Blood of the Fold

"You are free to choose: with us, or against us. If you are with us, then you will help us. Think carefully before you decide to leave, for if you leave, and decide later that you would rather not suffer the Order any longer, then you will pay double the tax for a period of ten years in order to earn your way back."

The crowd in the balconies gasped. A woman on the floor, near the front, spoke up in a distraught voice.

"What if we choose neither? It is against our principles to fight. We want to be left alone to go about our lives. What if we choose not to fight, to simply go about our business?"

"Do you arrogantly believe that we want to fight because we would stop the slaughter, and you are somehow better because you wish not to? Or that we will carry the load by ourselves so that you, too, may enjoy the freedom to live by your principles?

"You can contribute in other ways without taking up a sword, but contribute you must. You can help tend the wounded, you can help the families of men gone to fight, you can help build and maintain roads to get supplies to them; there are any number of ways you can help, but you will help. You will pay the tax, the same as everyone else. There will be no bystanders.

"If you choose not to surrender, you will stand alone. The Order intends to conquer all people and lands. Because there is no other way to stop them, I can intend no less. Sooner or later, you will be ruled by one of us. Pray it is not the Order.

"Those lands that choose not to surrender to us will be placed under blockade and isolated until we have time to invade and conquer you, or the Order does. None of our people will be allowed to trade with you, under penalty of prosecution for treason, and you will not be allowed to transport trade or travel through our land.

"The opportunity of surrender I give now carries incentives: you will be able to join us without prejudice or sanctions. Once this peaceful offer to surrender has expired, and it becomes necessary to conquer you, you will be conquered, and you will surrender, but the terms will be harsh. Every one of your people will pay triple the tax for a period of thirty years. It wouldn't be fair to punish future generations for the actions of this. Neighboring lands will prosper and grow, while you do not, burdened as you will be with higher costs to your surrender. Your land will eventually recover, but you will probably not live long enough to see it.

"Be warned: I intend to wipe the butchers called the Imperial Order from the face of the land. If you do more than try to stand aside, and are foolish enough to join with them, then you cast your fate with theirs; no mercy will be granted."

"You can't get away with this," an anonymous voice in the crowd called out. "We'll stop you."

"The Midlands is fragmented, and cannot be made whole again, or I would instead join with you. What is past, is past, and cannot be returned.

"The spirit of the Midlands will live on with those of us who honor its purpose. The Mother Confessor committed the Midlands to war without mercy against the tyranny of the Imperial Order. Honor her command and the ideals of the Midlands in the only way that will succeed: surrender to D'Hara. If you join with the Imperial Order, then you stand against everything the Midlands represented.

"A force of Galean soldiers, led by the Queen of Galea herself, hunted down the butchers of Ebinissia, and killed them to a man. She has shown us all that the Imperial Order is vincible.

"I am engaged to wed the queen of Galea, Kahlan Amnell, and join her people to mine, and thereby show all that I will not stand for the crimes committed, even if they were committed by D'Haran troops. Galea and D'Hara will be the first to join in the new union, through Galea's surrender to D'Hara. My marriage to her will show all that it will be a union made of mutual respect, demonstrating that it can be done without blood conquest or the lust for power, and instead for strength and a hope of a new and better life. She, no less than I, intends to annihilate the Imperial Order. She has proven her heart with cold steel."

The crowd, both those on the main floor, and those in the balconies, started crying out questions and demands.

Lord Rahl shouted them down. "Enough!" The people grudgingly fell silent once more. "I have heard all I intend to hear. I have told you the way it will be. Do not mistakenly think I will tolerate the way you behaved as nations of the Midlands. I will not. Until you surrender, you are all potential enemies, and will be treated as such. Your troops will at once surrender their weapons, one way or another, and will not be allowed to leave the custody of the D'Haran troops now surrounding your palaces.