Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

"Richard!" she cried as she again reached out for him. "Richard, I love you more than life! I love you so much. You're everything to me. You always have been."

Sobs caught her breath, turning them to gasps.

"Richard… I need you so badly."

His heart was breaking. He felt that he was failing her.

A soldier seized Richard by the hair.

"No!" Kahlan screamed, holding out a hand. "No! Please no! Somebody please help him! Dear spirits, somebody, please!"

The soldier leaned down, a cruel smile twisting his grime-streaked face.

"Don't worry, I'll see to her… personally." He laughed in Richard's ear.

"Please," Richard heard himself say, "please… no."

"Dear spirit, please, somebody help him!" Kahlan cried to those around her.

She could do nothing and she knew it. There was no chance for him and she knew it. She was reduced to begging for a miracle. That, in itself, fed the flames of hot dread burning out of control within him. This was, the end of everything.

"She's a real looker," the soldier said as he leered across the way at Kahlan, proving what Richard knew — that no miracle was at hand.

"Please… leave her be."

The soldier behind him laughed. That was what he had wanted to hear.

Richard was choking on the sob welling up in his throat. He couldn't breathe past it. Tears ran down his face along with the rain. She was the only woman he had ever loved, the one person who meant everything to him, meant more than life itself to him.

Without Kahlan there was no life, there was only existence. She was his world.

Without Kahlan life was empty.

Without him, he knew, Kahlan's life would be just as empty.

He saw other women not far from Kahlan, all being held by soldiers, all screaming for their men. He saw them saying things much like the things Kahlan was saying, offering the same words of love, the same calls for someone to save them. The soldiers taunted the men kneeling in the mud with vile oaths.

Seeing the women in the hands of the soldiers, one of the kneeling men to Richard's right struggled hard enough to earn himself a lightning-quick stab to the gut. It didn't kill him, but it was enough to keep him from fighting while he was made to wait his turn. As he knelt stiff and still, his wide eyes stared down at his own pink, glistening insides slowly bulging out of the gash. The screams of the man's wife seemed like they could have split the clouds above.

The man immediately to Richard's left gasped his last breath, thrashing in uncoordinated movements as the soldier holding up the man's head sawed the large knife back and forth across the victim's exposed throat. When finished, the soldier growled with the effort of heaving the dead weight back into the open pit. Richard heard the body thud down in the bottom of the open grave atop other bodies. He could hear gurgling gasps coming from the dark hole.

"Your turn," the soldier holding Richard said as he stepped around behind him to assume the role of executioner. The man leaned close. His breath stank of ale and sausage. "I need to finish this. I've a meeting with your lovely wife as soon as I'm done with you. Kahlan, isn't it? Yes, that's right — one of the other women confessed that your wife's name was Kahlan. Don't you worry, lad, I won't give Kahlan much of a chance to grieve, reminiscing about you. I'll have her full attention — I can promise you that. After I've had my satisfaction from her, others will have their turn on her."

Richard wanted to break the man's neck.

"Think about that as your wicked soul slides into the dark, eternal agony of the underworld, as you fall into the cold, merciless grasp of the Keeper. That's where all your kind goes — to the justice of eternal suffering — and that's as it should be, seeing as how we've all sacrificed everything to come up here to this forsaken land so we can bring divine Light and the law of the Order to all you selfish heathens. Your sinful way of life, your mere existence, offends the Creator — and it offends those of us who bow to Him."

The man was working himself up into a righteous rage.

"Do you have any idea what I've sacrificed for the salvation of the souls of your people? My family went hungry, went without — sacrificed — so that they could send everything to our courageous troops. My brother and I gave ourselves over to the fight for our cause and everything we believe in. We both came north to do our duty to our emperor and our Creator. We both devoted our lives to the cause of bringing goodness to you people. We fought in countless bloody battles against those who resist our efforts on behalf of what is right and just. We saw countless of our brethren die in those battles.