Richard had no intention of letting go. To let go would mean certain death.
The big man Richard was choking squirmed frantically, his arms flailing as he desperately reached for something, anything, that would help him escape or at least get a breath. He kicked with his heels, aiming for Richard’s shins. Richard pulled his knees up to keep his lower legs out of range. Most of the blind kicks landed on the ground and the ones that did connect weren’t direct enough. Gritting his teeth with the effort, Richard tipped the man back even farther just to make sure that he couldn’t do any damage with his heels.
Richard saw a knife blade rising in a bloody fist of the second man. He pulled the man he was strangling over on top of himself as best he could to shield himself against a knife attack. He didn’t know how effective it would be, but it was the only thing he could do.
Suddenly, there was a loud, bone-cracking thump. The man faltered as he tried to turn. Another, sharper thump swiftly followed. With the third blow, blood rained down.
The man dropped the knife as he collapsed in a limp heap across the top of the man Richard was choking.
Richard wasn’t sure what had happened, but he was not about to let go to find out. Without the second man fighting him, he was able to focus all his strength on the task at hand. The big man’s movements had already become slow and weak as not only his wind was being cut off, but also the blood to his brain.
Richard screamed with rage to power his own aching muscles. As the man’s struggling became sluggish, Richard swiftly changed his hold, throwing an arm around the man’s neck, getting him in a headlock. Hard as he he could, he twisted the man’s head. In the quiet drizzle, when he reached the point of resistance, he pulled back a bit to gather more force, then slammed the man’s head over even harder. When he did, he finally felt the neck snap. The man’s whole body immediately went slack.
Powered by fury, Richard continued strangling the man even though he was no longer fighting.
A hand gently reached down with a reassuring touch to Richard’s bulging biceps.
“It’s all right. He’s dead. They’re both dead.” It was a woman’s voice he didn’t recognize. “You’re safe,” she said. “You can let go now.”
Still panting from the effort and the rage, Richard blinked as he looked up into several shadowed faces crowded in over him.
They were not soldiers. From their simple clothes, they appeared to be country folk. Two women and two men leaned in, looking down at him. Back beyond those four, a handful of other men crowded in closer. They, too, looked like country folk.
CHAPTER
3
Richard gradually released the pressure on the dead man’s neck. As the remaining air hissed from his lifeless lungs, his head flopped crookedly to one side.
One of the men standing above him lifted the limp arm of the other, smaller of the two dead men atop Richard and pulled him off to the side. Even in death, there was still a bloody snarl frozen on the face.
A mask of blood had run down to cover the side of the man’s face. Fragments of bone stuck up from his matted hair. Richard saw that the back of his head had been bashed in with a large rock that one of the other men crowded in close still held in a tight grip.
As the man with the broken neck began to slowly slip off to the side, one of the women, the one who had touched Richard’s arm, used a foot to shove the bigger of the two dead men aside. It was a relief to have the suffocating weight finally off.
The woman picked up the bloody knife that the second attacker had dropped when his skull had been crushed in. Leaning close, she sliced at the rope binding Richard’s hands and they at last parted. She moved down and cut the rope tying his ankles together.
“Thank you,” Richard said. He was more than relieved to at last be free. “You saved my life.”
“For the moment,” a man in the shadows said.
“We hope you will return the favor,” another added.
Richard didn’t know what he meant, but he had bigger worries at the moment.
With an angry gesture, the woman with the knife hushed the men before turning her attention back to Richard.
He saw in the weak light of the full moon that illuminated the cloud cover that she was middle-aged. Fine lines creased her face in an agreeable way. It was too dark to tell the color of her eyes, but not the determination in them. Her expression, too, was one of grim resolve.
The woman leaned closer to press a hand to the bite wound on the side of his upper arm to try to stop the bleeding. Her gaze turned up to his as she held pressure in the wound.
“Are you the one who killed Jit, the Hedge Maid?” she asked.
Surprised by the question, Richard nodded as he looked around at all the stony faces watching him. “How do you know that?”
With her free hand, the woman pulled stray strands of her straight, shoulder-length hair back from her face. “A boy, Henrik, came to us a little while ago. He told us that he had been her captive, and that she intended to kill him like all the others she had killed. He said that two people rescued him and killed the Hedge Maid, but now they were in trouble and needed help.”
Richard leaned forward. “Was there anyone else with him?”
“I’m afraid not. Just the boy.”
Even though Richard had killed the Hedge Maid, he and Kahlan had both been grievously hurt. Their friends had brought a small army to get the two of them out of the Hedge Maid’s lair and take them home. Now, those friends were all missing. He knew that none of them would have willingly left Kahlan and him alone like this.
“Henrik was the one who told my friends what had happened and where they could find us,” Richard said. “They should have been with him.”
The woman shook her head. “I’m sorry, but he was alone. Terrified, and alone.”
“Did he tell you what happened, here?” Richard asked. “Did he tell you where those who were with us are now?”
“He was winded and in a panic to find help. He said there was no time to explain. He said we had to hurry and help you. We came right away.”
