His gaze passed over the empty space where the emperor was supposed to be. Where Kahlan was supposed to be. Without Kahlan, even a Kahlan who didn’t know him, the world was a cold and empty place.
Right then, Richard felt very small and alone.
In a numb haze, he took his place in the line with his men. When the horn blew and the enemy, bunched together in a tight formation, started coming, being down in the bowl of the Ja’La field was like standing in a valley, watching an avalanche descending on him. Right then, in that moment of desolation, Richard didn’t know what he would do.
The collision was brutal. Gritting his teeth with the effort, he tried to turn the men protecting their point man, but they plowed right through Richard and his team.
With little ceremony their point man reached the scoring zone and threw the broc. Defenders painted with red symbols leaped to try to deflect the throw, but the attackers rolled over them. The broc landed solidly in the net, scoring the first point.
The crowd erupted with a deafening roar of approval.
Richard had just learned something. The emperor’s team appeared to rely on their superior size and weight to grind their way through their opponents’ defense. They had no real need for finesse. He gave his men a stealthy hand signal as the other team formed up for their second charge.
When they came, all of Richard’s team hooked across the blocking line, using low tackles to take the legs out from under the big men in the center. It wasn’t elegant, but it served the purpose of opening a hole. Before the hole could close, Richard was through. The point man didn’t deviate course, confident in his size to smash Richard out of his way.
Richard pivoted, abruptly cutting across the front of the man, sweeping a leg at his ankles. As the man stumbled to maintain his balance, Richard snatched the broc out from his arms when they loosened in a natural reaction to falling face-first.
Richard dodged and darted his way through a loose line of men. As yet more men converged on him, he tossed the broc to Johnrock, already positioned behind the line of men. To the wild cheers of his supporters, Johnrock briefly held up the broc for all to see as he ran from a clutch of pursuers. Johnrock, enjoying the moment, turned backward as he ran so he could laugh at the men chasing him, then threw the broc over their heads to Richard.
Men dove in from every direction as Richard caught the broc. He twisted away from one man, dodged another, and pushed himself away from a third, reversing direction wildly in an effort to keep from the clutches of the big men. Despite his own players tackling men, or blocking them out of Richard’s way, the opponents closed in all around. As Richard tried to miss one man, another seized him around his shoulders and, as if he were a small child, tossed him to the ground. Richard knew that he wasn’t going to be able to keep the broc from these men, and he
didn’t want them all piling on top of him and breaking his bones, so as soon as he hit the ground he heaved the broc. Bruce was running in the right place at the right time. He caught the broc but was then tackled.
The horn blew, ending the time of play for the emperor’s team. They had scored a point, and Richard was fortunate to have kept them from getting two.
As he trotted to his side of the field, he reprimanded himself for letting his feelings get the better of him. He wasn’t paying enough attention. His mind wasn’t in what he was doing. He was going to get himself killed.
He couldn’t do anything to help Kahlan unless he shaped up.
His men were panting, most resting by leaning over with their hands on their knees. They looked despondent.
“All right,” Richard said as he reached them, “we’ve let them have their moment of glory. Now let’s take them down.”
That brought grins all around. All the men brightened at his words.
As Richard caught the broc when the referee tossed it his way, he glanced around at his men. “Let’s show them who they’re dealing with. Play one-three then reverse it.” He quickly showed them one finger, then three, in case they couldn’t hear him over all the noise. “Go.”
As one the men broke into a dead run, immediately clustering into a knot of men around Richard. No blockers went out front, no wing men went to the sides. Instead, all the men compacted together into as tight of a formation as they could and still be able to run at full speed.
The other team looked pleased by the tactic. It was their kind of play—brute force. With their supporters cheering them on they ran headlong at the cluster of Richard’s team.
All of Richard’s men watched Jagang’s team, waiting
until they reached the prescribed square. Moments from impact, as the defenders reached that spot, Richard’s entire team suddenly broke in every direction at once.
It was such a startling move that the other players faltered, turning one way, then the other, unsure what to do as the men they were about to clobber were unexpectedly bolting every which way. Each of Richard’s men ran in a crazy zigzag course that appeared to have no rhyme or reason. The men on Jagang’s team didn’t know who to grab, who to chase, or where they were going. In an instant, the massive, focused charge had scattered like so many fireflies.
The crowd roared with delighted laughter.
Richard ran a wild course the same as the other men, except he was the one with the broc. By the time that fact sank in for the other team, Richard was already around most of them and deep into enemy territory. As two of the blockers went after him he ran for his life.
