At the small window opening in the outer wall of the fortification he signaled with the high, clear whistle of the common wood pewee—the whistle Cara thought was that of the mythical short
-tailed pine hawk.
“I used a ladder pole,” he explained. “Cara is on her way.”
Kahlan tried to make her way over to him, but her body felt alarmingly unfamiliar to her. She staggered a couple of steps, her legs moving woodenly. She had the urge to get down on her hands and feet to walk. She felt like a stranger inside her own skin. It seemed foreign to have to breathe on her own, to have to look through her own eyes, to have to listen through her own ears. It was a strange, haunting sensation to feel her clothes against her skin.
Richard held out his hand to help steady her. Kahlan thought that as wobbly as she was, she might still be more steady on her feet than Richard.
“We’re going to have to fight our way out,” he said, “but we’ll have some help. I’ll get you the first sword I can.”
Richard blew out the flame of the single candle before a tin reflector on a small shelf.
“Richard, I’m not yet used to being…back inside myself. I don’t think I’m ready to go out there. I can hardly walk.”
“We don’t have a lot of choice. We have to get out. Learn as you go. I’ll help you.”
“You can hardly walk yourself.”
Cara, at the top of a pole ladder Richard had cut, leaned forward and wriggled in through the small window.
Halfway in, Cara gaped in delighted wonder. “Mother Confessor—Lord Rahl did it.”
“You don’t need to sound so surprised,” Richard griped as he helped the Mord-Sith the rest of the way in.
Cara only briefly took note of the dead man sprawled across the floor before Kahlan threw her arms around the woman.
“You can’t imagine how glad I am to see you,” Cara said.
“Well, you can’t imagine how glad I am to see you through my own eyes.”
“If only the trade you made had worked,” Cara added in a whisper.
“We’ll find another way,” Kahlan assured her.
Richard slowly drew the door open a crack and peeked out. He shut the door and turned back.
“It’s clear. Doors to the left and around the balcony are the rooms with the women in them. Stairs to the right are the closest that lead down. Some of the rooms at the bottom are for officers; others are barracks for soldiers.”
Cara nodded. “I’m ready.”
Kahlan looked from one to the other. “Ready for what?”
Richard took her by the elbow. “I need you to help me see.”
“Help you see? Is it progressing that fast?”
“Just listen. We’re going to move along the balcony to the left and open the doors. Do your best to keep the women calm. We’re going to break them out of here.”
Kahlan was a bit confused by everything—it was completely different from the plans she had been hearing along with Nicholas. She knew she would just have to follow Richard and Cara’s lead.
Outside, on the simple wooden balcony, there were no lamps or torches. The moon was down behind the black sprawl of the mountains. Kahlan’s sight when Nicholas had controlled her had been like looking through a greasy pane of wavy glass. The sparkling vault of stars overhead had never looked so beautiful. In that starlight, Kahlan could see simple buildings lined up around the outer wall of the fortification.
Richard and Cara moved along the balcony, opening doors. At each one, Cara quickly ducked inside. Some of the women came out in their nightshirts; some Kahlan could hear inside rushing to get dressed. In some of the rooms, babies cried.
While Cara was in one of the rooms, Richard opened another door. He leaned close to Kahlan and whispered, “Go in and tell the women inside that we’ve come to help them escape. Tell them that their men have come to get them out. But they must be as quiet as possible, or we’ll be caught.”
Kahlan rushed in, as best she could on unsteady legs, and woke the young woman in the bed to the right. She sat up, terrified, but silent. Kahlan reached around and shook the woman in the other bed.
“We’ve come to help you escape. You mustn’t make any noise. Your men are going to help. You have a chance to be free.”
“Free?” the first woman asked.
“Yes. It’s up to you, but I strongly advise you to take the chance, and to hurry.”
The women flew out of their beds and grabbed for clothes.
Richard, Kahlan, and Cara moved farther down the balcony, asking the women who had already come out to help rouse the others. In a matter of a few minutes, hundreds of women were huddled together out on the balcony. There was no problem keeping them quiet; they were all too familiar with the consequences of causing trouble. They didn’t want to do anything to get themselves caught trying to escape. Before long, they had made it all the way around the fortification balcony.
Many of the women had very young babies—ones too young to be taken away. The babies were mostly sound asleep in their mothers’ arms, but some of them started to cry. The mothers desperately tried to rock and cuddle them into silence. Kahlan hoped that it was a common enough sound that it wouldn’t draw the attention of the soldiers.
