Naked Empire (49 page)

As they started out, faces back in doorways and around dark corners peeked out to watch them. When Richard looked their way, the people ducked back in.

“They know you are not from here,” Anson whispered.

Richard didn’t trust that one of those people wouldn’t call the guards. “Let’s hurry up and get what we came here for.”

Anson nodded and hurriedly led Richard down a narrow street with what looked like little more than huts huddled together to each side. The single torch burning outside the long building where the soldiers had gone provided little light down the street. The town, at least what Richard could see of it in the dark, was a pretty shabby-looking place. In fact, he wouldn’t call it a town so much as a village. Many of the structures appeared to be housing for livestock, not people. Only rarely were there any lights coming from any of the squat buildings and the light he did see looked like it came from candles, not lamps.

At the end of the street, Richard followed Anson through a small side door into a larger building. The cows inside mooed at the intrusion. Sheep rustled in their pens. A few goats in other pens bleated. Richard and Anson paused to let the animals settle down before making their way through the barn to a ladder at the side. Richard followed Anson as he climbed quickly to a small hayloft.

At the end of the loft, Anson reached up over a low rafter to where it tied into the wall behind a cross brace. “Here it is,” he said as he grimaced, stretching his arm up into the hiding place.

He came out with a small, square-sided bottle and handed it to Richard. “This is the antidote. Hurry and drink it, and then let’s get out of here.”

The large door banged open. Even though it was dark outside, the torch down the street provided just enough light to silhouette the broad shape of a man standing in the doorway. By his demeanor, he had to be a soldier.

Richard pulled the stopper from the bottle. The antidote had the slight aroma of cinnamon. He quickly downed it, hardly noticing its sweet, spicy taste. He never took his eyes off the man in the doorway.

“Who’s in here?” the man bellowed.

“Sir,” Richard called down, “I’m just getting some hay for the livestock.”

“In the dark? What are you up to? Get down here right now.”

Richard put a hand against Anson’s chest and pushed him back into the darkness. “Yes, sir. I’m coming,” Richard called to the soldier as he hurried down the ladder.

At the bottom of the ladder, he turned and saw the man coming toward him. Richard reached for his knife under the coat he was wearing, only remembering then that he didn’t have his knife. The soldier was still silhouetted against the open barn door. Richard was in the darkness and the man probably wouldn’t be able to see him. He silently moved away from the ladder.

As the soldier passed near him, Richard stepped in behind him and reached to his side, seizing the knife sheathed behind the axe hanging on his belt. Richard gingerly drew the knife just as the man stopped and looked up the ladder to the hayloft.

As he was looking up, Richard snatched a fistful of hair with one hand and reached around with the other, slicing deep through the soldier’s throat before he realized what was happening. Richard held the man tight as he struggled, a wet gurgling the only sound coming from him. He reached back, frantically grabbing at Richard for a moment before his movements lost their energy and he went limp.

“Anson,” Richard whispered up the ladder as he let the man slip to the ground, “come on. Let’s go.”

Anson hurried down the ladder, coming to a halt as he reached the bottom and turned around to see the dark shape of the dead man sprawled on the ground.

“What happened?”

Richard looked up from his work at undoing the weapon belt around the dead weight of the soldier. “I killed him.”

“Oh.”

Richard handed the knife, in its sheath, to Anson. “Here you go. Now you have a real weapon—a long knife.”

Richard rolled the dead soldier over to pull the belt the rest of the way out from under the man. As he tugged it free, he heard a noise and turned just in time to see another soldier running in toward them.

Anson slammed the long knife hilt-deep into the man’s chest. The man staggered back. Richard shot to his feet, bringing the weapon belt with him. The soldier gasped for breath as he clutched at the knife handle. He dropped heavily to his knees. One hand clawed at the air above him as he swayed. Pulling a final gasp, he toppled to his side.

Anson stood staring at the man lying in a heap, the knife jutting from his chest. He bent, then, and pulled his new knife free.

“Are you all right?” Richard whispered when Anson stood.

Anson nodded. “I recognize this man. We called him the weasel. He deserved to die.”

Richard gently clapped Anson on the back of the shoulder. “You did well. Now, let’s get out of here.”