When he reached the scoring zone he heaved the broc. As soon as it left his fingers he was hit from behind, but it was too late to stop the throw. The broc sailed into the goal. Richard hit the ground with a man atop him. It was fortunate that the man had been running at full speed because his momentum tumbled him over Richard’s back.
Richard scrambled to his feet and trotted back toward his side of the field to the wild cheers of the crowd. The score was tied, but he wasn’t interested in a tie. He needed to press the advantage. The play he had devised wasn’t finished, yet. He needed to complete it.
His men, all smiles, gathered as quickly as possible. Richard didn’t need to give them a signal; he had already given them the whole play the first time. When the referee tossed him the broc they all immediately broke into a run.
Again, they formed into a tight formation as they charged across the field. This time, though, Jagang’s team, as they
raced to meet them, scattered at the last minute, ready this time to intercept all the men as they tried to take off in every direction. The crowd cheered and screamed their approval.
Rather than break apart, though, Richard’s team remained tightly packed together as they charged right up the middle of the field. The few dispersed players left within range to intercept them were mowed down by the full weight of the team. The minor defense of first two, followed by a third defender, didn’t slow Richard’s men at all. The other team, suddenly realizing what was happening, took up the pursuit. They were too late. Richard steered his men to the right goal.
As he reached the scoring zone and his men fell back into a protective shield, Richard threw the broc. He watched it in the torchlight as it arced through the night air and then went in. The crowd erupted in cheering. The horn blew, signaling the end of the play.
The referee at center field announced the score, one for the champions—Jagang’s team—and two for the challengers.
But then, before the referee had finished with the announcement and the hourglass was turned over, Richard saw him turn to something on the sidelines. It was Jagang. He was in the area that had been roped off for him. Nicci was at his side. Kahlan stood back a short distance. Jillian was with her.
As everyone waited, the referee went to the sideline and listened to the emperor a moment. He nodded and returned to center field, where he announced that the second score was ruled to have gone in after the horn blew, so it didn’t count. The score, the referee announced in a loud voice, was tied.
Part of the crowd yelled in anger, while others screamed with joy at their fortune.
Richard’s men started shouting angry objections, disputing the call. Richard strode in front of them. The noise of
the uproar of the crowd was so loud that he feared his men wouldn’t be able to hear him, so he pulled a thumb across his throat, cutting off their objections.
“You can’t change it!” he yelled at them. “Settle down! Focus!”
They stopped protesting but they weren’t happy. Richard wasn’t, either, but he knew that he couldn’t do anything about it. It had been the order of the emperor, after all, that had reversed their goal. Richard was going to have to alter his plans.
“We need to stop these men,” he said as he paced in front of his team. “When it’s our turn again, go to play two-five.” He showed them first two fingers, then five. Men nodded. “You can’t stop what just happened, but you can stop them from scoring. Then we can run our play and get back what was taken unfairly. Stop fixating on what’s done and over and put your minds ahead to what we must do.”
His men all nodded as they formed up, preparing for the other team’s charge. They were still angry but now they were ready to focus that anger on the other team.
The charge by the emperor’s team was sloppy. They were still caught up in the jubilation over their reversal of fortune. In a bone-crushing impact their point man was shaken by a coordinated block. Richard was proud of his men for the way they turned their anger around and made use of it.
In the furious struggle after the collision Johnrock came up with the broc. He tossed it to Bruce when the men chasing him got close. Bruce in turn passed the broc to Richard. Richard ran up the field and, to the delight of the crowd, used all his strength to throw from the two-point line. The broc went in. It didn’t count, of course, but the crowd roared as if it had. The cheers shook the ground. It was vindication for the stolen goal. It was as close to snubbing his nose at Jagang as Richard could come.
Their supporters in the crowd started chanting, “Four to one! Four to one! Four to one!”
The score was still officially one to one, but in the view of those who were cheering it was now four to one.
On their next charge, when the point man for the emperor’s team ran into the scoring zone and threw the broc, one of Richard’s men leaped up high and managed to deflect the broc just enough to cause it to go wide and miss the goal. When the horn blew, the score remained one to one.
On their first play, Richard was almost to the scoring zone when he was tackled. The man caught his legs in a viselike grip. As Richard hit the ground, he tossed the broc in Johnrock’s direction. Johnrock scooped it up just before a man on the other team was able to grab it.
Johnrock reached the scoring zone and threw. From the ground Richard watched as the broc went into the net, scoring a point.
