Blood of the Fold

They charged through the bramble and down a steep slope, half running, half sliding down the snow. Before she bounded over the edge she saw the horsemen spring from the cover of trees. The snow at the bottom was drifted into deep banks. They both struggled through them toward trees. It was like trying to run in a quagmire.

A man suddenly came out of the night and drove down the slope after them. Kahlan didn't wait for Adie to try to use her magic. There was no time if she failed.

Kahlan spun, bringing the sword around. The man in the red cape swept his sword up defensively as he plunged onward. He wore an armored breastplate. Her strike would be wasted on his armor. He was protecting his face — an instinctive reaction, but a fatal move against someone trained by her father, King Wyborn. Men in armor fought with false confidence.

With all her strength, Kahlan took her sword low instead. It jolted to a halt when it hit his femur. The man, the muscle of his thigh cleaved, tumbled with a helplessly cry to the trampled ground.

Another man leapt over top of him toward her. His red cape sailed open in the night air. Kahlan brought her sword up, slashing the inside of his thigh, severing the artery. As he fell past her, she hacked his hamstring.

The first cried out in panic. The second man cursed at the top of his lungs, calling her every vile name she had ever heard as he crawled ahead, brandishing his sword, provoking her to dare to fight him.

Kahlan remembered her father's counsel: Words can't cut you. Ward only for steel. Fight only steel, She didn't waste the time to finish them; they would probably bleed to death in the snow, and even if they didn't, maimed as they were, they couldn't come after her. Clutching each other's arms, she and Adie fled onward into the trees.

Panting in the darkness, they wove their way through the snow crusted fur trees. Kahlan realized Adie was shivering. She had lost her heavy cloak at the very beginning. Kahlan pulled off her wolf-hide mantle and threw it around Adie's shoulders.

"No, child," Adie began to protest.

"Wear it," Kahlan commanded. "I'm sweating, and anyway, it only slows my sword." In truth, her sword arm was so weary she could hardly lift the thing, much less swing it. Only fright powered her muscles. For now, that was enough.

Kahlan no longer knew which way she was running. The two of them simply ran for their lives. When she wanted go right, she went left instead. The trees they ran through were too thick to see the stars, or the moon.

She had to get away. Richard was in danger. Richard needed her. She had to get to him. Zedd should be there by now, but anything could go wrong. Zedd might not make it. She had to.

Kahlan slapped a balsam branch aside, struggling into a small open area of ledge wind-blown nearly clean of snow. She started to a halt. Before her stood two horses.

Tobias Brogan, the lord general of the Blood of the Fold, smiled down at her. A woman in tattered scraps of colored cloth sat on a horse beside him.

Brogan knuckled his mustache. "And what have we here?"

"Two travelers," Kahlan said in voice as cold as the winter air. "Since when has the Blood taken to robbing and butchering helpless travelers?"

"Helpless travelers? Hardly. The two of you must have killed over a hundred of my men."

"We have been defending our lives from the Blood of the Fold, which if it thinks it can get away with it, attacks people it doesn't even know."

"Oh I know you, Kahlan Amnell, Queen of Galea. I know more than you think. I know who you be."

Kahlan's fist tightened on the hilt of the sword.

Brogan stepped his big dappled gray closer, a gruesome grin overcoming his face. He rested an arm on the pommel as he leaned forward, his dark eyes holding her in their malevolent grip.

"You, Kahlan Amnell, be the Mother Confessor. I see you for who you be, and you be the Mother Confessor."

Kahlan's muscles locked tight, her breath held prisoner in her lungs. How could he know that? Had Zedd removed the spell? Had something happened to Zedd? Dear spirits, if anything happened to Zedd. .

With a cry of rage, she brought the sword around in a mighty swing. At the same time, the woman in the tattered rages flung a hand out. With a grunt of effort, Adie cast out a shield. The blow of air from the woman atop the horse brushed past Kahlan's face, flicking her hair out. Adie's shield had saved her.

Kahlan's sword flashed in the moonlight. The night air cracked as her blade sundered the horse's leg under Brogan.

The horse screamed as it thudded to the ground, pitching Brogan into the trees. At the same time, a gout of flame from Adie enveloped the other horse's head. It reared wildly, throwing the woman whom Kahlan now knew to be a sorceress, too.

Kahlan snatched Adie's hand and yanked her away. They scrambled desperately into the brush. All around, she could hear men and horses crashing through the trees. Kahlan didn't try to think where she was going; she simply ran.