Now that Richard was free and the rush of the fight was over, the shock of pain had begun to bear down on him in earnest. He touched his forehead with trembling fingers.
“But did he say anything else at all?” Richard asked. “It’s important.”
The woman glanced around in the darkness as she shook her head. “He said that you had been attacked and needed help. We knew that we had to hurry. Henrik is back at our village. When we get back you can question him yourself. For now, we must get in out of the night.” She gestured urgently to the woman behind her. “Give me your scarf.”
The woman immediately pulled it off her head and handed it over. The woman kneeling beside Richard used the scarf as a bandage, wrapping it high around his upper arm several times. She swiftly knotted it, then stuck the knife handle under the knot and twisted it around to tighten the tourniquet. Richard gritted his teeth against the pain.
He couldn’t seem to slow his racing heart. He was worried about all those who had been with him, worried as to what could have happened to them. He needed to get to Henrik and find out what was going on. More than that, though, he was worried about getting help for Kahlan.
“We shouldn’t be out here any longer,” one of the men in back quietly cautioned, trying to hurry the woman.
“Almost done,” she said as she quickly appraised some of his more obvious injuries. “You need these wounds sewn closed and treated with poultice or they will be infected by morning,” she told Richard. “Bites like this are not to be ignored.”
“Please,” Richard said as he gestured with his other arm toward the wagon. “Help my wife? I fear that she is hurt worse.”
With a quick gesture from the woman, two of the men hurried to the wagon.
“Is she the Mother Confessor?” one of the men called back as he checked on her.
Richard’s sense of caution rose. “Yes.”
“I do
n’t think that we can do anything for her here,” he said.
The other man spotted the sword and picked it up from the ground. His gaze glided over the ornately wrought gold and silver scabbard before taking in the word TRUTH made of gold wire woven through the silver wire wrapping the hilt.
“Then you would be the Lord Rahl?”
“That’s right,” Richard said.
“Then there is no doubt. You are the ones we came looking for,” the man said. “The boy, Henrik, told us who you were. We came to find you.”
Richard’s concern eased at hearing that it was Henrik who had told them exactly who he and Kahlan were.
“Enough,” the woman said. She quickly turned back to Richard. “Glad we were in time, Lord Rahl. I’m Ester. Now we have to get you both back to safety.”
“Richard will do.”
“Yes, Lord Rahl,” she said absently, as if no longer listening as she pressed at wounds, checking their depth.
Ester motioned to some of the other men behind her. “You will need to help him. He’s badly hurt. We have to get out of here before those who did this come back.”
Several men, relieved to hear that she was finally ready to leave, rushed in to help Richard to his feet. Once up, Richard insisted on going to Kahlan. The men steadied him when he staggered to the wagon.
Richard saw that Kahlan was still unconscious, but breathing. He laid a hand on her, aching with fear over her condition. Her clothes were soaked in blood from the ordeal with the Hedge Maid. The thought of that vile creature and what she had been doing to Kahlan again awakened Richard’s anger.
The Hedge Maid had been drinking Kahlan’s blood.
He slid his hand through the long slit in her shirt, feeling where Jit’s familiars had slashed open Kahlan’s abdomen to bleed her and collect her blood for the Hedge Maid to drink. He was worried not only about the severity of the terrible wound, but how much blood she had lost. To his astonishment, he found only a few swollen ripples in her skin where the long wound had been nearly healed.
Richard recalled, then, the touch he had felt—the touch of a healing begun, but not finished. Zedd or Nicci must have healed the deep wound on Kahlan, but from the rest of the wounds still evident on her, Richard could see that, as with him, they hadn’t finished what they had started. Because he remembered that it had been Nicci’s healing touch on him, he suspected that it would have been Zedd who had started healing Kahlan.
Richard was thankful that Zedd had managed to heal the terrible gash in Kahlan’s abdomen, but he hadn’t had time to heal everything. She had a number of wounds that still bled. He knew, too, that she must have other serious injuries or she would not be unconscious.
“Do you have someone who can help her?” Richard asked. “A gifted person?”
Ester hesitated. “We have someone gifted who may be able to help,” she finally said.
One of the men behind leaned close, taking hold of Ester’s dress at her shoulder to pull her back a bit as he whispered in her ear. “Do you think that wise?”
The woman turned an angry look on the man. “What choice is there? Should we instead let them die?”
He straightened, his only answer a sigh.
“But we must hurry,” Ester said. “She can’t heal them if they’re dead.”
“Besides that,” another man reminded her, “we need to get all of us in out of the night.”
At his words, others glanced around in the darkness. Richard noted that they all seemed terrified of being out after dark. Having once been a woods guide, he had often visited country folk. It was a relatively common attitude among them to want to shut themselves in when the sun went down. People in more remote places tended to be more superstitious than most, and the one common thing they all feared was darkness.
Although, he had to admit that these people certainly had real things to fear.
