Confessor (Sword of Truth 11)

All the men laughed—even the soldiers.

Bruce, suddenly looking a little less sure of himself as his gaze darted around at his chuckling teammates, cleared his throat.

“I guess, now that you put it that way, I can see some of what you mean. I guess I’d like to have some of your power drawings, too.” He thumped his chest with a fist. “I want the other teams to fear me.”

Richard nodded. “They will, if you all do as I say. Keep in mind that before this first game the men on the other teams will probably see this red paint on all our faces and think it’s foolish. You have to be prepared for that. When you hear them laughing at you, let that laughter make you angry. Let it fill your hearts with the desire to jam that laughter right back down their throats.

“In that very first moment when we step onto the field, the other team, as well as many of those watching, will probably not just laugh, but call us names. Let them. We want that. Let them underestimate us. When they do that, when they laugh at you or call you names, I want you to save up the anger you’re feeling. Fill your hearts with it.”

Richard met the eyes of each man in turn. “Keep in mind that we are here to be victorious in the tournaments. We are here to win the chance to play the emperor’s team. We alone are worthy of that chance. Those men who are laughing at you are the worthless dregs of Ja’La players. We must sweep them aside so that we can get at the emperor’s team. The men in the first games are in our way. They are in our way and they are laughing at us.

“When you step onto the field of play let their laughter ring in your ears. Soak it in, but keep silent. Let them see no emotion from you. Hold it inside until the right moment.

“Let them think us fools. Let them be distracted by believing that we will be easy marks, rather than focusing on how to play us. Let them lower their guard.

“Then, the instant the game begins, in a focused, coordinated manner unleash your rage against those who laughed at you. We have to hit them with our full force. We have to crush them. We have to make this game as important as if it were the emperor’s team we were playing.

“We can’t simply win this first game by a point or two as is usually the way it goes. That’s not good enough. We can’t be satisfied with that kind of piddling victory. We must be unyielding. We must overwhelm them. We must hammer them into the ground.

“We must beat them by at least ten points.”

The men’s jaws dropped. Eyebrows went up. Such lopsided victories happened only in children’s mismatched games. A Ja’La team on this level winning by more than four or five points was virtually unheard of.

“Every member of the losing team gets a lash of the whip for each point they lose by,” Richard said. “I want that bloody whipping to be on every tongue of every other team in this camp.

“From that moment on, no one will laugh. Instead, each team who has to face us will worry. When men worry, they make mistakes. Every time they make one of those mistakes we will be ready to pounce. We will make their worry warranted. We will bring their worst fears to life. We will prove every sleepless moment of cold sweat to have been justified.

“The second team we beat by twelve points.

“And then, the next team will be even more fearful of us.”

Richard waved his red finger in the direction of the soldiers on the team. “You know the effectiveness of such tactics. You crushed any city that stood against you so that those yet to be conquered trembled in fear as they waited for you to come. Those people knew your reputation and they greatly feared your arrival. Their fear allowed you to more easily conquer them.”

The soldiers grinned. They could now put Richard’s plan in a frame of reference that they understood.

“We want to make all the other teams afraid of the team with the red, painted faces.” Richard fisted his free hand. “Then, we will crush each of them in turn.”

In the sudden silence, the men all made fists to match his and thumped them to their chests in oaths that they would make it so. These men all wanted to win, each for his own reason.

None of those reasons was anything like Richard’s reason.

He hoped not to ever have to play the emperor’s team—he hoped to get his chance long before then—but he had to be prepared to go that far, if necessary. He knew that a good chance might not come along before then. Should it not, he had to insure that they reached the final game of the tournament, when he was more confident of getting the chance he would need.

Richard finally turned back to Johnrock and in short order completed the drawing with a few emblems that symbolized massive weight behind an attack, drawing them down each of Johnrock’s heavily muscled arms.

“Do me next, will you, Ruben?” one of the men asked.

“Then me,” another called out.

“One at a time,” Richard said. “Now, as I’m working, we need to go over our strategy. I want each man to go into this game knowing exactly what to do. We all have to know the plan so that we can all follow it. We all have to know the signals. I want for us to be ready to rush the opponent from the first instant. I want to knock the wind out of them while they’re still laughing.”

Each man in turn sat on the overturned bucket and let Richard paint his face. Richard approached each man as if the drawing was a matter of life and death. In a way it was.

The men had all been pulled in by Richard’s sober lecture. A solemn mood settled over them as they sat silently watching their point man draw what only Richard knew were some of the most deadly concepts he knew how to create. Even if they didn’t understand the language behind those symbols, they understood the meaning behind what Richard was doing. They could see that each man looked fearsome.

As each man was completed, Richard realized that it was like looking at a nearly complete collection of the designs that made up the dance with death, with elements of the boxes of Orden thrown in for good measure.

The only symbols he’d left out were the ones he was saving for himself, the elements of the dance that invoked the most deadly of cuts—the ones that cut into the enemy’s very soul.

One of the soldiers on his team offered Richard a polished piece of metal so that he could see himself as he began to apply the elements of the dance with death. He dunked his finger in the red paint, thinking of it as blood.

The men all watched in rapt attention. This was their leader in battle, the one they followed in Ja’La dh Jin. This was his new face and they were all serious about learning it.

As a final element, Richard added the lightning bolts of the Con Dar, the symbols representing a power Kahlan had invoked when the two of them had been trying to stop Darken Rahl from opening the boxes of Orden and she thought that Richard had been killed. It was a power meant for vengeance.

Thinking about Kahlan, her memory lost, her identity taken from her, being at the mercy of Jagang and the evil beliefs of the Order, as well as picturing her in his mind with that lurid bruise on her face, made his blood boil with rage.

Con Dar meant “Blood Rage.”

CHAPTER 10