Faith of the Fallen (Sword of Truth 6)

Cara got to her bare feet. “Mother Confessor, you are still half asleep and having dreams. Go back to sleep.”

Kahlan smiled as she watched Cara leave. The smile faded as she lay back in her bed. In the quiet loneliness, her doubts crept back.

She cupped her breasts. Her nipples throbbed and ached. As she moved on the bed a little, she winced as she only then began to realize how much she hurt, and where.

She couldn’t believe that, even in her sleep, a part of it had been… She felt her face reddening again. She felt an overwhelming sense of shame at what she had done.

No. She had done nothing. She was only sensing something through her link to Nicci. It wasn’t real. She hadn’t really experienced it—Nicci had. But Kahlan suffered the same injuries.

As she had at various times, Kahlan still felt that connection to Nicci through the link, and an aching sort of caring about the woman. What had happened left Kahlan feeling saddened. She felt that Nicci

had so desperately wanted…something.

Kahlan slipped her hand down between her legs. She flinched in pain as she touched herself. She brought her fingers up to the candlelight. They glistened with blood. There was a lot of blood.

Despite the burning pain of being torn inside, the confused embarrassment, and the shadow of shame, she most of all felt a sense of relief.

She knew without doubt: Cara was right, it had not been Richard.

Chapter 52

Ann peered among the stand of birch trees crowded in the deep shadows of cliffs for which the place was named. The dense wood was thick with the trees, their peeling white bark covered with dark blotches making it disorienting and difficult to make sense of anything. To become disoriented, here, and wander into the wrong place, uninvited, was the last mistake you would ever make.

It had been in her youth that she’d last come here, to the Healers of Redcliff. She’d promised herself she would never return. She’d promised the healers as much, too. In the nearly thousand years since, she hoped they had forgotten.

Few people knew of the place, and even fewer ever came here—with good reason.

The term “healers” was an odd and highly misleading designation for such a dangerous lot, yet it wasn’t entirely without merit. The Healers of Redcliff weren’t concerned with human ailments, but with the well-being of things that mattered to them. And very odd things indeed mattered to them. To tell the truth of it, after all this time, she would be surprised to find them still in existence.

As much as she hoped their talents could help, and as desperately as she needed help, she hoped to find that the healers no longer stalked the Redcliff Wood.

“Visitooor…” hissed a teasing voice from the dim shadows in the crags of the cliff off behind the trees.

Ann stood still. Cold sweat dotted her brow. Among the confusion of lines and spots made by the trees, she could not make out what it was she saw move. She didn’t really need to see them. She had heard the voice. There were no others like theirs. She swallowed, and tried to sound composed.

“Yes, I am a visitor. I’m glad to find you well.”

“Only us few left,” the voice said, echoing among the rock walls. “The chiiiimes took most.”

That was what Ann had feared…what she had hoped.

“I’m sorry,” she lied.

“Tried,” the voice said, moving through the trees. “Could not heal the chiiiimes away.”

She wondered if they could still heal at all, and how long they would last.

“Comes sheeee for a healings?” teased a voice from the depths of the jagged clefts to the other side.

“Come to let you look,” she said, letting them know she had terms, too. It would not be all their way.

“Costssss, you know.”

Ann nodded. “Yes, I know.”

She had tried everything else. Nothing had worked. She had no other choice, at least none she could think of. She was no longer sure if it mattered to her what happened, if it mattered if she ever came out of the Redcliff Wood.

She was no longer sure if she had ever done any real good in her entire life.

“Well?” she asked into the shadowy silence.

Something flashed back behind the trees, back in the shade under low rock ledges, as if inviting her further along the path, deeper into the twisting cleft in the mountains. Rubbing her knuckles, which still ached from the burns long healed, she followed the path, and the rustle of brush. Shortly, she came to a small gap in the trees. Back through that gap, she could see the craggy opening of a cave.

Eyes watched from that dark maw.

“Comes sheeee in,” the voice hissed.

In resignation, Ann let out a sigh as she stepped off the trail, and into a place she had never forgotten, despite how much she had tried.

Kahlan’s hair whipped around, lashing at her face. She gathered it in a fist over the front of her armored shoulder as she made her way through the hectic camp. Thunderstorms collided violently with the mountains at the east side of the valley, throwing off lightning, thunder, and intermittent sheets of rain. Sporadic gusts bent the trees, and their leaves shimmered as if trembling in fright before the onslaught.

Usually, the camp was relatively quiet so as not to give any unwanted information to the enemy. Now, the noise of camp breaking up was jarring by contrast. The noise alone was enough to make her pulse race. If only that were all.

