Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

In the center of it all, in a prison island created out of a ring of supply wagons, Richard lay chained with other captive men brought in to play in the Ja'La dh Jin tournaments. Most of his team was made up of regular Imperial Order troops, but they were off sleeping in their own tents.

Hardly a city ruled by the Order was without a Ja'La team. As children these soldiers had played it almost from the time they could walk. They all expected that after the war was over Ja'La would endure for them. To many of the soldiers of the Order, Ja'La dh Jin-the Game of Life-was itself a matter of life and death, nearly equal to the cause of the Order.

Even to a scrawny old woman who followed her emperor to war and lived off the scraps of his conquest, murder was an acceptable means of helping her favored team to victory.

Having a winning Ja'La team was a source of great pride for an army division, just as it was for any city. Commander Karg, the officer responsible for Richard's team, was also intent on winning. A winning team could bring far more tangible benefits to those directly involved than mere glory. Those who ran the top teams became powerful men. Winning Ja'La players became heroes rewarded with riches of every sort, including legions of women eager to be with them.

At night Richard was chained to the wagons that held the cages that had transported him and the other captives, but in the games they had played along the way he was the point man for their team, trusted to carry Commander Karg's ambitions to glory in the tournaments at Emperor Jagang's main encampment. Richard's life depended on how well he did his job. So far he had rewarded Commander Karg's faith in him.

Richard's choice from the first had been to either join Commander Karg's effort, or be executed in the most gruesome manner possible.

Richard, though, had had other reasons for "volunteering." Those reasons were far more important to him than anything else.

He glanced over and saw that Johnrock, chained to the same transport wagon, lay on his back sound asleep. The man, a miller by trade, was built like an oak tree. Unlike the point men of other teams, Richard insisted on endless practice whenever they were not on the move. Not everyone on his team liked it, but they followed his instructions. Even in their cage as they had traveled to the Imperial Order's main force, Richard and Johnrock analyzed how they could have done better, devised and memorized codes for plays, and did endless push-ups and other exercises to build their strength.

Exhaustion had apparently overcome the noise and confusion of camp, and Johnrock was sleeping as peacefully as a baby, unaware that their reputation had brought people out into the night who wanted to end their team's chances before they reached the tournaments.

As tired as Richard was, he had only been dozing from time to time. He found himself having difficulty sleeping. Something was wrong, something not connected to all the myriad troubles swirling around him. It was not even anything to do with the immediate worldly dangers of being a captive. This was something different, something inside him, something deep within him. In a way it reminded him a little of the times he'd been sick with a fever, but that wasn't really it, either. No matter how carefully he tried to analyze it, the nature of the feeling remained elusive. He was so confused by the inexplicable sensation that he was left with nothing so much as an aching feeling of restless foreboding.

Besides that, he was too preoccupied thinking about Kahlan to be able to sleep. Held captive by Emperor Jagang himself, she was not all that far away.

Sometimes when he'd been alone with Nicci, late in the night sitting before a fire, she had stared into those flames and confided in him how Jagang had brutalized her. Those stories gnawed at Richard's insides.

He couldn't see the emperor's compound, but as they had rolled in through the sprawling encampment earlier that day he had seen the impressive command tents. To find himself looking into Kahlan's green eyes after all this time, even if for only a fleeting moment, had filled him with joy and relief. He had at long last found her, and she was alive. He had to find a way to get her out.

Reasonably sure that the latest woman to have stabbed him was no longer lurking in the shadows for another attempt, Richard finally pulled his hand away to inspect the wound. It wasn't as bad as it might have been. If he had been sound asleep, like Johnrock, it might have gone much worse.

He guessed that perhaps the odd feeling that had been keeping him awake had actually served him well.

As much as the wound in his leg stung, it wasn't serious. Holding his hand tightly over it had stopped the bleeding. The wound from earlier that night was also painful, but it, too, wasn't anywhere as bad as it might have been. His shoulder blade had caught the tip of the woman's knife and thwarted her attempt at murder.