As they made their way back up the street, Richard asked Anson to wait while he checked down alleyways and between low buildings, searching for soldiers. As a guide, Richard often scouted at night. In the darkness, he was in his element.

The town was a lot smaller than he had expected. It was also much less organized than he thought it would be, with no apparent order to where the simple structures had been built. The streets through the haphazard town, if they could be called streets, were in most cases little more than footpaths between clusters of small, single-room buildings. He saw a few handcarts, but nothing more elaborate. There was only one road through the town, leading back to the barn where they had recovered the antidote and run into the two soldiers, that was wide enough to accommodate a wagon. His search didn’t turn up any patrolling soldiers.

“Do you know if all the men of the Order stay together?” Richard asked when he returned to Anson, waiting in the shadows.

“At night they go inside. They sleep in our place, by where we came in.”

“You mean that low building where the first two soldiers went?”

“That’s right. That’s where most people used to gather at night, but now the men of the Order use it for themselves.”

Richard frowned at the man. “You mean you all slept together?”

Anson sounded mildly surprised by the question. “Yes. We were together whenever possible. Many people had a house where they could work, eat, and keep belongings, but they rarely slept in them. We usually all slept in the sleeping houses where we gathered to talk about the day. Everyone wanted to be together. Sometimes people would sleep in another place, but mostly we sleep there together so we can all feel safe—much like we all slept together at night as we made our way down out of the pass with the statue.”

“And everyone just…lay down together?”

Anson diverted his eyes. “Couples often slept apart from others by being with one another under a single blanket, but they were still together with our people. In the dark, though, no one could see them…together under a blanket.”

Richard had trouble imagining such a way of life. “The whole town fit in that sleeping building? There was enough room?”

“No, there were too many of us to all sleep in one sleeping house. There are two.” Anson pointed. “There is another on the far side of the one you saw.”

“Let’s go have a look, then.”

They moved quickly back toward the town gates, such as they were, and toward the sleeping houses. The dark street was empty. Richard didn’t see anyone on the paths between buildings. What people were left in the town had apparently gone to sleep or were afraid to come out in the darkness.

A door in one of the small homes opened a crack, as if someone inside were peering out. The door opened wider and a thin figure dashed out toward them.

“Anson!” came the whispered voice.

It was a boy, in his early teens. He fell to his knees and clutched Anson’s arm, kissing his hand in joy to see him.

“Anson, I am so happy that you are home! We’ve missed you so much. We feared for you—feared that you were murdered.”

Anson grabbed the boy by his shirt and hauled him to his feet. “Bernie, I’m well and I’m happy to see you well, but you must go back in now. The men will see you. If they catch you outside…”

“Oh, please, Anson, come sleep at our house. We’re so alone and afraid.”

“Who?”

“Just me and my grandfather, now. Please come in and be with us.”

“I can’t right now. Maybe another time.”

The boy peered up at Richard, then, and when he saw that he didn’t recognize him shrank back.

“This is a friend of mine, Bernie—from another town.” Anson squatted down beside the boy. “Please, Bernie, I will return, but you must go back inside and stay there tonight. Don’t come out. We fear there might be trouble. Stay inside. Tell your grandfather my words, will you now?”

Bernie finally agreed and ran back into the dark doorway. Richard was eager to get out of the town before anyone else came out to pay their respects. If he and Anson weren’t careful, they would end up attracting the attention of the soldiers.

They moved quickly the rest of the way up the street, using buildings for cover. Pressing up against the side of one at the head of the street, Richard peered around the corner at the squat daub-and-wattle sleeping house where the guards had gone. The door was open, letting soft light spill out across the ground.

“In there?” Richard whispered. “You all slept in there?”

“Yes. That is one of the sleeping houses, and beyond it the other one.”

Richard thought about it for a moment. “What did you sleep on?”

“Hay. We put blankets over it, usually. We changed the hay often to keep it fresh, but these men do not bother. They sleep like animals in dusty old hay.”

Richard looked out through the open gates at the fields. He looked back at the sleeping house.

“And now the soldiers all sleep in there?”