“Wait here,” Richard whispered to Kahlan. “Keep everyone up here until we get the gate open.”
With Cara right behind him, Richard slipped carefully down the steps and started across the open yard. When one of the babies suddenly began bawling, soldiers came out of a building to see what was going on. They spotted Richard and Kahlan. The soldiers yelled, sounding an alarm.
Kahlan heard the distinctive ring of steel as Richard drew his sword. Men rushed out of some of the doors, heading Richard and Cara off. Being used to dealing with these people, the men rushing toward Richard apparently weren’t greatly concerned about violence. They were wrong, and fell as soon as they got close enough for Richard to strike. Some Richard took down as he ran; others Cara caught as they tried to come in from the side.
The screams of some of the men as they fell woke the whole encampment. Men rushed out of barracks below, pulling on their trousers and shirts, dragging weapon belts behind.
In the faint starlight, Kahlan spotted Richard by the dropgate. He took a mighty swing. Sparks showered across the wall as the sword shattered one of the heavy chains holding up the gate. Richard ran to the other side, to cut the other chain. Two men caught up to him there. In one fluid movement, Richard cut them both down.
As Cara dropped other men who were rushing in at Richard, he swung the sword again. White-hot fragments of steel filled the air along with the ringing sound of metal shattering. The gate groaned and slowly started to fall outward. Richard heaved his weight against it and it picked up speed. With a resounding crash, it came down, raising clouds of dust.
A great cry rose up as men outside, wielding swords, axes, and battle maces, charged in across the broken bridge and into the fortification. The soldiers rushed to meet the invasion and there was a great clash of weapons and men.
Kahlan saw, then, that soldiers were racing up the stairway on the opposite side of the balcony.
“Come on!” Kahlan yelled to the women. “We have to get out now!”
Holding the rail to keep her balance, Kahlan raced down the steps, all the women pouring down behind her, a number carrying screaming babies. Richard ran to meet her at the bottom. He tossed her a short sword with a leather-wound grip. Kahlan caught it by the handle just in time to turn and slash a soldier running up from beneath the balcony.
Owen made his way through the fighting and over to the women. “Come on!” he called to them. “Get to the gate! Run!”
The women, galvanized by his command, started running across the compound. As they reached the fighting, some of the women, instead of running out the gate, took the opportunity to leap on the backs of soldiers fighting Owen and his men. The women bit the men on the backs, beat at their heads, tore at their eyes. The soldiers were not restrained in dealing with the women, and several were brutally killed. It didn’t stop others from joining the fight.
If they would only run for the gate, they could escape, but instead, they were atta
cking the soldiers with their bare hands. They had been held in bondage to these men for a very long time. Kahlan could only imagine what they had gone through and couldn’t say she blamed them. She was still having difficulty moving, making her body do what she wanted it to do, or she would have joined them.
Kahlan turned at a sound only to see a man charging in at her. She recognized his flattened nose. Najari—Nicholas’s right-hand man. He was one of the men who had carried her to the fortification. He wore a wicked grin as he came for her.
She could have used her power on him, but she feared to trust it right then. She instead brought the short sword out from behind her back and slammed it through Najari’s gut. He stood stiffly right in front of her, his eyes wide. She could smell the stink of his breath. Kahlan wrenched the handle of the sword to the side. Mouth opened wide, he panted, fearing to draw a deep breath, fearing to move and cause any more damage. Kahlan gritted her teeth and swept the sword’s handle around in an arc, ripping his insides apart.
She stared into his startled eyes as he slid off her sword. He grunted in pain as he dropped to his knees, holding his wound together as best he could. He never got what Kahlan knew he intended, what Nicholas had promised him. He fell forward onto his face, spilling his insides across the ground at her feet.
Kahlan turned to the attack. Richard was engaged in slashing his way through men trying to surround him as he fought to keep the gate clear. Others, Richard’s men, came at the enemy from behind, cutting into them the way Richard had taught them.
Kahlan saw Owen not far away. He was standing in the open, among the fallen and the fighting, staring across the raging battle to a man just outside one of the doors under the balcony.
The man had a thick black beard, a shaved head, and a ring through one ear and one nostril. His arms were as big as tree limbs. His shoulders were twice as wide as Owen’s.
“Luchan,” Owen said to himself.
Owen started across the open area of the fortification, past men engaged in pitched battle, past those crying out and those falling to blades, past swords and axes sweeping through the air, as if he didn’t even see them. His eyes were locked on the man watching him come.