Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

Her aim was to skirt the main confrontation between the regular soldiers and the royal guard while moving toward where she'd last seen Richard, hoping that as they moved off to the side she didn't get too far away from Richard's approach. At the same time she wanted to stay out of the new confrontation. The elite guard would be a very different foe from the regular soldiers.

Commander Karg leaped down off the horse among the original royal guard contingent. "Where's Jagang?" he called out to the wall of guards protecting the injured emperor.

"He's been shot with an arrow," one of the guard officers said as he signaled his men to open a path for the commander.

Kahlan saw Jagang, then, still on his knees, being supported by a big man squatting down to each side of him. He was pale, but conscious. He was having difficulty breathing, occasionally coughing, leaving little dark spots of blood on his chin and down the front of him. One hand clutched the arrow jutting from the right side of his chest.

"An arrow!" Karg yelled. "How in the name of Creation did that happen?"

The officer seized Karg by his chain mail and yanked him close. "Your man shot him!"

Commander Karg glared as he lifted the officer's chin with the point of a knife. "Get your hands off me."

The man released the commander, but returned the glare in kind.

"Now, what are you talking about it being my man?" Karg asked.

"It was your point man. He shot the emperor with an arrow."

Karg's expression darkened. "Then I'll kill him myself."

"If we don't kill him first."

"Fine. You do it, then. I don't really care who kills him-as long as he's dead that's all that matters. The man is dangerous. I don't want him running around loose to do any more damage. Just bring me his head so that I know that it's finished."

"Consider it done," the officer said.

Karg ignored the man's boast as he started pushing other men out of his way. "Get the emperor on his feet!" he yelled at the wall of men around Jagang. "We're getting him back to his compound. There are Sisters there who can help him. We can't do anything here."

No one argued. Guards helped Jagang to his feet. Two men, one to each side, put shoulders under his arms, supporting him.

"Karg," Jagang said in a weak voice.

The commander stepped close. "Yes, Excellency?"

A grin spread on Jagang's face. "Glad to see you. I guess you earned her for a while."

Commander Karg shared in a brief, sly smile with the emperor before turning and yelling at the guards. "Let's go!"

Jillian clutched Kahlan tightly on one side, Nicci on the other as they continued to slip away to the side, trying not to be seen. The guards helping Jagang started moving him out. The men Commander Karg had brought with him hacked and slashed their way back through the battle.

Kahlan dreaded the thought of being back in Jagang's tent. As she kept an eye on the guards, she looked back over her shoulder, searching, but she didn't see Richard.

Drunken, angry soldiers fought on all around the three of them as Kahlan watched the emperor's guards start to organize a forward wedge to clear a path to get them back away from the Ja'La field and toward the emperor's compound.

Almost all of the torches had long since gone dark in the fighting. The guards had brought some of their own, but they weren't close. As dark as it was with the heavy overcast, Kahlan couldn't even see the Ja'La field anymore. Even the plateau rising up above the Azrith Plain seemed to have vanished in the blackness. She had to use the distant ramp, lit by-torchlight, to get her bearings.

With a thud that shook the ground, fire boiled up as Sisters apparently used their power to blast their way through the vast army in order to get to Jagang's rescue. There had been hundreds of thousands of men at the Ja'La match. It didn't seem like any were fleeing. Now the guards protecting the emperor needed to escape that mob.

Kahlan, Jillian, and Nicci, too, needed to escape through the mob, but they didn't have thousands of heavily armed guards to help them. They relied, instead, on trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. Hunching to look harmless, they avoided looking directly at the men around them. They kept the hoods of their cloaks up and their heads down as they slowly slipped through pockets of relative calm amid the chaos. It was slow going. They still hadn't managed to get clear of the guards engaged in hand-to-hand fighting with the mob. Somehow, they had to make it through that line of guards, and then through the army beyond.

Commander Karg, a wicked grin on his snake-face, abruptly appeared out of the darkness and seized Nicci by the upper arm. "There you are." He pulled the hood of her cloak back to get a good look at her. "You're coming with me." He gestured to one of his men. "Take the girl along, too. Since we're going to have a party, we might as well make it a proper affair with a young lady for my men."