Richard watched as several men gently lifted Kahlan and then placed her over the shoulder of the biggest man. Richard wanted to carry her himself, but he knew that he couldn’t even walk by himself. He reluctantly let two of the men put their shoulders under his arms to help him stay upright.
In the faint moonlight and soft golden glow of lanterns that several of the people carried, Richard looked back beyond the wagon. For the first time, he saw countless bodies. They weren’t the men of the First File. Strange, pale, half-naked people lay sprawled across the ground everywhere. Given their gaping wounds, it looked like the First File had fought a fierce battle. Given the numbers of the dead, it was no wonder that the damp air smelled of blood and gore.
Nearby, just beyond the corner of the wagon, one of the dead men lay sprawled on his back, mouth agape. His dead eyes stared up at the dark sky.
The man’s teeth had been filed to points.
Richard’s grandfather Zedd and the sorceress Nicci had brought elite soldiers with them to see Richard and Kahlan safely back to the People’s Palace. None of them would have abandoned the two of them. Richard scanned the scattered bones among pieces of uniforms, insignias, and the weapons of the First File lying scattered across the ground. It was a horrifying sight. But he didn’t see anything that looked like it belonged to Zedd or Nicci or Cara.
Cara, his and Kahlan’s personal bodyguard, was Mord-Sith. She would not have left him for any reason short of death, and he’d always suspected that even then Cara would come back from the world of the dead to protect him.
He feared that out there in the darkness where he couldn’t see them, the bones of all those he cared so much about were among the dead. Panic at the thought of losing those so close to him tightened his chest.
“Hurry now,” Ester said, pushing at the men helping to hold Richard up. “He’s bleeding badly. We have to get back.”
The others were more than happy to start away from the sight of so much death and head back to safety.
Richard let the men half carry him onto a narrow path through the wall of trees and into the night.
CHAPTER
4
On their swift journey through a forest so dense that the floor of the trail remained nearly untouched by moonlight, all of the people around him kept a wary watch of the surrounding darkness. Richard, too, scanned the woods, but he could see little beyond the weak lantern light. There was no way of telling what might be back in the black depths of the woods, no way of telling if the mysterious, half-naked people who had slaughtered his friends might be following him.
Every sound caught his attention and drew his eye. Every branch that brushed against him or snagged on his pant leg elevated his heart rate.
From what he could see, the people he was with carried nothing more than utilitarian knives. They had used a rock to dispatch the man attacking Richard. He would hate to encounter the hordes of killers on the dark trail and have to fight them off with little more than rocks.
He was glad to have the tooled leather baldric back over his right shoulder and his sword again at his left hip. From time to time he absently touched the familiar hilt of his sword for reassurance. He knew, though, that he was in little condition to fight.
Still, just touching the ancient weapon stirred its latent power and the silent storm of rage it held within it, stirring its twin within him and enticing him to call it forth. It was reassuring to have that faithful weapon and its attendant power at his beck and call.
Because some of the people had lanterns, Richard scanned the blackness for eye shine that would reveal the presence and position of animals beyond the limited range of the lantern light. While he did see some small creatures like frogs, a raccoon, and some night birds, he didn’t see any eyes of larger animals watching them.
Of course, it was always possible that something larger could have been hidden among the dense clusters of ferns and shrubs or back among the tree trunks so that Richard wouldn’t have seen them.
And, of course, there would have been no eye shine if the eyes watching them were human.
Since he couldn�
�t really see anything in the black depths of the woods, he depended instead on sounds and smells that might tip him off to a threat. The only thing he smelled, though, was the familiar scent of balsam, ferns, and the mat of pine needles, dried leaves, and forest litter covering the ground. The only sounds he heard were the buzz of insects and sometimes the sharp call of night birds. Distant, faint cries of coyotes occasionally echoed through the mountains.
All of the people taking Richard and Kahlan to the safety of their village refrained from talking on the journey. The wary group walked swiftly but nearly silently, the way only those who had spent a lifetime in the woods were able to do. Even the man ahead who was carrying Kahlan made little noise as he moved along the trail. Richard, unable to walk very well and sometimes dragging his feet as the men on either side helped him, was making more noise than any of the rest of them, but there was little he could do about it.
With all the bodies of strange people he had seen back near the wagon, to say nothing of the two men who had attacked him and the things he had overheard, as well as all the warnings he’d previously gotten about venturing into the Dark Lands, Richard could easily see why these people were nervous and being so careful. The two men who had attacked him had looked nothing like the bodies he had seen. If those two men had been right, then the dead were the mysterious people they had mentioned, the Shun-tuk.
It seemed that unlike other country folk Richard knew back home, the people with him had more reason for their fears than simple superstition.
He appreciated it when people took real dangers seriously. The people who most often invited trouble were the willfully ignorant who didn’t want to believe trouble was possible, so they dismissed the potential for it. You couldn’t be ready for what you never considered or were unwilling to consider. Worry was sometimes a valuable survival tool, so Richard thought it foolish to ignore it. But still, since they were so lightly armed, he didn’t think these people took the threats seriously enough.
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