Phantom (29 page)

“In addition, Emperor Jagang was a dream walker, a man with powers handed down to him through ancient magic. He used that ability to invade the minds of others not only to gain knowledge, but to control them. Today, as you know, he controls a number of gifted people, Sisters of the Light and the Dark among them. He thus commands both forces of steel and magic.”

“Lord Rahl,” one of the older officers said, interrupting Richard’s pacing speech, “you dismiss our men too easily. Most of our army is made up of D’Haran forces and the rest we have trained. These men know what is at stake. They are not green recruits. They are experienced soldiers who know how to fight. We also have Verna and her Sisters, who had proven themselves. Along with these skilled soldiers and Sisters of the Light, we have right on our side.”

“The Imperial Order is not predestined to lose just because they are evil. In the long run evil will turn in on itself, but for our lives and the lives of those we protect that is little comfort. Evil can still dominate mankind for a thousand years, two thousand, or even more before it eventually dies of its own poison.”

Richard started pacing again as he spoke with great passion. “There are times in history when things might have gone either way but for the valiant efforts of some individuals, I grant you that. In fact, I am counting on it. This is the time when we decide what will be our future. This is the time when we must do what must be done, despite how painful it will be, if we and our children are to have a future. Our future, freedom’s future, hinges on us and what we do, on whether or not we succeed.”

“Lord Rahl,” the older officer said with quiet assurance, “the men know that our backs are to the wall. They will fight, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

Richard realized that the men weren’t understanding what he was getting at. He stopped and faced the men as he clasped his hands behind his back. In the back of his mind he could see the ghostly image that Shota had shown him of the bloody end of it all. It was like a weight trying to drag him under.

Richard finally spoke. “I’ve always said that I can’t lead us into a final battle with the Order or we would lose. Things have happened since last I was with you men that make me believe that now more than ever before.”

Rumblings of discontent matched the rumblings of thunder filling the gloomy afternoon air. Before they could object or take him off on a tangent, Richard went on.

“The army of the Order is very soon going to be advancing up into D’Hara from the south on their way to the People’s Palace. You men are advancing south to meet them. They know that. They expect that. They want that. We are marching to Jagang’s orders. He is controlling our tactics. He is drawing us into a battle he knows we can’t win and that he can’t lose.”

Voices of protest erupted, all shouting that the future wasn’t fixed, that they could prevail.

Richard held up a hand to halt the voices. “While the future isn’t fixed, reality is what it is. As soldiers you plan your tactics according to what you know, not what you wish.

“Even if by some miracle we were able to win this looming battle, it would turn out not to be decisive. Such a battle would end up merely being a fight we won at a great cost, while the Order would simply come right back at us again with an even larger force. Even if we were to win the impending battle—which I know we can’t—we would then have to fight another battle against even more men, and then another.

“Why? Because each time we fight them we lose men and get weaker. We have little reserves to call upon. Each time Jagang needs them, he gets a steady stream of nearly limitless reinforcements and only gets stronger.

“We would lose in the end for one very simple reason: no war is ever won defensively. While a defensive battle can be won, a war cannot be won defensively.”

“So,” an officer asked, “what do you propose? That we sue for peace?”

Richard dismissed the idea with a casual, if irritated, gesture. “The Order would grant no peace terms. Maybe long ago, in the beginning, they would have accepted our surrender, allowed us to bow and kiss their boots, allowed us to put on the chains of slavery, but not now. Now they want only a victory bought and paid for with our blood. But what difference would it have made? Either way, the end result would be the same: the murder and subjugation of us and our people. How we lose, for the most part, is irrelevant. Surrender or defeat ends with the same result. One way or the other all is lost.”

“Then…what?” the man stammered in a heated voice. “Fight on until we are finally killed or captured?”

The men stared at the red-faced officer who had spoken. These men had been fighting the Order for a long time. They were not hearing anything they didn’t already know. Still, fighting the invaders was all they could do. It was their duty. It was the only thing they knew.

Richard turned and took in Cara. Standing there in her red leather, her feet spread, her hands clasped behind her back, she looked like she believed she could take on the Order all by herself.

Richard gestured to the woman standing beside Cara. “Nicci, here, once served on their side.” When he heard the whispers about an enemy among them, he added, “Much the same as all of you were once in the service of tyranny when you served Darken Rahl, and some of you even his father, Panis Rahl. You had no choice. Darken Rahl did not care what you wanted to do with your lives. He only cared that you followed his orders. Now, when given a choice, you have committed to our cause. Nicci has as well.

“The men of the Order are different. You were fighting because you were made to under threat of violence or even death. They are fighting because they believe in a cause. They hunger to fight. They want to be a part of their war effort.

“Since she was there, with Jagang, Nicci has firsthand knowledge. She has seen things that may help put it into perspective for you.”