“Yes. They took the place from us. They said it was to be their barracks. Now our people—the ones still alive—must sleep wherever they can.”

Richard made Anson stay put while he slipped through the shadows, out of the light of the torch, to survey the area beyond the first building. The second long structure also had soldiers inside laughing and talking. There were more men than were needed to guard such a small place, but Witherton was the gateway into Bandakar—and the gateway out.

“Come on,” Richard said as he came up beside Anson, “let’s get back to the others. I have an idea.”

As they made their way to the gate, Richard looked up, as he often did, to check the starry sky for any sign of black-tipped races. He saw instead that the pole to each side of the gate held a body hanging by the ankles. When Anson saw them, he paused, held frozen by the horror of the sight.

Richard laid a hand on the man’s shoulder and leaned close. “Are you all right?”

Anson shook his head. “No. But I will be better when the men who come to us and do such things are dead.”

Richard didn’t know if the antidote was supposed to make him feel better, but if it was, it hadn’t yet done its work. As they crept through the pitch-black fields, his chest hurt with every breath he took. He paused and closed his eyes briefly against the pain of the headache caused by his gift. He wanted nothing more than to lie down, but there was no time for that. Everyone started out once more when he did, quietly making their way through the fields outside of Witherton.

It felt good, at least, to have his sword back, even if he dreaded the thought of having to draw it for fear of finding its magic was no longer there for him. Once they recovered the other two bottles of the antidote and he was rid of the poison, then maybe they could make it back to Nicci so that she could help him deal with his gift.

He tried not to worry if a sorceress could help a wizard once his gift had gone out of control, as his had. Nicci had vast experience. As soon as he reached her, she could help him. Even if she couldn’t help him, he felt confident that she would at least know what he had to do in order to get the help he needed. After all, she was once a Sister of the Light; the purpose of the Sisters of the Light had been to help those with the gift to learn to control it.

“I think I see the outer wall,” Kahlan said in a quiet voice.

“Yes, that’s the place.” Richard pointed. “There’s the gate. See it?”

“I think so,” she whispered back.

It was a dark night, with no moon. While the others were having difficulty seeing much of anything as they made their way through the dark, Richard was glad for the conditions. The starlight was enough for him to see by, but he didn’t think it was enough to give the soldiers any help in seeing them.

As they crept closer, the sleeping house came into view through the open gate. The torch still burned outside the door to the building where the soldiers slept. Richard signaled everyone to gather around close. They all crouched low. He grabbed the shoulder of Anson’s shirt and pulled him up closer yet, then did the same with Owen.

Both now carried battle-axes. Anson also carried the knife he’d earned. The rest of the men carried the weapons they had helped finish making.

When Richard and Anson had returned to the forest clearing, Anson had told the waiting men everything that had happened. When he said that he killed the man called the weasel, Richard held his breath, not sure exactly how the men would react to hearing that one of their own had actually killed a man. There was a brief moment of astonished silence, and then spontaneous joy at the accomplishment.

Every man wanted to shake Anson’s hand to congratulate him, to tell him how proud they were. At that moment, any lingering doubts Richard harbored had vanished. He had allowed the men to celebrate briefly while he waited for the night to darken, and then they had started making their way through the fields.

This was the night that Witherton gained its freedom.

Richard looked around at all the dark shapes. “All right, now, remember all the things we’ve told you. You must stay quiet and hold the gates steady while Anson and Owen cut the rope where they hinge. Be careful not to let the gates fall once the ropes are cut.”

In the dim starlight Richard could just make out the men nodding to his instructions. Richard carefully checked the sky, looking for any sign of black-tipped races. He didn’t see any. It had been a long time since they’d seen any races.

It seemed that the trick of taking to the forests just before they changed their expected route and being careful to stay out of sight from the sky had worked. It was possible that they had succeeded in slipping out from under Nicholas the Slide’s surveillance. If they really had escaped his observation, then he wouldn’t know where to begin looking for them.

Richard briefly squeezed Kahlan’s hand and then started for the opening in the town wall. Cara crouched close at his other side. Tom was bringing up the rear, along with Jennsen, making sure there were no surprises from behind.