Johnrock, overjoyed, waved both hands high in the air as he jumped up and down like a boy. The crowd loved it. Richard couldn’t help smiling as he untangled himself from his tackler, who delivered a painful punch in Richard’s back just before parting. Richard didn’t take the bait. He knew better than to let himself be drawn into a fight when the broc wasn’t in play.
As he caught up with Johnrock and they ran together back toward the starting zone for their next run, Richard clapped his wing man on the shoulder.
“You did good, Johnrock,” Richard yelled over the cheering.
“I brought us glory!”
Richard couldn’t help laughing. “Glory,” he agreed as he again clapped Johnrock on the back. “And a point that counts.”
As they formed up while waiting for the referee to deliver the broc, all of the men shouted their congratulations
to a beaming Johnrock. He pumped his fist, eliciting a mighty team shout, before he took his usual place at Richard’s right. Bruce took his left wing. The blockers formed a wedge heavily weighted out ahead of Johnrock. The play was meant to draw the defenders to the left side, where the defense was weakest.
As they charged up the field, the emperor’s team started going to Richard’s left, as he wanted, but at the last moment they hooked and crashed through the center of the heaviest part of the wedge. Such a tactic would not stop Richard or get them the broc. They were after something else. Richard knew there was going to be trouble when tacklers leaped over the forward blockers.
“Johnrock!” Richard yelled. “Cut right!”
Johnrock, instead, dropped his big shoulder into the teeth of the attack. Three tacklers dove low. The fourth hooked an arm around Johnrock’s neck. A fifth man, racing at full speed, hit him from the side, applying force to the fulcrum at Johnrock’s neck.
Richard felt like he was in a dream and couldn’t make his legs move fast enough.
Even as he was running with all his strength, he could hear bone break.
Her heart heavy, Kahlan watched as Richard knelt beside his fallen right wing man. The horn blew. The men from Jagang’s team quickly left their victim slumped on his side to return to their end of the field to be ready to defend.
“Is he dead?” Jillian asked.
Kahlan circled an arm around the shoulders of the girl pressed in against her left side. “I’m afraid so.”
“Why would they deliberately do such a thing?”
“It’s the way the Order plays Ja’La dh Jin. Killing is a means to get what they want.”
Kahlan could see the tears in Richard’s eyes as his men hooked their arms under his and dragged him back away from the body. If he didn’t go back to play immediately he would be ejected for delaying the game. Referee’s assistants quickly set to work dragging the lifeless form of the big man off the field.
Kahlan could hear Jagang, half a dozen paces ahead of her, chuckle.
Nicci, at his side, briefly glanced back over her shoulder. Kahlan didn’t quite know what to make of the liquid look in her blue eyes. It seemed part sadness for Richard, part bottled rage, and, somehow, part warning to Kahlan.
Kahlan hadn’t been able to speak with Nicci again since that night after she had been so terribly hurt. Ever since Jagang had made his bet with Commander Karg he had been moody and short-tempered.
Last evening, as Nicci waited in the bedchamber and Kahlan waited in the outer room of his tent, he’d met outside with some of the members of his team. Kahlan hadn’t heard everything, but it had sounded like he had given them orders that he wanted them to see to it that the point man for Karg’s team didn’t cause them any trouble.
Kahlan had had a sleepless night, worried that Richard might not live to see morning. What ever had been planned had Jagang in a lusty mood for Nicci. Kahlan and Jillian had been ordered to stay where they were on the floor in the outer room. He wanted to be alone with his Slave Queen, as he called her.
Kahlan hadn’t known what Jagang was doing to her. No matter what he was doing to her, Nicci never screamed. In his bed she always seemed to simply go numb, staring unblinking at nothing in this world as he went about his business. Kahlan understood what Nicci was doing. It was the only defense she had. As she drew inward, her outward indifference was her protection for her sanity. It would do her no good to let herself pay attention to everything that the brute was doing to her. On the other hand, her indifference enraged Jagang, often sending him into fits of violence.
Kahlan wondered if, when he started in on her, she would have the strength Nicci had.
That morning, Kahlan had wondered if the Sisters were going to have to be called yet again to save Nicci, or to heal her at least. When Jagang had emerged from the bedchamber, though, he had Nicci by her hair. He tossed her to the floor in front of him, looking pleased with himself, with her helplessness. Kahlan had been relieved that, while she
looked a bit battered and bruised, at least she hadn’t appeared grievously injured.
Out on the field Richard’s team gathered, preparing for the next play. Kahlan glanced around as legions of men still cheered their satisfaction at the man’s death. Others, though, yelled in anger, shaking fists at the emperor’s team. The air fairly crackled with tension. As the game quickly went back into action, the crowd began to settle down, at least to a degree.
