Terry Goodkind - Confessor - Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

For the second time that day, a woman stabbed Richard.

Jolted fully awake by the shock of pain, he instantly seized her bony wrist, preventing her from ripping open his thigh. A dingy dress, buttoned all the way up to her throat, covered her gaunt figure. In the dim light of distant campfires Richard saw that the square of cloth draped over her head and knotted under her angular jaw looked to be made out of a scrap of frayed burlap.

Despite her frail frame, her sunken cheeks, her stooped back, she had the glare of a predator. The woman who had stabbed him earlier that night had been heavier, and stronger. Her eyes, too, had burned with hate.

The slender blade this woman wielded was smaller as well. While it made a painful puncture wound, had she sliced across his thigh muscle, as she’d apparently intended by the way she was holding the knife, it would have been far worse. The army of the Imperial Order did not bother to care for slaves with crippling injuries; they would simply have put him to death.

That had probably been her plan in the first place.

Gritting his teeth with awakened rage as he held the struggling woman’s wrist in a viselike grip, Richard twisted her arm as he lifted her white-knuckled fist in order to withdraw the blade from his leg. A drop of blood dripped from the tip.

He easily muscled her under his control. She was not the powerful killer he had at first feared. Her desire, her intent, her lust, however, were just as vicious as that of any of the invading horde she followed. As she grunted in pain, vapor from each panting breath rose into the cold night air. Richard knew that to be gentle would only give her another opportu­nity to finish the job. Surprise had provided her with an opening; he would not foolishly grant her a second chance. Still firmly holding her wrist, he wrenched the knife from her grasp.

He didn’t let up the pressure on her arm until he had possession of the blade.

He could have broken her arm, and she deserved no less, but he didn’t—this was not the time or place to create a disturbance. He merely wanted her away from him. Once he’d disarmed her, he shoved her back.

As soon as she stumbled to a halt, she spat at him. “You’ll never beat the team of the great and glorious Emperor Jagang. You are dogs—all of you! All of you from up here in the New World are heathen dogs!”

Richard glared at her, watching to make sure she didn’t pull another knife and renew the attack. He checked to the sides for an accomplice. Although there were soldiers not far away, just beyond the small enclosure of supply wagons, they were preoccupied with their own business. There didn’t appear to be anyone with the woman.

When she started to spit at him again, Richard lunged at her. She gasped in fright as she flinched back. Having lost courage for the busi­ness of stabbing a man when he was awake and able to defend himself, she cast him one last hateful glare, then turned and escaped into the night. Richard had known that the length of heavy chain attached to the collar around his neck wasn’t long enough to allow him to get to her, but she hadn’t known that and so the threat had been convincing enough to scare her off.

Even in the middle of the night the vast army encampment into which she had vanished was ceaselessly busy. Like some great, churning beast it swallowed her up.

While many of the soldiers were sleeping, others seemed always to be at work repairing gear, making weapons, cooking, eating, or engaged in drinking and raucous stories around fires as they passed the time waiting for their next opportunity at murder, rape, and plunder. All night long, it seemed, there were men testing their strength against one another, some­times with muscle, sometimes with knives. Small crowds gathered from time to time to watch such contests and to bet on the outcome. Patrolling guards looking for any signs of serious trouble, soldiers looking for enter­tainment, and camp followers looking for a handout prowled the encamp­ment throughout the night. Occasionally men wandered by to size up Richard and his fellow captives.

Between gaps in the wagons Richard could see some of the camp fol­lowers, hoping to earn food or even a small coin, going from group to group offering to play a flute and sing for the men. Others offered to shave soldiers, wash and care for their clothes, or tattoo their flesh. A number of the shadowy figures, after brief negotiations, disappeared into tents with the men. Others wandered the camp looking to steal. And a few of those out in the night were intent on murder.

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.