Commander Karg folded his muscled arms. "I want you to be tattooed so that you look like my team. So that all will know that it is Commander Karg's team."

"And if we lose? If we lose in a humiliating fashion?"

The commander leaned in a little as he glared. "Then you will be whipped at the least, and no longer of any use to me at worst. I think you know by now what becomes of captives who are of no use."

"If that happens," Richard said, "everyone will remember that the team you put to death for being inferior were all tattooed just like you. If we fail, they will remember the snake pattern of your tattoo on all of us. It would link us to you, but also you to us. If we lose, you will be stigmatized by that tattoo. If we lose, every time they see your tattooed face they will laugh at you.

"If we should for some reason happen to lose, paint can be washed off before we are whipped or worse."

Commander Karg was beginning to grasp just what Richard meant. He visibly cooled as he scratched his jaw.

"I'll see if I can't come up with some paint."

"Make it red."

"Red? Why?"

"Red stands out. It will be memorable. Red also reminds people of blood. I want them to see us and before anything else wonder why we want to look like we are painted in blood. I want the other teams to worry about that the night before a game. I want them to sweat and lose sleep thinking about it. When they finally come to play us they will be tired and then we will make them bleed."

A slow smile spread on Commander Karg's face. "You know, Ruben, were you born on the right side of this war, along with me, I bet we would be good friends."

Richard doubted that the man truly understood the concept of friendship, or could even appreciate such values.

"I'll need enough paint for all the men," Richard said.

Commander Karg nodded as he started away. "You will have it."

Kahlan hurried to stay close to Jagang as he marched through the camp lest he give her a stunning shock of pain through the collar. Of course, as he had demonstrated any number of times, he needed no excuse. She knew, though, that right then she had better not even look like she might give him cause, because he was in a hurry due to the strange news the man had brought.

She didn't care so much about the news, though. Her mind was on the man she had finally seen again, the captive who had been brought in the day before.

As she moved through the encampment, thinking about the man, she watched not only her guards but also the common soldiers in the camp, looking for reactions that might indicate that they could see her, listening for any obscene remark that would betray them. All around, startled men stared at the heavily armed group making their way through the midst of their daily life, but she didn't see a single man look directly at her, or show any other signs of seeing her.

Despite being men in an army led by the emperor himself, these men had probably never seen Jagang this close before. The army, all in one place, constituted a population that was larger than almost any city. If these men had ever seen the emperor before, it was likely only at a great distance. Now, as he passed close by, they stared at him in open awe.

Kahlan noted in their reaction, and Jagang's attitude toward them, the contradiction to the Order's teachings of the absolute equality of all men. For his part, Jagang never showed any penchant for sharing the common life of his men, a daily existence in the filth and mud. They lived in a camp that was virtually lawless, involved in crimes of every sort with their unruly fellows, while Jagang always enjoyed protection from those theoretically equal to him in every way. Kahlan supposed that if they shared one thing, it was that they, like their emperor, lived lives of almost constant, irrational violence and complete indifference to human life.

Kahlan, invisible to the soldiers all around, stepped carefully over puddles and dung. She clutched the knife tightly in a fist under her cloak, unsure, yet, exactly what she would do with it. The opportunity to take the knife had suddenly presented itself and she had acted.

In such rough surroundings it felt good to have a weapon. The encampment was a frightening place, despite how invisible she was to nearly all the soldiers. Even though she knew that she had no hope of using the knife to escape Jagang, all of her special guards, and the Sisters, it still felt good to have a weapon. A weapon gave her a modicum of control, a way to defend herself-at least to a degree. More than that, though, a weapon symbolized how much she valued her life. Having it was a declaration to herself that she had not, and would not, give up.

If she had a chance, Kahlan would use the knife to try to kill Jagang. She knew that if she were to actually accomplish such a deed it would mean a sure death for her as well. She knew, too, that the Order would not falter because of the loss of the man. They were like ants. Stepping on one would not send the colony into retreat.

Still, she knew that sooner or later she was going to be put to death- and probably made to suffer greatly along the way by Jagang's own hand. She had already seen him murder several people for little or no excuse, so putting an end to him would at least serve to satisfy her sense of justice. Kahlan's memory of her past life was gone. Her total awareness since the Sisters had taken that memory was that of a world gone mad. She might not be able to set the world right, but if she could kill Jagang she might be able to see justice done in one little part of it.

It wouldn't be easy, though. Jagang was not only physically powerful and skilled at combat, he was a very clever individual. Sometimes Kahlan thought that he really could read her mind. In another way, since Jagang was a warrior and he was often able to anticipate what she would do next, Kahlan thought that in the past she could not remember she must have been a warrior, too.

Alerted by the urgent whispers of their friends, men in the camp all around came out of tents, rubbed sleep from their eyes, and stood in the drizzle staring at the swift procession in their midst. Other men turned from work at caring for animals to watch. Riders reined in their horses to wait until the emperor passed. Wagons rumbled to a halt.

No matter where she was in the camp it stank, but in among the men it was a degree worse. The cook fires added greasy soot to the smell of the latrines. She didn't think that the hastily dug latrines were going to be adequate for long. By the foul look of the little streams of water wending their way through the camp, they were already overflowing. The smell proclaimed that she was right. She couldn't imagine how much worse it was going to become over the coming months of the siege.

Even with the stench and the revolting sights of some of the things going on in the camp, Kahlan noted it all only dimly in the back of her mind. Her thoughts were on other things. Or rather, on one thing: that man with the gray eyes.

She hadn't known which team he would be with. When she had seen his face the day before he had been in a cage on a transport wagon. She knew only, from catching bits of Jagang's conversations with officers, that the cages held some of the men who were on a team come to play in the tournaments.

Jagang had been eager to tour the teams before any of the games were to begin. As they went from team to team, she had been looking for the man. At first, she hadn't even realized that she was doing it. She found herself staying close to Jagang as he inspected the players so that she could also see them.

He knew a great deal about some of the teams. He commented to his guards about what he expected he would see before he reached each new team. When he arrived at a new group he would ask to see the point man, along with the wing men. Several times he wanted to have a look at the men of the blocking line. It reminded Kahlan of a housewife at market, inspecting cuts of meat.