Kahlan could sense, though, that the mood of the onlookers had changed. What had been universal approval of the match at hand finally getting under way had turned restless and was even in some ways beginning to look malcontent. It had started to change when Jagang had intervened over the last point Richard had scored. Jagang had overruled the referees, saying the goal had been made after the horn blew. The referees had acquiesced and voided the point, but everyone knew that the broc had clearly gone in before the horn.
None of that mattered, though. The emperor had made the call.
The red team seemed determined to play on as if they hadn’t just lost their biggest man. Out on the field they muscled their way through a line of blockers. Richard deftly sidestepped several attempts to snare him. A number of other men, though, were closing in.
Richard abruptly halted on the safe square, a place that was rarely used, preventing the man who had been about to tackle him from doing so. It was the man who had broken the wing man’s neck.
Kahlan couldn’t imagine what Richard was up to. Being on that square prevented him from being attacked as long as he remained there, but it also trapped him on an island that was swiftly being surrounded by opponents. While temporarily safe, he couldn’t score from that spot.
He would eventually have to move, but with every passing moment the territory all around him was becoming ever more unhealthy.
As the man turned to check on his teammates, who were quickly closing in, Richard shouted something to get his attention. The man turned back.
Richard, holding the broc pressed back against his chest, with his hands on either side of it, suddenly released it in an explosive throw. The heavy broc smashed squarely into the man’s face so hard that it rebounded back into Richard’s hands.
The blow had been powerful enough to partially cave in the man’s face. With his nose completely driven back into his skull, the man went limp and dropped straight down in a heap.
The crowd gasped at the unexpected turn of events.
In a rage, another man to Richard’s right lunged, even though Richard was on the safe square. The referee didn’t look inclined to step in to call a foul. Richard rolled the broc back under his left arm as he ducked to that side a little. Turning all the while to keep faced to the attack, he swung his right arm. The thick bone of his forearm chopped the man across the throat. The man grabbed for his throat as he stumbled back and collapsed. One leg kicked reflexively as he desperately gasped for air. His windpipe apparently crushed, his face began turning from red to blue.
Without pause, another towering man charged in from the left with a fist raised. Richard twisted toward him, going inside the punch and the opening in the man’s defenses, and used his momentum to help him thrust straight in with lightning speed. The powerful strike focused in the heel of his hand hit the man right over his heart. The blow was enough to stagger him back. The big man clutched his chest, looking dazed and confused, and then, as his eyes began to roll back, he crumpled to the ground.
Without any help, Richard had taken out three men who were all considerably bigger than him. She could easily see why there were so many arrows around the field pointed at him at all times.
Kahlan couldn’t begin to imagine what would happen if Richard ever got his hands on a blade.
Richard wasted no time. He bolted through the opening he had just created and headed for the goals. His men looked to have been prepared for the move. They were already stationed along his route, ready to block the tacklers going after him. Everywhere across the field men crashed together.
Kahlan could see all the faces on the entire hillside across on the other side of the field turn in unison as they watched Richard running toward the opponent’s goals, dodging some men, his blockers knocking others out of his way.
Richard, with no one close enough to bring him down, raced into the scoring zone. In the clear, he heaved the broc into the net, scoring another point. His team was once again ahead.
The crowd was swept up in the frenzy of the fast-paced action. Even Jagang had stepped forward, closer to the edge of the field, to watch, one hand fisted in anxiety at his side. His guards, too, all leaned out to watch as Richard’s team, still with time on their turn, got the broc from the referee and started another charge.
As they made it into their opponent’s territory, Richard cut left, only to be tackled. Kahlan thought that it almost looked deliberate. It reminded her of the way he had fallen in the mud so that no one would recognize him that first time they had gone to see his team.
When Richard hit the ground the broc shot from his arms. This, too, looked to her to be a little less than natural. It struck her that it looked to be part of a scheme. His left
wing man, who was racing up the field, just happened to be in the right place at the right time. He dipped and scooped up the broc as it rolled past. In an instant he was in the scoring zone and took the throw. With Richard down, it was a legal play for a wing man to attempt a score.
The broc went in the goal, setting off thunderous cheers.
The wing man threw his arms up in joy at having scored. It was something that wing men rarely had the chance to attempt, and even more rarely accomplished. While Kahlan knew that it was permitted, she’d never actually seen it done before today.
