Stone 41

**Chapter 41**

Kahlan wakes up. It's been two hours, and when she comes out of her tent, Ryan and Looey #2 are there, along with a bound and gagged Mosle. It seems that Looey #2 had all the others killed, but brought Mosle back for Kahlan to murder personally. I'm not quite sure what the point of that was, but...oh, it's so we can have the following scene, of course.

Instead of killing Mosle, Kahlan mindrapes him and orders him to tell her what he was planning to do. Mosle babbles that he was planning to take his boys to the Imperial Order and join up with them, and tell them everything he could about the Army of Children, because he didn't want to die. Kahlan orders him to die, and he does.

Okay, BULLSHIT! I'm sorry, but I'm not swallowing this latest bit of Suecromancy. We were lead to believe that, not just Mosle, but all of the seventy-six men who were murdered (let's call it what it is) were fully willing to give their lives in a hopeless assault on the Evil Wagoneers' army, out of loyalty to their oaths, vengeance for their slaughtered and mutilated friends and family, and a desire to keep this sort of atrocity from happening again. Fair enough; I can believe that. But then we're expected to believe that these 76 strawmen suddenly decided to throw all that away – the oaths, the vengeance, the loyalty, the heroic defense of others – and not only flee the Army of Children, but actually **join with the people responsible for the atrocity.**

And the reason for this sudden, drastic shift of behavior?

They don't want to serve under a woman.

…

\~/\~/\~/\~/\~/

I have no words. I literally have no words for how stupid and insulting this is. This is like the French Resistance in World War Two suddenly switching sides and deciding to work for Hitler just because they didn't like Churchill, or Roosevelt, or some other Allied leader. The sheer scale of the stupidity boggles the mind.

And the cherry on top of the Stupid Sundae is, of course, Kahlan exhibiting her Always Right No Matter What Sue ability.

\*sigh\*

Anyway...Ryan asks Kahlan what she would have done if Mosle had proved to be innocent. Kahlan replies that she *“probably would have taken that knife you offered, and killed you.”*

...

gvbf.kjgjv[yugvjh'kvcb ayhpou

WHAT THE HELL? WHAT KIND OF THING IS THAT TO SAY? WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN? WHY WOULD KAHLAN SAY A THING LIKE THAT?

\~/\~/

I'm going to ignore that last bit because every time I think about it my brain starts to throb.

Bleargh...anyway, Ryan grovels before Kahlan, saying how wise and awesome she is, and I choke back bile. Looey #2 runs up with some soup for Kahlan, and she chokes down a spoonful while thinking of how to get out of eating it. Apparently using her Mindrapist power negated the two hours of sleep she had (huh?). Also...

*“The last thing a Confessor needed while recovering her power was food. It diverted her energy to the food instead of returning her strength.”*

I'm...pretty sure that doesn't make any sense. If mindraping is physically taxing, which it seems to be, eating ought to *help* the recovery, not hinder it. Kahlan specifically notes that rest is the best way to recover after mindraping someone, which indicates a physical drain or fatigue. But of course, none of the magic in this series has made any sense yet; why should it start now?

We learn that Chandelier and his Boyz each have a “troga,” which is basically a garrotte. It's a length of wire with a wooden handle at each end; the Mud People use them to sneak up behind their enemies and strangle or decapitate them. So they're assassination tools, then. Lovely; just what you expect the Good Guys to be using. Chandelier, Prim and Tossy have somehow made garrottes for all 4,924 of the soldiers in the Army of Children.

So, wait. They're going into battle armed with *garrottes?*

Even the officers.

Okay. Sure. Fine. \~/\~/

Kahlan takes Chandelier's ten-step poison and decides to poison the booze she's leaving for the Order. Chandelier says that that amount of poison won't kill them, but it will make them sick for days.

Kahlan notices that six of the barrels are smaller, and upon learning that they are barrels of rum she responds *“Rum? The drink of nobility?”* I must admit, I've never heard that rum was “the drink of nobility.” The drink of pirates, maybe. A quick check on Wikipedia confirms that rum was invented by slaves and drunk by pirates. So...yeah. History fail.

Kahlan poisons the drink-of-nobility, then takes Prim and Tossy's ten-step poison and poisons all the other booze as well.

