the roar of combat, their screams could hardly be heard.
It wasn’t so much that the nearby soldiers involved in the riot were deliberately disobeying the orders to move back—the reality was they had no real choice in the matter. They were being compressed by the weight of the hillside of men flowing downward. As the entire crowd was completely consumed in battle, the men at the bottom near the Ja’La field were caught in that downward crush and were being helplessly carried into the deadly blades of Jagang’s guards.
Kahlan glanced out at the riot on the Ja’La field. She blinked at what she saw.
Richard had a bow.
He already had an arrow nocked. He had a second arrow held at the ready in his teeth.
Jagang stood in the center of his guards, a bloody short sword gripped tightly in a fist hanging at his side as he shouted commands. He glared with black eyes at the soldiers out beyond, a great many of them belligerently drunk, as they fought and died over who had won Ja’La dh Jin. Jagang pointed with his free hand, yelling orders to his guards, directing individuals into gaps in the effort to keep the mob back.