Richard turned again to Nicci. She looked like a statue, her skin smooth and fair, her blond hair tumbled down over her shoulders. There was nothing about her face, her figure, that Richard would have changed if he were the one to carve a statue of her. She was a picture of beauty, who had seen ugliness beyond imagining.

“Nicci, please tell these men what will happen to them if they are captured by the Imperial Order.”

Richard had no idea what she would say, what she knew, but he did know, especially from the things Jebra had told them, that the Order had only contempt for life.

“The Order does not execute their captives immediately.” With deadly calm, Nicci glided one step closer to all the men staring at her. She waited at Richard’s side until the silence was painful and she had the undivided attention of every man before her. “First,” she said, “every man captured is castrated.”

A collective gasp went up from the assembled men.

“After that, after they have suffered unendurable agony and humiliation, the ones still alive are put to torture. The ones who survive the torture are finally put to death in one brutal fashion or another.

“Those who surrender to the Order without a fight are spared such treatment. That is the design behind the cruelty toward captives—to strike fear into a potential adversary so that they will surrender without a fight. Their treatment of civilians in captured cities is just as brutal and it has the same goal in mind. As a result, many cities have fallen to the Order without a fight.

“You men have fought them long and hard. You would not be spared any of it. If you are caught by Jagang’s forces there is no hope for you. You will be made to wish with all your hearts that you had never been born. Death will be your only release.

“Not that it matters. Life under the Order is not much different than waiting for death at the hands of the Order. Life under the Order is a slow, grinding death in itself. It just takes longer; the misery of it stretches out over years.

“Only those who hate life, and everything good, prosper. The Order, in fact, fosters and encourages those who hate the good aspects of life. Their teachings are, after all, formed from a bitter hatred for the good. The environment such beliefs create is one of universal misery. The haters relish the misery of others, since the good angers them. If captured, these haters would be your masters.”

The men stood in stunned silence. In that silence, Richard heard the gentle patter of rain on the awning stretched overhead. The storm was rolling in on them.

Nicci spoke offhandedly into the silence. “The fried testicles of their enemies are a prized treat for the soldiers of the Imperial Order. The camp followers will scour a battlefield after a battle, looking for loot and any wounded enemy still alive that they can castrate. Those precious, bloody gems harvested from a living enemy are a valuable and sought-after commodity during the drunken celebration after a victory. The soldiers believe that such a delicacy gives them greater strength and virility. Afterwards, they turn their attention to their women captives.”

Richard pinched the bridge of his nose between a thumb and first finger. “Anything else?”

Nicci raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that enough?”

Richard heaved a sigh as he let his hand drop. “I guess so.”

He turned back to the men. “The simple truth is that there is no way you can win the coming battle. You are going to lose.”

Richard took a deep breath and finally uttered the unspeakable words he had come to say.

“That is why there will be no final battle. We will not fight Emperor Jagang and his army of the Imperial Order. As Lord Rahl, leader of the D’Haran Empire, I refuse to allow such an act of pointless self-destruction. We will not fight them.

“Instead, I have come to disperse our army. There will be no final battle. Jagang will have the New World unopposed.”

Richard saw tears filling the eyes of many a man.

Richard’s words were received like a slap.

An angry officer shouted, “Then why should we fight?” He swept an arm around at his fellows. “We’ve been at this war for years. Many of our fellow soldiers are no longer here, with us, because they have sacrificed their lives to preserve our cause and loved ones. If there is no chance, if we are just going to lose in the end, then why have we bothered to fight? Why should we bother to continue in this struggle?”

Richard smiled bitterly. “That’s the whole point.”

“What point?” the man growled.

“If people see no chance for triumph, no chance to win, and see instead that they face only ruin and death, then they begin to lose their will to fight. If they see that they have no chance to spread their beliefs, that they face only death if they continue to try to do so, then they will begin to want to forget all about such a war.”

If anything, the man was only getting angrier, as were many of the other officers. “So you’re telling us to forget about the war? That we can’t win against the will of the Order? That since we can’t win there is nothing to fight for?”

Richard clasped his hands behind his back as he lifted his chin with resolve. He waited until he was sure that he had every ear.

“No. I’m telling you that I want to make the people of the Old World feel that way.”

The men frowned in confusion, muttering questions among themselves. They quickly quieted down as Richard went on.

“Jagang is bringing his army up into D’Hara. He wants to meet us in battle. Why? Because he believes he can defeat us. I believe he is right. I don’t believe this because you men lack anything in bravery, training, strength, or skill, but simply because I know how vast his resources are. I’ve spent time down in the Old World. I know how vast the place is. To an extent, because I have traveled through the Old World, I know how many
people they have, how much livestock, crops, and other assets. I’ve seen these things on a scale I’ve never seen before. They have reserves you cannot even begin to imagine.