A couple of young men named Brin Jackson and Peter Chapman want to talk with Kahlan, but I can't get over how erratic the names in this book are. Anyway, Brin and Peter have a great idea. They've got a length of heavy chain strung between two warhorses, and they want to race the horses down the enemy's picket line, one on either side with the chain between them, and break all the enemy's horses' legs. Which is simultaneously horrible and retarded. It's horrible that they're planning to maim thousands of innocent animals, though I can understand the necessity – trained warhorses were every bit as dangerous as their riders. But it's retarded because, seriously, how many sets of horse-legs will this chain go through before the two horses hauling it are slowed down and stopped? Not many, I'll bet. And that's assuming no crippled horses fall on the chain, or in front of the attacking horses. And assuming all the enemy horses stay in a nice straight line. And assuming the picket lines don't tangle up the chain. Bleah. \~/\~/ Stupid idea is stupid.

Kahlan, however, thinks it's bloody brilliant and puts Brin and Peter in charge of the new Horse-Powered Horse Maiming Department. Oh, and I should also mention how Brin giggles as he describes his horse-mutilation engine. Lovely fellow.

Kahlan talks with one of the sentries, a guy named Cynric (who I keep wanting to call Cynic. Oh wait; that's me). The sentries have captured a carriage containing an older couple, with a driver named Ahern. Uh-oh! Hijinks! Kahlan learns that the man's name is Reuben Rybnik, just so we get the “joke.”

Kahlan orders them all killed.

Yes. That just happened. Kahlan just ordered Zedd's murder.

Wait! Before you start celebrating, Kahlan learns about Ahern's royal pass and decides, what the hell, let them all go. But the fact remains that the purported *heroine* of the series just *casually ordered the cold-blooded murder of a random old man and woman.* \~/\~/

Still, if Kahlan had actually been responsible for Zedd's murder, my opinion of this book would have been much improved.

Okay, remember how Kahlan ordered some tubs of whitewash? Are you ready for the reason? Are you ready to hear the sheer demented glory that is Kahlan's Whitewash Battle Plan?

Kahlan directs Ryan to pick for her a thousand of the best and fiercest swordsmen in the army. The swordsmen are to paint themselves white with the whitewash. Why? Winter camouflage, you say? Wrong, wrong, wrong. It's so they look like *spirits!* See, the D'Harans (never mind that there are plenty of non-D'Harans in the Order's army) are terrified of spirits, which as everyone knows look like whitewashed teenagers. Not inky specters from the netherworld, as we saw in Book 1. So the D'Harans will be so terrified by this army of “spirits” that they will be unable to defend themselves properly.

But wait! It gets better! Kahlan intends that her thousand whitewashed teenage swordsmen go into battle **naked.** They are to lose their clothes shortly before the attack. Why? What twisted logic accounts for this? Well, it seems that there was once a tribe called the Shahari, who fought the D'Harans so fiercely that they are still remembered and feared...however many years later this is. It's been long enough to become *“the legend of the Shahari,”* so at least a generation or two. The Shahari went into battle, as Kahlan says, *“naked and, well... aroused.”*

So, to sum up: Kahlan's plan involves a thousand teenage swordsmen stripping naked and painting themselves white, then assaulting a numerically-superior force of hardened veterans in the dead of winter, in the mountains. The purpose of this attack is to shock and terrify the enemy soldiers...the very enemy soldiers that, just a few chapters ago, Kahlan insisted were fearless ubermensch who gloried in bloodshed and could not be stopped by mere mortal flesh.

\~/\~/\~/\~/

Still, I have to admit that if I saw a thousand aroused, naked teenage boys charging at me, I'd be pretty scared regardless of what color they were.

Oh, and just to cap off the craziness, Kahlan plans to whitewash herself and lead the attack. Naked. \~/ I can't really add anything to that, now can I?

Wait...why did the Army of Children happen to have enough whitewash with them to completely paint 1,001 people? That's got to take...what, a couple of gallons each, considering that they're immersing themselves in tubs rather than being painted. Why were they hauling 2,000 gallons of whitewash through the mountains in the dead of winter on a suicide mission? WHY?? \~/

End chapter, thank Tolkien.

Drinks: 20

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