Naked Empire

Maybe the Order can be thrown out of your land, but they cannot be effortlessly kept out, for it is their ideas that have come to destroy you.

"So choose. Slaves or free men. Life as either will not be easy. I think you know what life as slaves will be like. As free men you will have to struggle, work, and think, but you will have the rewards that brings, and those rewards will be yours and no one else's.

"Freedom must be won, but then it has to be guarded lest those like the Order come again to enslave those wishing for someone else to do their thinking.

"I am the Lord Rahl. I intend to go get the antidote to the poison you've given me. If you men choose to be part of this struggle, to rid yourselves and your loved ones of evil, then I will help you.

"If you choose not to stand with us, then you may go back and let the Order do with you what they will, or you can run. If you run, you may survive for a time, as you have been doing, but, because that is not the way you wish to live, you will die as frightened animals, never having lived what life has to offer.

"So choose, but if you choose to stand with me against evil, then you will have to relinquish your self-imposed blindness and open your eyes to look around at life. You will have to see the reality of the world around you. There is good and bad in the world. You will have to use your minds to judge which is which so that you can seek the good and reject the bad.

"If you choose to stand with me, I will do my best to answer any honest question and try to teach you how to triumph against the men of the Order and those like them. But I will not suffer your mindless teachings that are nothing more than a calculated rejection of life.

"Take a look at the bloody fingers you or your friends hold. Look at what was done to children by evil men. You should hate such men who would do this. If you don't, or can't, then you have no business being with those of us who embrace life.

"I want each of you to think about those children, about their terror, their pain, their wish not to be hurt. Think of what it was like for them to be alone and in the hands of evil men. You should rightfully hate the men who would do such things. Hold tight to that righteous hatred, for that is the hatred of evil.

"I intend to recover the antidote so that I can live. In the process, I also intend to kill as many of those evil men as I can. If I go alone, I may succeed in getting the antidote, but alone I will not succeed in liberating your homes from the Imperial Order.

"If you choose to go with me, to help me in this struggle, we may have a chance.

"I don't know what I face there, so I can't honestly tell you that we have a good chance. I can only tell you that if you don't help me, then there is likely no chance."

Richard held up a finger. "Make no mistake. If you choose to join us and we take up this struggle, some of us will probably die. If we do not, all of us will die, not necessarily in body, but in spirit. Under such rule as the Order has shown you, no one lives, even though their bodies might for a time endure the misery of life as slaves. Under the Order, every soul withers and dies."

The men were silent as Richard paused to meet their gazes. Most could not look away, while some seemed shamed and so they stared at the ground.

"If you choose to side with me in this struggle," Richard said with deliberate care, "you will be called upon to kill men of the Order, evil men. If you once thought that I enjoyed killing, let me assure you that you are very wrong. I hate it. I do it to defend life. I would never expect you to relish killing. It is a necessity to do it, not to enjoy doing it. I expect you to relish life and do what is necessary to preserve it."

Richard picked up one of the items, lying off to the side, that they had made while waiting for Tom and Owen to bring the men up into the pass.

It looked like little more than a stout stick. It was in fact made of oak limbs. It was rounded at the back to fit the hand, narrow at a point in the middle, and pointed at the other end.

"You men don't have weapons. While we waited for you to arrive, we've made some." He waggled his fingers, requesting Tom to come forward. "The men of the Order won't recognize these as weapons, at first, anyway. If questioned, you should tell them that they're used to make holes in the ground to plant crops."

With his left hand, Richard seized Tom's shirt at his shoulder, to hold him, and demonstrated the weapon's use by slowly showing how it would be thrust upward, toward a man's middle just under his ribs, to stab him. Some faces among the men twisted with revulsion.