As the horn blew, signaling the end of the timed turn, Richard caught up with his left wing man and, with a proud smile, clapped him on the back. Judging by the way the wing man looked at Richard, Kahlan thought that recognition from Richard had meant just as much to the man as the goal.
The wing man was an Imperial Order soldier, not a captive like some of the other members of Richard’s team. She wondered why Richard would be so amiable with an Order soldier. Every time she started to have hopeful confidence in the man, something would happen that made her caution return.
Since the last game they had attended, when Nicci had seen the man called Ruben and spoken the name Richard, Kahlan knew that Richard was his real name. She hadn’t been able to speak a word with Nicci since then, though, so she couldn’t ask, but she suspected that Richard was really Richard Rahl—Lord Rahl.
She didn’t know if it was true, but it would certainly explain a lot, like why the man fell in the mud that first day, and why he painted his face with wild designs meant to disguise who he was, and why he told people that his name was Ruben.
It just seemed impossible, though—the Lord Rahl himself
being a captive of the Imperial Order, playing on a Ja’La team against the emperor’s team.
What really troubled her, though, was that he knew her. He had called out her name that first day he had been in a cage on a wagon in the supply train rolling into camp. She supposed it was possible that the Order had captured him without realizing who they had. The coincidence of it all, though, struck her as pretty far-fetched. She knew, though, there was likely more to it than she realized. Maybe Richard had gotten himself caught, somehow, in order to get close to her. To rescue her.
Now, she told herself, she was just being silly.
Still, she wondered why she kept finding herself at the center of so many things.
She wished she could get a chance to talk with Nicci again so that she could ask if it really was Richard Rahl.
But then, by Nicci’s reaction, by her tears at seeing him, Kahlan didn’t need to ask. Kahlan could see it written on her face.
This was the man Nicci loved.
Out of the corner of her eye, Kahlan kept track of her special guards as they looked between her and the Ja’La field. When the crowd roared, jamming fists in the air with expectant excitement, her guards leaned this way and that to see between the royal guard and out to the field as the emperor’s team took the broc for their turn to try to score. Three of their players, who had just been dragged to the sidelines, had been replaced by substitute players. By the way the three were abandoned off to the side, Kahlan knew that all three had died. Richard had killed three men in a heartbeat without any help.
She didn’t think that was going to be the end of it, either.
The emperor’s team looked to be in a blind rage as they began their charge. Bunched into a gang, they went straight
up the middle, determined to mow down anyone who got in their way. Richard’s team parted for them, then from both sides swiftly moved in behind and attacked from the rear, seizing men’s legs. Tackled in that fashion, they fell face-first in the direction they were running, making the impact all the more jarring.
One of the tackles was violent enough to break the ankle of the man on the emperor’s team. He screamed in pain. The point man, hearing the scream, was distracted for a split second. It was just long enough for him to get hit from the side by two men. He was thrown to the ground so viciously that it knocked the wind out of him and rattled his teeth. A brawl broke out over possession of the broc.
As the emperor’s team recovered, they muscled men aside and managed to keep the broc. On their feet again, they fought to get past the defenders. Several men on Richard’s team were left on the ground, rolling in pain. The crowd yelled frenzied encouragement to the emperor’s team. Their point man dodged this way and that, going around some men, knocking others aside.
Kahlan’s guards, hearing the rabid cheering, inched ever forward, trying to see what was happening. That left more empty space back away from the sideline, where Kahlan was. The press of spectators lining the slope behind, all their weight pushing forward, down toward the field, was causing the area reserved for the emperor to be squeezed in from both sides. Toward the front, where Jagang was, the royal guards kept the excited crowds to each side back, but even they were caught up in the frantic struggle on the Ja’La field; they weren’t paying as much attention behind, where the space was slowly shrinking.
Kahlan tightened her left arm protectively around Jillian, keeping her close as the special guards, having less and less space, started to inch forward where there was
more room up closer to the action. The ones who had been behind her pressed in close, squeezing past as they slowly, steadily moved toward the front.
Nicci, having been forgotten by the emperor as he became completely caught up in the action, took a step back, out of the way. That allowed Kahlan’s guards space to move forward. It looked natural, like she was merely trying not to interfere with what they wanted.
Jagang, like everyone else, cheered, groaned, cursed, and yelled at the teams on the field. Darkness had long ago settled in, lending an otherworldly mood to the event. Torches lining the edge of the field cast flickering light to the open patch of ground surrounded by a sea of black. Between many of the torches archers watched with arrows nocked. But even they were caught up in the emotions of the game, watching the action more than they seemed to be watching the captives.