Faith of the Fallen (Sword of Truth 6)

Kahlan fell to her knees once more to help General Meiffert free Cara. He had found her amid the snare of rope and folds of canvas. From time to time one of them had to turn to fight off sporadic attackers. Kahlan could see Cara’s red boots sticking out from under the canvas, but they were still.

Tent line was tangled around Cara’s legs. With Kahlan and the general working together, they cut through the mire of rope and were finally able to unroll Cara. She held her head as she moaned. She wasn’t unconscious, but she was groggy and unable to get her bearings. Kahlan found a lump in her hair, at the right side of her head, but it wasn’t bleeding.

Cara tried to sit up. Kahlan pressed her down on her back.

“Stay there. You were hit on the head. I don’t want you to get up just yet.”

Kahlan looked over her shoulder and saw Verna, nearby, singling out Imperial Order troops, each twitch of her hands casting a fiery spell to blast them from their horses, or a focused edge of air as sharp as any blade, yet more swift and sure, to slice them down. Without the gift themselves, or one of the gifted to protect them, the enemy’s simple armor was no defense.

Kahlan caught Verna’s attention and motioned for her help. Seizing the woman’s cloak at her shoulder, Kahlan pulled Verna close to speak into her ear so as to be heard above the noise of battle.

“See how she is, will you? Help her?”

Verna nodded and then huddled at Cara’s side as Kahlan and the general turned to a fresh charge of cavalry. As one man galloped in close, wielding his lance around, General Meiffert dodged the strike and then leaped up onto the side of the horse, catching hold of the saddle’s horn. With a grunt of angry effort, he drove his sword through the rider. The surprised man clawed at the blade in his soft middle. The general yanked his sword free, then grabbed the man by the hair and dragged him out of the saddle. As the dying man fell away, General Meiffert sprang up into the saddle, in his place. Kahlan snatched up the fallen cavalryman’s lance.

The big D’Haran general wheeled the huge horse into the way of charging enemy cavalry, protecting Verna and Cara. Kahlan sheathed her sword and used the lance to good effect against the warhorses. Horses, even well-trained warhorses, didn’t appreciate being stabbed in the chest. Many people considered them just dumb beasts, but horses were smart enough to understand that driving themselves onto a pointed lance was not what they wanted to do, and reacted accordingly.

As horses bucked and reared when Kahlan stabbed them with her lance, many of their riders fell. Some were injured from the fall onto scattered equipment or the frozen ground, but most came under the swarming attack of the D’Harans.

From atop his Imperial Order warhorse, General Meiffert commanded his men to form a defensive line. After directing them into place, he charged off, roaring a string of orders as he went. He didn’t tell his men who to protect, so as not to betray Kahlan to the enemy, but they quickly saw what it was he intended them to do. D’Harans grabbed up the enemy lances, or came running with their own pikes, and soon there was a bristling line of steel-tipped pole weapons presenting a deadly obstacle to any approaching cavalry.

Kahlan called out orders to men on either side, and, as she joined the line, commanded them into position to block an Imperial Order cavalry unit of about two hundred who were trying to make good their escape. The enemy might have been emulating the raids the D’Haran cavalry had made on the Imperial Order’s camp, but Kahlan wasn’t about to allow them to succeed at it. She intended them to fail.

The enemy’s horses balked when they encountered a solid line of advancing pikes brandished by men shouting battle cries. Soldiers coming from behind the Order cavalry rained down arrows. D’Harans dragged trapped riders from their saddles, down into the bloody hand-to-hand fighting on the ground.

“I don’t want one of them escaping camp alive!” she yelled to her men. “No mercy!”

“No mercy!” every D’Haran within earshot called out in answer.

The enemy, so confident and arrogant as they had charged in, relishing the prospect of spilling D’Haran blood, were now nothing more than pathetic men in the ungainly grip of despair as the D’Harans hacked them to death.

Kahlan left the soldiers with the lances and pikes, now that a defensive line had been established and the enemy was trapped, and ran back through the fires and choking smoke to find Verna, Adie, and Cara. She had to dodge wounded soldiers of both armies on the ground. The fallen attackers who still had fight in them snatched at her ankles. She had to stab several who tried to rise up to grab her. Others afoot who suddenly appeared, she had to cut down.

The enemy knew who she was, or at least they were pretty sure. Jagang had seen her, and no doubt had described the Mother Confessor to his men. Kahlan was sure to have a heavy price on her head.

