Blood of the Fold (Sword of Truth 3)

With cold fury, he realized that the mriswith had finally determined that he was their only threat, and were surrounding him. He could hear Kahlan screaming his name. He could see beady eyes everywhere. There was nothing he could do, and nowhere to run, even if he wanted to. He felt the sting of blades that came too close before he could stop them.

There were too many. Dear spirits, there were just too many.

He didn’t even see any soldiers close anymore. He was surrounded by a wall of scales and flashing three-bladed knives. Only the rage of the magic slowed them. He wished that he had told Kahlan he loved her, instead of yelling at her.

Something brown flashed in his side vision. He heard a howl from a mriswith, but it wasn’t one he killed. He wondered if confusion was what you felt when you died. He was dizzy from spinning, from swinging his sword, from the bone-jarring impacts.

Something huge dropped from above. Then another. Richard tried to wipe mriswith blood out of his eyes in an effort to tell what was happening. All around, mriswith howled.

Richard saw wings. Brown wings. Furry arms were flashing in his vision, twisting off heads. Claws rent scales apart. Fangs ripped into necks.

Richard stumbled back as a huge gar thumped to the ground right in front of him, tumbling the mriswith back.

It was Gratch.

Richard blinked as he glancing around. There were gars everywhere. More were coming, up in the air—that was the spots he had seen.

Gratch heaved a ripped mriswith into the Blood of the Fold, and lunged at another. The gars all around tore into them. More dropped from the darkening sky atop mriswith all along the lines. There were glowing green eyes everywhere. The mriswith shrouded themselves in their capes, becoming invisible, but it did them no good; the gars could still find them. They had nowhere to run.

Richard held the sword in both hands, gawking. Gars roared. Mriswith howled. Richard laughed.

Kahlan’s arms clamped around him from behind. “I love you,” she said in his ear. “I thought I was going to die, and I hadn’t told you.”

He turned and looked into her wet green eyes. “I love you.”

Richard heard shouts over the cries of battle. The green he had seen were men. There were tens of thousands of them, charging into the rear of the Blood of the Fold, pouring in around buildings, crushing the crimson-caped men back. The D’Harans on Richard’s side, free of the mriswith, rallied and tore into the Blood with the deadly competence they were known for.

A huge wedge of the men in green cleaved through the Blood of the fold, coming toward Richard and Kahlan. To each side, dozens of gars set upon mriswith. Gratch flailed into them, ramming them back. Richard climbed up on a fountain to better see what was happening. He took Kahlan’s hand and helped her up beside him. Men surged in to protect him, driving the enemy back.

“They’re Keltans,” Kahlan said. “The men in green uniforms are Keltans.”

At the van of the Keltish charge was a man Richard recognized: General Baldwin. When the general saw them on the fountain, he and a small guard peeled away from his main force of men, shouting orders as he departed, and cut a line through the crimson-caped men, their horses trampling men underfoot like autumn leaves. The general hacked at a few with his sword for good measure. He broke through the battle lines and reined in before Richard and Kahlan standing on the fountain.

General Baldwin sheathed his sword and bowed in his saddle, his heavy serge cape, fastened at one shoulder with two buttons, draped to one side, revealing the green silk lining. He came up and clapped a fist to his tan surcoat.

“Lord Rahl,” he said with reverence.

He bowed again. “My queen,” he said with even more reverence.

Kahlan leaned toward him when he came up, her tone ominous. “Your what?”

Even the man’s shiny pate reddened. He bowed again. “My most… glorious… esteemed queen, and Mother Confessor?”

Richard tugged the back of her shirt before she could speak. “I told the general here how I had decided to name you the Queen of Kelton.”

Her eyes widened. “The queen of…”

“Yes,” General Baldwin said as he glanced about at the battle. “It kept Kelton together, and our surrender unbroken. As soon as Lord Rahl told me of this great honor, that we were to have the Mother Confessor as our queen, just as Galea, showing how he honors us as our neighbors, I brought a force to Aydindril to help protect Lord Rahl and our queen, and to join in the battle against the Imperial Order. I didn’t want either of you to think we aren’t prepared to do our part.”

Kahlan finally blinked and straightened. “Thank you, General. Your help came just in time. I am most appreciative.”

The general pulled off his long black gauntlets and tucked them through his wide belt. He kissed Kahlan’s hand. “If my new queen will excuse me, I must return to my men. We have half our force spread out behind just in case these traitorous bastards try to escape.” He blushed again. “Pardon a soldier’s language, my queen.”

As the general returned to his men, Richard scanned the battle. The gars were searching, looking for more mriswith, and finding only a few. Those didn’t last long.

Gratch looked to have grown another foot since Richard had last seen him, and was now the size of any of the males. He seemed to be directing the search. Richard was dumbfounded, but his joy was tempered by the scale of the carnage before him.

“Queen?” Kahlan said. “You named me Queen of Kelton? The Mother Confessor?”

“It seemed a good idea at the time,” he explained. “It seemed the only way to keep Kelton from turning on us.”

She appraised him with a small smile. “Very good, Lord Rahl.”

As Richard finally sheathed his sword, he saw three spots of red break through the dark leather of D’Haran uniforms. The three Mord-Sith, Agiel in hand, came at a run across the square. Each wore her red leather, but it did a poor job this day of disguising the blood all over them.

“Lord Rahl! Lord Rahl!”

Berdine flew at him like a squirrel flinging itself for a branch. She landed on him, webbing him in arms and legs, knocking him back off the wall and into the fountain full of snowmelt.

She sat up on his stomach. “Lord Rahl! You did it! You took the cape off like I told you! You heard my warning after all!”

She fell on him again, clutching him in red arms. Richard held his breath as he

went under. Though the icy water wouldn’t have been his choice, he was glad for the excuse to wash off some of the stinking mriswith blood. He gasped for air when she grabbed his shirt in her fist and hauled him up. She sat in his lap, legs around his middle, and hugged him again.

“Berdine,” he whispered, “my shoulder is hurt. Please don’t squeeze so hard.”

“It’s nothing,” she announced in true Mord-Sith disregard for pain. “We were so worried. When the attack came, we thought we would never see you again. We thought we had failed.”

Kahlan cleared her throat. Richard held out an introductory hand. “Kahlan, these are my personal guards, Cara, Raina, and this is Berdine. Ladies, this is Kahlan, my queen.”

Berdine, making no attempt to get off his lap, grinned up at Kahlan. “I’m Lord Rahl’s favorite.”

Kahlan folded her arms as her green-eyed glare darkened.

“Berdine, let me up.”

“You still smell like a mriswith.” She shoved him back in the water and again hauled him up by his shirt. “That’s better.” She pulled him closer. “You ever run off like that again without listening to me, I’ll do more than give you a bath.”

“What is it about you and women and baths?” Kahlan asked in an even tone.

“I don’t know.” He looked out over the battle still raging, and then back to Berdine’s blue eyes. He hugged her with his good arm. “I’m sorry. I should have listened to you. The price of my foolishness was too great.”

“Are you all right?” she whispered in his ear.

“Berdine, get off me. Let me up.”

She flopped off his lap to the side. “Kolo said that the mriswith were enemy wizards who traded their power for the ability to become invisible.”

Richard gave her a hand up. “I nearly did, too.”

She stood in the water on her tiptoes and pulled his shirt collar aside, inspecting his neck. She let out a relieved sigh. “It’s gone. You’re safe. Kolo said how the change came, how their skin began to scale over. He said that that ancestor of yours, Alric, created a force to battle the mriswith.” She pointed. “Gars.”