Stone 44

**Chapter 44**

*“They emerged out of fog and mist, the white fangs of death. The startled prey, at first immobilized by bone-chilling fright, jumped to flee before the white death. Fangs of white steel ripped into them without mercy as they bolted for their lives. Death squeals tore the night air with their terror. Hysteria sent them running heedlessly onto the waiting cold, white steel.”*

As you can no doubt tell from the above paragraph, we now return to Naked Kahlan and the Thousand Whitewashed Teenagers (appearing live! In concert!). The above sort of poetic, passive-voice mayhem continues for about a page. We learn that the sentries have been killed, and that *“many”* of the Order soldiers are (1) dead from poisoned booze, (2) sick and useless from poisoned booze, or (3) so drunk that they just grin at their killers. Marvelous discipline this army has. \~/

We're told that even the sober soldiers don't necessarily notice that anything is wrong, since apparently large-scale destruction is common in the Imperial Order's camp. \~/ Oh, and then we learn...this...about D'Harans:

*“Among D'Harans, fighting in the camps was simply part of the revelry, and men screaming when they were stabbed in altercations was not noteworthy. What one had was only his if he was fierce enough to keep it from others who were always ready to take it. Alliances among D'Harans were shifting sands that could last a lifetime or, more commonly, for as little as an hour, when a new alliance became more advantageous or profitable. The drinking, and the poison, dulled their grasp of the sheer volume of the screams.*

*“In battle they were disciplined, but when not in battle, they were ungoverned to the point of anarchy...At battle, or the first sound of an alarm, they became a single unified fighting machine, almost an entity of one mind...*

*“Without an alarm to warn them, they paid the added noise and screaming little attention.”*

So the D'Harans (why we're picking on them I don't know, since before we were specifically told that there were many nationalities represented here) are a disciplined and fearless fighting force...composed of murderous, treacherous, untrustworthy drunkards.

\~/\~/\~/

Naturally, Kahlan's plan is working perfectly and her Thousand Naked Teenagers (naked in the *snow*, I remind you. In the *mountains*. At *night*) are slaughtering their enemies (who are superior in terms of numbers, training, experience and equipment) without much in the way of resistance. Oh, wait; there is some resistance. I shall quote the entirety of the ferocious D'Haran counterstrike:

*“A pocket of fierce counterattack was surrounded and broken, but not without cost.”*

Moving on...

Blah blah, the officers are taken alive and Kahlan interrogates them. Riggs isn't there; apparently Kahlan hurt him earlier and he's in the surgeon's tent. Kahlan tells Karsh, the Keltish commander, to say hi to Satan for her and her Naked Teenage Avengers execute all the officers. This somehow causes a spot on Kahlan's neck to hurt and start bleeding; specifically, the spot Rahl kissed when Richard foolishly summoned his spirit in Chapter 16.

As per Kahlan's orders, her Naked Teenagers then take the time to mount all the officers' heads on poles before continuing on. That...seems like a horrible waste of time while in the middle of a battle. A battle, mind you, which was supposed to consist of “rush in, do as much damage as possible, rush back out.”

Kahlan and her Boys start to get bogged down as the Order soldiers finally realize they're under attack and start doing something about it. In response, Kahlan leaves her protective ring of bodyguards, stands in the saddle (and is instantly shot dead by an archer? No, sorry...) and declaims *“For Ebinissia! For her dead! For her spirit!”* She follows this up with *“In the name of their spirits, I have come to avenge them!”*

This is sufficient to cause the D'Harans to drop to their knees and beg for forgiveness, weeping and wailing for mercy.

I am not even slightly exaggerating.

I'm not even going to go into what's wrong with that. \~/\~/

There's a pointless scene involving the Horse-Powered Horse Mutilation Engine, which of course is working perfectly. Kahlan and her Teens are on the verge of fleeing the Order camp (on draft horses, mind you) when Kahlan notices that there's fighting behind them, which Looey #2 was supposed to be preventing...somehow. Like any good commander, she...rides back alone to see what's up.\~/ It turns out the rear guard is slowed by the fact that they're trying to bring Looey #2's corpse back with them (really? How much does he *weigh?*). Kahlan bullies them into leaving the corpse, and decides that the best possible thing for her to do is...play solitary rear-guard for the *actual* rear-guard force.

Yes. Kahlan, the Mother Confessor, leader of the Children's Army, Last of the Confessors, who is already on a Save The Freaking World quest – and who is currently stark naked – has decided the best use of her talents is to fight **alone**, hand-to-hand to hold back the army of 50,000 invincible ubermenchen so the last few of her Naked Teenage Soldiers can get away.

\~/\~/

The Order soldiers recognize Kahlan and, because they are morons, decide to take her alive, thus enabling her to slaughter several of them with her sword. Because Terry Goodkind knows nothing about medieval battles, the soldiers are able to grab the reins of the trained warhorse (they want it alive as well...I don't know either \~/) and not have several bones broken. Seriously, warhorses were called that for a reason. Anyway, the soldiers finally manage to bear Kahlan down under sheer weight of numbers, and it's specifically noted that they're grabbing her breasts. \~/

Drinks: 13

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