They had left Betty not only tied up, but confined to a makeshift pen to be sure she didn’t follow after them and give them away at the wrong moment. The goat had been unusually distraught to be left behind, but with lives at stake they couldn’t risk Jennsen’s goat causing trouble. She would be happy enough after they returned.

When they reached the fields close to the town gates, Richard motioned for everyone to get down and stay where they were. Along with Tom, Richard moved up to the gates, taking cover in the shadow of the wall. There was a soldier just inside the gate, pacing slowly in his lonely nighttime sentry duty. He wasn’t being very careful, or he would not be doing such duty in the light of the torch.

As the soldier turned to walk away from them, Tom slipped up behind the man and swiftly silenced him. As Tom dragged the dead man through the gates to hide him in the darkness outside the wall, Richard moved in through the gates, staying in the shadows and away from the torch burning outside the sleeping house. The door to the sleeping house stood open, but no light or sound came from inside. This late, the men were bound to be asleep.

He moved past the first long building to the second, and there came upon another guard. Quickly, silently, Richard seized the man and cut his throat, holding him tight as he struggled. When he finally went limp, Richard laid him in the darkness at the head of the second sleeping house, around the corner from the torchlight.

In the distance, the men had already swarmed over the gates, holding them up while Anson and Owen worked quickly at cutting the ropes that acted as hinges. In moments, both sections of gate were freed. Richard could hear the soft grunts of effort as the heavy gates were manhandled around by the two gangs of men.

Jennsen handed Richard his bow, the string already strung. She handed him one of the special arrows, holding the rest at the ready for him. Kahlan slipped up to the torch on the pole outside the first building and lit several small torches, handing each of them off to the men. She kept one for herself.

Richard nocked the arrow and then glanced around at the faces seeming to float before him in the wavering torchlight. In answer to the unspoken question, they all nodded that they were ready. He checked the men balancing the two gates and saw their nod. The bow in one hand, with his fist holding the arrow in place, Richard gave hand signals to the men, starting them moving.

What had been a slow, careful approach from the woods into the town suddenly transformed into a headlong rush.

Richard held the head of the arrow nocked in his bow in the flame of the torch Kahlan held out for him. As soon as it caught, he ran to the open door of the sleeping house, leaned into the darkness, and fired the arrow toward the back.

As the blazing arrow flew the length of the building, it illuminated row upon row of men sleeping on the bed of straw. The arrow landed at the far end, spilling flame across the straw. A few heads lifted at the confusing sight. Jennsen handed Richard another. He immediately drew string to cheek and the arrow shot toward the middle of the interior.

As Richard pulled back from the doorway, two men with torches, dripping flaming drops of pitch, heaved them just inside. They hissed as they flew through the air, landing amid the sleeping men, bouncing and tumbling through the straw, igniting a wall of flame.

In a matter of only a few heartbeats since the attack started, the first sleeping house was set afire from one end to the other. The largest blaze, by design, was the fire spread by the pitch-laden torches, at the end of the building nearest the door. Confused cries came from inside, muted by the thick walls. The sleeping soldiers scrambled to their feet.

Richard checked that the men with the heavy gates were coming; then he ran around the sleeping house to the second building. Jennsen, following close behind, handed him an arrow, the flames around its head wrapped in oil-soaked cloth making a whooshing sound as she ran.

One of his men pulled the torch from the stand outside the building where the guard Richard killed had been patrolling. Richard leaned in the doorway only to see a big man charging at him out of the dark interior. Richard pressed his back against the doorjamb and kicked the man squarely in the chest, driving him back.

Richard drew the bowstring back and shot the flaming arrow off into the interior. As it lit the interior in its flight through the building, he could see that some of the men had been awakened and were getting up. Turning to take the second flaming arrow from Jennsen, he saw smoke pouring up from the first building. As soon as he drew string to cheek and loosed the second arrow, he leaned away and men heaved the torches in.

One torch fell back out of the doorway. It had bounced off the chest of a man rushing for the doorway to see what was happening. The pitch from the torch caught his greasy beard afire. He let out a bloodcurdling scream. Richard kicked him back inside. In an instant, men by the dozens were racing for the door, not only to escape the burning building, but to meet the attack. Richard saw the flash of weapons being drawn.

