It seemed that the trick of taking to the forests just before they changed their expected route and being careful to stay out of sight from the sky had worked. It was possible that they had succeeded in slipping out from under Nicholas the Slide's surveillance. If they really had escaped his observation, then he wouldn't know where to begin looking for them.
Richard briefly squeezed Kahlan's hand and then started for the opening in the town wall. Cara crouched close at his other side. Tom was bringing up the rear, along with Jennsen, making sure there were no surprises from behind.
They had left Betty not only tied up, but confined to a makeshift pen to be sure she didn't follow after them and give them away at the wrong moment. The goat had been unusually distraught to be left behind, but with lives at stake they couldn't risk Jennsen's goat causing trouble. She would be happy enough after they returned.
When they reached the fields close to the town gates, Richard motioned for everyone to get down and stay where they were. Along with Tom, Richard moved up to the gates, taking cover in the shadow of the wall. There was a soldier just inside the gate, pacing slowly in his lonely nighttime sentry duty. He wasn't being very careful, or he would not be doing such duty in the light of the torch.
As the soldier turned to walk away from them, Tom slipped up behind the man and swiftly silenced him. As Tom dragged the dead man through the gates to hide him in the darkness outside the wall, Richard moved in through the gates, staying in the shadows and away from the torch burning outside the sleeping house. The door to the sleeping house stood open, but no light or sound came from inside. This late, the men were bound to be asleep.
He moved past the first long building to the second, and there came upon another guard. Quickly, silently, Richard seized the man and cut his throat, holding him tight as he struggled. When he finally went limp, Richard laid him in the darkness at the head of the second sleeping house, around the corner from the torchlight.
In the distance, the men had already swarmed over the gates, holding them up while Anson and Owen worked quickly at cutting the ropes that acted as hinges. In moments, both sections of gate were freed. Richard could hear the soft grunts of effort as the heavy gates were manhandled around by the two gangs of men.
Jennsen handed Richard his bow, the string already strung. She handed him one of the special arrows, holding the rest at the ready for him. Kahlan slipped up to the torch on the pole outside the first building and lit several small torches, handing each of them off to the men. She kept one for herself.
Richard nocked the arrow and then glanced around at the faces seeming to float before him in the wavering torchlight. In answer to the unspoken question, they all nodded that they were ready. He checked the men balancing the two gates and saw their nod. The bow in one hand, with his fist holding the arrow in place, Richard gave hand signals to the men, starting them moving.
What had been a slow, careful approach from the woods into the town suddenly transformed into a headlong rush.
Richard held the head of the arrow nocked in his bow in the flame of the torch Kahlan held out for him. As soon as it caught, he ran to the open door of the sleeping house, leaned into the darkness, and fired the arrow toward the back.
As the blazing arrow flew the length of the building, it illuminated row upon row of men sleeping on the bed of straw. The arrow landed at the far end, spilling flame across the straw. A few heads lifted at the confusing sight. Jennsen handed Richard another. He immediately drew string to cheek and the arrow shot toward the middle of the interior.
As Richard pulled back from the doorway, two men with torches, dripping flaming drops of pitch, heaved them just inside. They hissed as they flew through the air, landing amid the sleeping men, bouncing and tumbling through the straw, igniting a wall of flame.
In a matter of only a few heartbeats since the attack started, the first sleeping house was set afire from one end to the other. The largest blaze, by design, was the fire spread by the pitch-laden torches, at the end of the building nearest the door. Confused cries came from inside, muted by the thick walls. The sleeping soldiers scrambled to their feet.
Richard checked that the men with the heavy gates were coming; then he ran around the sleeping house to the second building. Jennsen, following close behind, handed him an arrow, the flames around its head wrapped in oil-soaked cloth making a whooshing sound as she ran.
One of his men pulled the torch from the stand outside the building where the guard Richard killed had been patrolling. Richard leaned in the doorway only to see a big man charging at him out of the dark interior.
Richard pressed his back against the doorjamb and kicked the man squarely in the chest, driving him back.
Richard drew the bowstring back and shot the flaming arrow off into the interior. As it lit the interior in its flight through the building, he could see that some of the men had been awakened and were getting up.
Turning to take the second flaming arrow from Jennsen, he saw smoke pouring up from the first building. As soon as he drew string to cheek and loosed the second arrow, he leaned away and men heaved the torches in.
One torch fell back out of the doorway. It had bounced off the chest of a man rushing for the doorway to see what was happening. The pitch from the torch caught his greasy beard afire. He let out a bloodcurdling scream.
Richard kicked him back inside. In an instant, men by the dozens were racing for the door, not only to escape the burning building, but to meet the attack. Richard saw the flash of weapons being drawn.
He sprang back from the doorway as the men carrying the heavy section of gate rushed in. They turned the gate sideways and rammed it in under the eaves, but before they could bring the bottom down to wedge it against the ground, the weight of bellowing men inside crashed into the section of gate and drove it back. The men carrying it fell back, the weight knocking them from their feet, the gate landing atop them.
Suddenly, men were pouring from the doorway. Richard's men were ready and fell on them, driving the wooden weapons into their soft underbellies and snapping the handles off as man after man spilled out of the doorway.
Standing to the side of the door, others used their maces to bash in the skulls of soldiers who emerged. When one soldier came out with his sword raised, the man to the side clubbed his arm as another rushed in and drove a wooden stake in up under his ribs. The more men who fell at the doorway, the more those trying to get out were slowed and could be dispatched.
The soldiers were so stunned to see these people fighting that in some cases they fought back only ineffectually. As a soldier leaped over the bodies in the doorway and lifted a sword, a man jumped on his back and seized his arm while another stabbed him. Another, crying orders, charged Jennsen, only to have the bolt of a crossbow fired into his face. A few soldiers escaped the burning building and managed to slip past Richard's men only to meet Cara's Agiel. Their screams, worse than the cries of men on fire, briefly brought the gaze of every man, from both sides of the battle.
Fallen knives and swords were scooped up by the men of the town and turned on the men from the Imperial Order. Richard fired an arrow into the center of the chest of a man emerging from the smoke that rolled out of the doorway. As he was falling, a second arrow felled the man behind him. As more men rushed out, they fell over those piled around the doorway and were hacked to death with commandeered axes or stabbed with confiscated swords.