There seemed to be Imperial Order men scattered throughout the camp. She doubted there had been an attack by foot soldiers; they were probably cavalrymen who had lost their mounts. Horses were often easier moving targets to hit with arrows and spears than were men. In the gathering darkness it was hard to make out enemy soldiers. They were able to sneak through the camp undiscovered as they hunted targets of value, such as officers, or maybe even the Mother Confessor.

When the lurking enemy spotted Kahlan making her way through the chaos, they came out from their hiding places to go after her with wild abandon. Others, she came upon and surprised. Remembering not only her father’s training, but Richard’s admonition, Kahlan cut fiercely into the enemy soldiers. She gave them no opening; no chance; no mercy.

Her training under her father had been a good foundation for the esoteric tactical precepts that Richard had taught her when she was recovering from her wounds back in Hartland. Richard’s way had seemed so strange, then; now, it seemed so natural. In much the same way a lighter horse could outmaneuver a big warhorse, her lighter weight became her edge. She didn’t need the weight because she simply didn’t clash with the enemy in the traditional manner, as they expected. She was a hummingbird, floating out of their reach, swooping in between their ponderous moves to efficiently deliver death.

Such moves were not at odds with the manner of fighting that her father had taught, but complemented it in a way that fit her. Richard had trained her not with a sword, but with a willow switch, a mischievous smile, and a dangerous glint in his eyes. Now, Richard’s sword, strapped over the back of her shoulder, was an ever-present reminder of those playful lessons that had been not only unrelenting, but deadly serious.

She finally found Verna, bent over Cara, but didn’t see the general anywhere. Kahlan snatched Verna’s sleeve.

“How is she?”

“She threw up, but that seemed to have helped, once it passed. She will probably be woozy for a while, but I think she’s otherwise all right.”

“She has a thick skull,” Adie said. “It not be cracked, but she should lie still for a time—at least until she recovers her balance.”

Cara’s hands groped as if having trouble finding the ground beneath her. Despite her obvious dizziness, she was cursing the Prelate and trying to sit up. Kahlan, squatting beside Cara, pressed her shoulder to the ground.

“Cara, I’m right here. I’m fine. Lie still for a few minutes.”

“I want at them!”

“Later,” Kahlan said. “Don’t worry, you’ll get your chance.” She saw that the blood was cleaned from Adie’s head. “Adie, how are you? How is your head?”

The old sorceress gestured dismissively. “Bah. I be fine. My head be thicker than Cara’s.”

Soldiers had gathered, forming a protective wall of steel. Verna, Adie, and Kahlan

crouched over Cara, keeping an eye on the surrounding area, but the fighting immediately around them seemed to have ended. Even if pockets of battle remained, with the large number of D’Haran soldiers who had protectively closed ranks, the four women were safe for the time being.

General Meiffert finally returned, charging through the line of D’Haran defenders as they parted for him. He leaped from his enemy warhorse. The horse tossed his head at the indignity of being ridden by the enemy, and ran off. The young D’Haran general crouched down on the opposite side of Cara. Winded, he started talking anyway.

“I’ve been down checking with the front lines. This is a raid, much like what we’ve been doing to them. It looked bigger than it really was. When they spotted the Mother Confessor, they called their men into this area, so the damage was mostly focused in this section.”

“Why didn’t we know?” Kahlan asked. “What went wrong with the alarm?”

“Not sure.” He was shaking his head, still getting his breath. “Zedd thinks that they learned our codes, and that when we blew the alarm, they must have used Subtractive Magic to alter the magic woven into the sound that tells our gifted that it’s a real attack.”

Kahlan let out an angry breath. It was all starting to make sense to her. “That’s why there have been so many false alarms. They were numbing us to them so that when they attacked, we would be unconcerned, falsely believing our own alarms were just another enemy false alarm.”

“I’m guessing you’re right.” He flexed his fist in frustration. He looked down then and noticed Cara scowling up at him. “Cara. Are you all right? I was so—I mean, we thought you might be badly hurt.”

“No,” she said, casting a cool glare at Verna and Kahlan, each of whom used a hand to hold her shoulders down. She casually crossed her ankles. “I just thought you could handle it, so I decided to take a nap.”

General Meiffert gave her a quick smile and then turned a serious face to Kahlan.

“It gets worse. This cavalry attack was a diversion. They hoped it might get you, I’m sure, but it was meant to make us believe it was just a raid.”