Nicci reached up and felt the side of her face. She moved her jaw side to side, testing how it worked.

"I think I'm all right."

"You need to get up. I don't think we're going to be able to stay here for long. Richard started his war."

Through obvious pain, Nicci smiled. She had never doubted that he would.

Kahlan stood, helping Jillian pull a still unsteady Nicci to her feet. Jillian put her arm around Nicci's waist, helping steady her. Nicci draped an arm over the girl's shoulders for support.

Jagang, glancing back at Kahlan, saw her helping Nicci up. He pointed at Kahlan with one hand while with the other seizing the shirt of one of the special guards. He shoved the man in Kahlan's direction.

"Keep your eye on her," he growled. "All of you!"

The men, the only ones there who could see her-besides Jagang and Richard-abandoned their efforts in helping to hold back the droves of brawling soldiers and scrambled to do the emperor's bidding.

In the confusion and chaos, Jagang's regular guards, along with a contingent of his ever-present personal bodyguards, were furiously fending off the churning, yelling, battling throng all around them. Jagang's guards were all big, muscular men, yet it was all they could do to try to keep the regular soldiers pushed back. Inch by inch, though, they were beginning to lose ground.

Those regular soldiers weren't really interested in battling with Jagang's guards, or with the emperor for that matter-they were fully occupied with fighting one another, lost to the passions of the drunken brawl-but that fight was nonetheless pressing steadily in toward the emperor.

Jagang shouted at his guards, angry that they were being too indulgent with men who clearly weren't heeding commands. He ordered the guards to gut the men if they didn't move back. Kahlan didn't think that Jagang was at all worried about his safety. It was more a matter of indignation at their lack of veneration for their emperor.

The guards didn't hesitate. Big, experienced men who had been busy pushing soldiers back switched instead to killing those who pressed in toward them. Jagang snatched up a short sword when one of his bodyguards, concerned that it might come to a matter of self-defense, offered it to him. Jagang vented his rage by hacking at men to either side. Over the roar of combat, their screams could hardly be heard.

It wasn't so much that the nearby soldiers involved in the riot were deliberately disobeying the orders to move back-the reality was they had no real choice in the matter. They were being compressed by the weight of the hillside of men flowing downward. As the entire crowd was completely consumed in battle, the men at the bottom near the Ja'La field were caught in that downward crush and were being helplessly carried onto the deadly blades of Jagang's guards.

Kahlan glanced out at the riot on the Ja'La field. She blinked at what she saw.

Richard had a bow.

He already had an arrow nocked. He had a second arrow held at the ready in his teeth.

Jagang stood in the center of his guards, a bloody short sword gripped tightly in a fist hanging at his side as he shouted commands. He glared with black eyes at the soldiers out beyond, a great many of them belligerently drunk, as they fought and died over who had won Ja'La dh Jin. Jagang pointed with his free hand, yelling orders to his guards, directing individuals into gaps in the effort to keep the mob back.

Kahlan looked beyond and saw Richard with the bowstring drawn back to his cheek. In another blink, the arrow was away.

She held her breath as she watched the razor-sharp, steel-bladed arrow fly. Almost as fast as the first was away, another followed.

Just before the first could hit home, one of Jagang's guards turned to urgent calls for assistance from other guards fighting back a knot of soldiers who had broken through their lines on the other side. The man dashed past in front of the emperor to help. As he ran past he took the first arrow meant for the emperor. It hit under his right arm, in the side of the chest, between the front and back plate of thick leather armor. The arrow penetrated deep enough to have reached his heart. Judging from the way the man faltered, it had.

In surprise, Jagang turned a little, taking a half a step back when the man gasped as he collapsed. That half step turned out to be enough to save the emperor's life, because the second arrow hit Jagang in the right side of his chest. Had he not moved when the first man was hit, he would have taken the second arrow dead center in his heart.

Kahlan couldn't believe that with such clamor, disorder, confusion, furious fighting, rage, fear, pain, and death all around, Richard could make such a shot.

At the same time she couldn't imagine him missing.

With an arrow buried deep in his chest, Jagang staggered back. As he dropped to his knees, his guards frantically rushed to surround him and form a wall shielding him from the possibility of any more arrows finding their way in. Kahlan lost sight of the emperor behind the tight screen of bodyguards.

She used the moment of frozen shock on the faces of her special guards to slam the knife in her right hand into the right kidney of one of these guards as he watched Jagang's fate unfolding. She thrust the blade in her left hand into the gut of a man to her left as he turned to her. She pulled the knife up, slicing him open. A third guard turned from the emperor's struggle and charged toward her. Jillian tripped him as he rushed forward. Kahlan caught his throat with her knife as he fell past, and with one quick pull cut it open from ear to ear.

She turned and saw Richard across the field.

He had a sword.

As another guard stepped in, his hands reaching out to disarm her, Nicci slammed her knife into his back. He twisted around, crying out in shock as he reached back over his shoulder at the wound. She stabbed him twice in the chest-rapid, heavy blows. He stumbled and fell, trying to throw his arms around her to hold himself up, but couldn't and toppled to the ground. For not being an expert in using knives, Nicci appeared to have worked it out.

A fifth man grabbed Jillian, intending to use her as a shield as he came for Kahlan. Kahlan slashed the forearm wrapped around Jillian's neck, cutting through muscle and tendons down to bone. When he flinched with a cry of pain, Jillian swiftly pulled away from him. As he lunged at Kahlan, she used his forward momentum to impale him on the knife in her other hand. She jerked the blade upward until it hit ribs. His eyes opened wide in surprise. She stepped aside as he fell past her, his insides spilling out when he hit the cold hard ground. In all the confusion she didn't see the sixth special guard, but she knew there was one.

The mass of men on the slope behind Richard was continually slipping downward, flooding into the bowl of the Ja'La field. Clusters of soldiers, as they fought, swarmed out onto the flat field. Most of the men with bows had already been rolled under by the churning throng. Because many of the men with the torches had long since been plowed down as well by the battle descending on them, it was getting darker. It was becoming difficult to see.

The Ja'La field was being inundated with combatants. Men fought for their lives while others fought to take life. Yet others, drunk after a day of celebrating at Ja'La matches, fought for the sake of fighting. Men grievously injured littered the ground. Everywhere men who had been hurt screamed in pain. No one helped them.

There were soon so many men with their faces covered in red that it was becoming difficult to keep track of Richard. What only a brief time ago made him stand out now served to hide him. Only moments ago he was conspicuous; now he was a phantom among the chaos.

None of the soldiers appeared to be slowing down or holding back. They were enraged and in the mood to kill anyone and everyone. Men swinging axes took off arms, split skulls, and chopped chests open. Men with swords ran others through.