He sprang back from the doorway as the men carrying the heavy section of gate rushed in. They turned the gate sideways and rammed it in under the eaves, but before they could bring the bottom down to wedge it against the ground, the weight of bellowing men inside crashed into the section of gate and drove it back. The men carrying it fell back, the weight knocking them from their feet, the gate landing atop them.

Suddenly, men were pouring from the doorway. Richard’s men were ready and fell on them, driving the wooden weapons into their soft underbellies and snapping the handles off as man after man spilled out of the doorway. Standing to the side of the door, others used their maces to bash in the skulls of soldiers who emerged. When one soldier came out with his sword raised, the man to the side clubbed his arm as another rushed in and drove a wooden stake in up under his ribs. The more men who fell at the doorway, the more those trying to get out were slowed and could be dispatched.

The soldiers were so stunned to see these people fighting that in some cases they fought back only ineffectually. As a soldier leaped over the bodies in the doorway and lifted a sword, a man jumped on his back and seized his arm while another stabbed him. Another, crying orders, charged Jennsen, only to have the bolt of a crossbow fired into his face. A few soldiers escaped the burning building and managed to slip past Richard’s men only to meet Cara’s Agiel. Their screams, worse than the cries of men on fire, briefly brought the gaze of every man, from both sides of the battle.

Fallen knives and swords were scooped up by the men of the town and turned on the men from the Imperial Order. Richard fired an arrow into the center of the chest of a man emerging from the smoke that rolled out of the doorway. As he was falling, a second arrow felled the man behind him. As more men rushed out, they fell over those piled around the doorway and were hacked to death with commandeered axes or stabbed with confiscated swords. Since they could emerge only one at a time, the soldiers couldn’t mount a coordinated attack, but those waiting could.

As Richard’s men fought back those struggling to get out of the doorway of the burning building, other men rushed to help lift the gate so those under it could get up and get control of it. Once the gate was lifted, the men swung it around and, with a cry of joint effort, ran with it toward the building. They drove the top up under the eaves, first, but when they brought the bottom edge down, the bodies piled in the doorway prevented them from getting the bottom down so they could wedge it in place.

Richard called out orders. Some of his men rushed in and seized an arm or a leg of a dead man and dragged the body aside so the others could finally bring the bottom of the gate down against the building to close off the opening.

One man from inside squeezed through just before they had the gate in place. The weight of the door pinned him against the building. Owen leaned in and with a sword he’d picked up decisively stabbed the man through the throat.

As men inside pounded at the gate covering the doorway and threw their weight against it, men on the outside piled around to push it down and hold it in place. Other men fell to their knees and drove stakes into the ground to lock the gate section in place, trapping the soldiers inside.

Behind, streamers of flame leaked out from under the eaves of the first building and leaped up into the night sky. The roof of the building ignited all at once, explosively engulfing the entire sleeping house in sparks and flames. Screams of men being burned alive ripped the night.

The waves of heat coming off the massive fire as the first building was consumed by the flames began to carry the heavy aroma of cooking meat. It reminded Richard that, for the killing he did, his gift demanded the balance of not eating meat. After all the killing of this night, since his gift was already spinning out of control, he would have to be even more careful to avoid eating any meat.

His head was already hurting so much that he was having trouble focusing his vision; he couldn’t afford to do anything that would further unbalance his gift. If he was not careful, the poison wouldn’t get the chance to be the first to kill him.

Heavy black smoke billowed out from around the edges of the gate covering the doorway of the second sleeping house. Screams and pleas came from inside. The men of the town moved back, watching, as smoke began rolling up from under its eaves. The battle seemed to have ended as quickly as it had started.

No one spoke as they stood in the harsh glare from the roaring fires. Flames ate through the second building. With a loud whoosh it was engulfed in fire.

The heat drove everyone back away from the two sleeping houses. As they moved back from the burning buildings, they encountered the rest of the people of the town, all gathered in the shadows, watching in stunned silence.

One of the older men took a step forward. “Speaker Owen, what is this? You have committed violence?”

Owen stepped away from the men he was with to stand before the people of his town. He held an arm back, pointing toward Richard.