As Kahlan hurried through what to the untrained eye would look like mass confusion, Cara, in her red leather, shoved men out of the way to break a clear path for the Mother Confessor. Kahlan knew better than to try to get the Mord-Sith not to do it. At least it caused no harm. Most of the men, when they saw Kahlan in her leather armor with a D’Haran sword at her hip and the hilt of the Sword of Truth sticking up over her shoulder, moved out of her way without Cara’s help.

Horses nearby reared as they were being harnessed to a wagon. Men shouted and cursed as they struggled to get the team under control. The horses bellowed in protest. Other men ran through camp, leaping over fires and gear as they rushed to deliver messages. Men sprang out of the way as wagons sped along, splashing mud and water. A long column of lancers five men wide was already marching off into the threatening gloom. Their supporting archers were scrambling to fall in with them.

The path to the lodge was set with stones so people heading for it would not have to walk in the mud, though one still had to run the gauntlet of mosquitoes. Rain swept in just as Kahlan and Cara made the door. Zedd was there, with Adie, General Meiffert and several of his officers, Verna, and Warren. They were all loosely gathered around the table pulled to the center of the room. Half a dozen maps lay atop one another on the table.

The mood in the room was tense.

“How long ago?” Kahlan asked without any greetings.

“Just now,” General Meiffert said. “They’re taking their time striking camp. They’re not organizing for an attack. They’re simply forming up to move out.”

Kahlan rubbed her fingertips against her brow. “Any word on the direction?”

The general shifted his posture, betraying his frustration. “The scouts say that by all indications they’re going north, but nothing more specific than that, yet.”

“They aren’t coming after us?”

“They could always change course, or send an army over here, but right now, it appears they aren’t interested in coming in here after us.”

“Jagang doesn’t need to come after us,” Warren said. Kahlan thought he looked a little pale. Small wonder. She imagined they were all a little pale. “Jagang has to know we are going to come at him. He’s not going to bother coming in here after us.”

Kahlan couldn’t dispute his logic. “If he goes north, he has to know we’re not going to sit here and wave good-bye.”

The emperor had changed his tactics—again. Kahlan had never seen a commander like him. Most military men had their preferred methods. If they had once won a battle in a certain way, they would suffer a dozen losses with the same tactics, thinking it had to work because it once had. Some were limited by their intellect. Those were easy enough to read; they usually waged an artless campaign, content to throw men into a meat grinder, hoping to clog it with sheer numbers. Some leaders were clever, inventing tactics as they went. Those often thought too much of themselves and ended up on the point of a simple pike. Others slavishly went about using textbook tactics, thinking of war as a kind of game, and that each side should oblige the other by following rules.

Jagang was different. He learned to read his enemy. He held to no favored method. After Kahlan had hit him with quick limited attacks driven into the center of his camp, he learned the tactic and, instead of relying on his overpowering numbers, sent the same kind of attack back at the D’Haran army to good effect. Some men could be driven to making foolish mistakes by shaming them. Jagang didn’t make the same mistake twice. He reined in his pride and changed his tactics again, not obliging K

ahlan with foolhardy counterattacks.

The D’Harans had still managed to carve him up. They had taken out Imperial Order troops in unprecedented numbers. Their own losses, while painful, were remarkably low considering what they had accomplished.

Winter, though, had killed far more of the enemy than anything Kahlan and her men could conceive. The Imperial Order, being from far to the south, was unfamiliar with and ill prepared for winter in the New World. Well over half a million men had frozen to death. Several hundred thousand more had succumbed to fevers and sickness from the harsh life in the field.

The winter alone had cost Jagang nearly three-quarters of a million men. It was almost beyond comprehension.

Kahlan now commanded roughly three hundred thousand troops in the southern reaches of the Midlands. Under ordinary circumstances, that would be a force capable of crushing any enemy.

The men streaming up from the Old World had replaced the enemy losses several times over. Jagang’s army was now well over two and a half million men. It grew by the day.

Jagang had been content to sit tight for the winter. Fighting in such conditions was, for the most part, impossible. He had wisely waited out the weather. When spring had come, he still sat. Apparently, he was smart enough to know that warfare in spring mud was a deadly undertaking. In the muddy season, you could lose your supply wagons if they got strung out. Streams became impassable floods. Losing wagons was a slow death by starvation. Cavalry were next to useless in the mud. Losses to falls in a cavalry charge cost valuable mounts, to say nothing of the men. Soldiers could make an attack, of course, but without supporting services, it was likely to be a bloodbath for no real gain.

Jagang had sat out the spring mud. His minions had used the time to spread the word about “Jagang the Just.” Kahlan was infuriated when she got reports, weeks after the fact, about “envoys of peace” who had shown up in various cities throughout the Midlands, giving speeches about bringing the world together for the good of all mankind. They promised piece and prosperity, if they were welcomed into cities.