Naked Empire   ::   Goodkind Terry

The man had a thick black beard, a shaved head, and a ring through one ear and one nostril. His arms were as big as tree limbs. His shoulders were twice as wide as Owen's.

"Luchan." Owen said to himself.

Owen started across the open area of the fortification, past men engaged in pitched battle, past those crying out and those falling to blades, past swords and axes sweeping through the air, as if he didn't even see them. His eyes were locked on the man watching him come.

The face of a young woman appeared in the dark doorway behind Luchan He turned and growled at her to go back inside, that he was going to take care of the little man from her village.

When Luchan turned back around, Owen was standing before him.

Luchan laughed and put his fists on his hips. "Why don't you scurry back into your hole?"

Owen said nothing, gave no warning, made no demands. He simply lit into Luchan with a vengeance — just as Richard had counseled him to do — slamming a knife into the big man's chest over and over before Luchan had a chance to react. He had underestimated Owen. It had cost him his life.

The woman rushed out of the doorway and came to a halt over the body of her former master. She stared down at him, at his one arm splayed out to the side, at the other lying across his bloody chest, at the unseeing eyes. She looked up at Owen.

Kahlan assumed that this was Marilee, and feared that she was going to reject Owen for harming another, that she would castigate him for what be had done.

Instead, she rushed to Owen and threw her arms around him.

The woman went to her knees beside the body and took the bloody knife from Owen's hand. She turned to the fallen Luchan and stabbed him half a dozen times with such force that it drove the knife in up to the hilt with every thrust. Watching her tearful fury, Kahlan didn't have to wonder how she had been treated by the man.

Her anger spent, she stood again and tearfully hugged Owen.

Kahlan needed to get to Richard. She was relieved that her ability to move as she intended was returning. She started making her way around the edge of the battle, staying close to the walls, past men who saw her and thought she would be an easy mark. They didn't know that from a young age she had been taught to use a sword by her father, King Wyborn, and that Richard had later honed her skill to deadly proficiency, teaching her how to use her lighter weight to give her lethal speed. It was the last mistake the men made.

Off across the open area, a mob of soldiers, now fully awake and fully prepared to engage in battle, swarmed out of the barracks. They all charged for Richard.