“Jagang has amassed an enormous force of savage men who are devoted to their beliefs. They intend to crush everyone and everything opposing them. They lust to be conquering heroes, to spread their faith. Jagang has been provided with everything his experience tells him he will need, and then he doubled it. Just to be certain, he then doubled it again.

“Jagang does not hold perverse moral notions of warfare fought by employing no more assets than an opponent possesses—of some kind of fabricated fairness imposed on the act of mortal combat. He has no interest in an equal contest—nor should he. He is interested only in mastering us. That is his task.

“To that end, they want us to defend from the position of our greatest vulnerability, fight from our weakest footing—on the battlefield, in a traditional final battle. That is what all of Jagang’s efforts have been dedicated to because it’s what everyone expects. They want to meet us this way because we don’t stand a chance against their numbers. There is simply no way that we have enough forces to prevail. They will then crush us.

“Afterwards, they will celebrate their great victory—as if the accomplishment was ever in doubt—by frying up all your testicles and then in a drunken orgy they will rape your wives and sisters and daughters!”

Richard leaned toward the men and jabbed a finger at his temple. “Think! Are you so mired on the concept of a traditional final battle that you have forgotten its purpose? Are you putting the ‘the way it’s always been done’ ahead of the reason for doing it? The sole reason for such a battle is to prevail over the enemy, to settle the matter once and for all. That concept of a final battle has evolved into thinking that it’s the way it must be done because that is the way it has always been done.

“Stop being pointlessly tied to that idea. Think. Stop being blinded by what you have done before. Stop throwing yourselves into your graves as if by rote. Think—
think
—about how to accomplish our objective.”

“You mean to say that you have a better idea than fighting them?” a younger officer asked. Like most of the men, he looked truly puzzled.

Richard took a breath in an effort to get a grip on his temper. He lowered his voice and looked among all the sober faces as he went on.

“Yes. Instead of doing the expected and throwing ourselves into a final battle, I simply want to destroy them. That is, after all, the root objective of a grand final battle. If such a battle will not accomplish that objective, then we must find another way.

“Unlike those who fight for the beliefs of the Order, none of us needs to brag about a glorious victory on the field of battle. There is no glory in such things. There is simply success or failure. Failure means a new dark age. Success means we live free. Civilization hangs in the balance. It’s as simple as that.

“There is no narrowly defined field of battle in such a struggle for life, such a struggle for our very survival against men driven by a desire to murder us because they think we have no right to exist. Such a struggle is not a fight over a plot of ground, a war over turf, but is based in the minds of men, based in the very ideas that motivate them.

“Our loved ones will not be better served by a victory on a battlefield; they will only be served if we prevail in this struggle of ideas.”

General Meiffert finally lifted a hand to speak. “Lord Rahl, if not by meeting them in combat, then how do you propose we accomplish such a task against a foe that you have just explained is so vast that it is unbeatable? After all, even if it is their beliefs that drive them, it is their swords that we must deal with.”

Men nodded, happy that their general had asked the question they all had in mind. It was also the question Richard had been waiting for. He had discouraged their hope of a victory in a traditional battle by throwing out their mindset. Now he had to show them how to win the war.

As the drumbeat of rain on the tarp overhead increased, Richard, hands clasped behind his back, appraised all the faces watching him. “You must be the thunder and lightning of freedom. You must be vengeance unleashed against a people with corrupt ideas that have not just allowed evil to dwell in their hearts, but authorized and advocated it.

“We must fight the war our way. We must fight it for what it really is—not armies on a field of battle acting as surrogates for ideas, but a war for the future of mankind.

“As such, it is a war in which the Old World is totally committed, in which everyone on their side has dedicated themselves to the struggle. They are passionate about their cause. They
believe
in what they are doing. They think they have right on their side, that they are acting morally,
that they are fulfilling the Creator’s wishes, and so they are justified in murdering whoever they wish in order to define how mankind will live.

“They are all investing their property, their labor, their wealth, and their lives in the struggle. Their people—not just their army—want to subjugate us and make us bend to their beliefs. They want us to be slaves to their faith, just as they are. They encourage their army to attack innocent people here, in the New World, in order to force their beliefs on us. They want us, as followers of the same faith as they, to sacrifice our lives to that faith, to live the lives they wish us to live, to dictate what our children will believe…by force if necessary.

“All the people who believe in the ways of the Order, who contribute, who encourage, who support, who pray for their soldiers to crush us, are part of their war effort. Each of those people adds something to their cause. As such, they are just as much the enemy as the soldiers swinging the swords for them. They are the ones who feed their blades with a supply of young men and everything they need to come after us, from food to moral support and encouragement.”

Richard pointed south. “In fact, those people who make this war possible are perhaps even more of an enemy because each one is a silent enabler who wishes us harm from afar, who hates by choice, who believes that there is no consequence for them forcing their will on us.

“Loot and plunder goes back to reward their support. Slaves are sent back to labor for them. Blood and tears are extracted to enforce their demands for faith.

“These people have made the choice to believe, made the choice to think that they have a right to our lives, made the choice to do anything necessary to rule us. There must be consequences to the choices they have made, especially when their choices ruin the lives of others who have done them no harm.”

Richard opened his hands. “And how are we to accomplish this?”

He drew his hands into fists. “We must bring this war home to the people who support and encourage it. It must not simply be the lives of our friends, our families, our loved ones who are thrown into the bloody cauldron these people of the Old World stoke. It must now be their lives as well.

“They see this as a struggle for the future of mankind. I intend to see that it is. I want them to fully understand that if they set out to murder and subjugate us—for whatever reason—then there will be consequences.

“From this day forward, we will fight a real war, a total war, a war without mercy. We will not impose pointless rules on ourselves about what is ‘fair.’ Our only mandate is to win. That is the only way we, our loved ones, our freedom will survive. Our victory is all that is moral. I want any supporter of the Order to pay the price for their aggression. I want them to pay with their fortunes, their future, their very lives.

“The time has come to go after these people with nothing but cold black rage in our hearts.”

Richard lifted a fist. “Crush their bones to blood and dust!”

There was a moment of silence as everyone took a collective breath, and then a thunderous cheer erupted, as if they had all secretly known that they had no chance to succeed and that they were doomed to face only death and failure in the end, but now they had been shown that there was a way. There was, at last, a real chance to save their homes and loved ones, to save the future.

Richard let the revelry go on for a time, then held up a hand to make them listen as he went on.

“The army of the Order has the support of the people of their homeland. The soldiers of the Order each know that their families, friends, and neighbors support them. The men of the Order need to hear from those back in the Old World. What I want the men of the Order to hear are wails of agony. I want them to know that their homes are being gutted, their cities and towns leveled, their businesses and crops destroyed, and their loved ones left with nothing.

“The Order preaches that life in this world is nothing but misery. Make it so. Strip away the thin veneer of civilization they so despise.”

Richard looked to Verna and the women with her, Sisters of the Light, all. “They hate magic; make them terrified of it. They think those with magic must be destroyed; make them believe that they can’t be. They want a world without magic; make them wish only not to anger us ever again. They want to conquer; make them want only to surrender.”

As the lightning crackled through the gloomy afternoon air, and the wind-driven rain beat against the awning overhead, Richard turned his attention back to the men. When the latest crackle of thunder died out, he went on.

“To accomplish our purpose, we must have a coordinated plan aimed at every facet of the threat. To this end, some of our forces must be devoted to
the important goal of hunting and killing their supply trains. Those trains are essential to the Order’s survival. They not only get the reinforcements they need, but those trains send a steady stream of supplies that they must have in order to survive. The Imperial Order forces plunder as they go, but it’s nowhere near enough to sustain them. Their overwhelming size is also a vulnerability. We must deny them those supplies they need to survive here in such numbers. We must cut that vital link. If the Imperial Order’s soldiers starve to death they are just as dead. Any Order soldier who dies of starvation is one less we have to worry about. That’s all that matters to us.

“Also, the recruits coming up from the south will be much more vulnerable since they will not yet have joined up with experienced men, or be in massive numbers. They are poorly trained and little more than young thugs going off to rape and pillage. Slaughter them before they go north and have the chance. It will be ever more difficult to enlist new recruits if they are being killed on their own soil before they can ever go off to kill helpless strangers. Even better if they are small units just assembling in their home towns. Bring the war to them. Kill them before they have a chance to bring it to us. If young men know that if they volunteer they will never get to be heroes, never get their hands on plunder and young captive women, and see that they will not make it far before they are set upon by men who don’t fight as they expected, don’t throw themselves into a futile final battle against impossible odds, their passion for joining the fight will turn icy cold. If it doesn’t, then they can die, too, before they ever have a chance to join the army to the north. Seeing the bodies of these young heroes-to-be rotting on their doorsteps will help us crush the spirit of the people of the Old World.”

Richard appraised the intent gazes before going on. “The idea of a final battle dies here, dies today. Today we dissolve into thin air. After today there will be no D’Haran Empire army that the Imperial Order can engage in a final battle and destroy. They want to do this, after all, in order to strip our people of our protection, leaving them naked and vulnerable. We are not going to allow that. Today we start fighting this war a new way—our way—a way rationally thought out, a way that will win.

“I want everyone in the Old World to fear you as if you were avenging spirits. Beginning today, you will become the phantom D’Haran legions.

“No one will know where you are. No one will know when you will strike. No one will know where you will strike next. But I want everyone
in the Old World to know without any doubt whatsoever that you will come after them and you will strike as if the underworld itself were about to open up and annihilate them. I want them to fear the phantom D’Haran legions as if you are death itself.