Page 40 of The Third Kingdom (Sword of Truth 13)

Samantha seemed completely comfortable on the trail. She danced down behind him like a mountain goat, pausing to wait for him to make it past difficult spots where he was more careful. It wasn’t that he was going slow—he wasn’t—it was simply that she had grown up ascending and descending the trail and she was intimately familiar with it. Either that, or she was not properly cautious.

When they finally reached the boulder field at the bottom of the mountain, he again scanned the gloomy countryside out beyond the small sheds, buildings, and shelters housing the village’s animals and tools. The open fields out beyond allowed him to see a goodly distance, all the way to the dark swath of sodden forest in the distance. What he could see looked deserted.

The chickens and geese were making a racket. They had been quiet until Richard and Samantha had made it down near their coops and that was probably what disturbed them, so he wasn’t alarmed.

Moving out of the boulders, he noticed that the rest of the animals seemed strangely quiet. The sheep huddled together under a roof of a small pole building. They were either staying out of the drizzle, or they were afraid of something. The hogs were likewise quiet and crowded together in corners of their pens.

Richard checked the damp ground, looking for fresh tracks that would indicate someone was about. There were tracks everywhere from people going about the work of looking after the animals. In fact, there were so many tracks through the mud that it made it difficult to make out anything suspicious.

But then he spotted a track that bought him to a halt. The people of Stroyza all wore shoes or boots. The print from this particular left foot was bare. What was so disturbing, though, was that the right footprint wasn’t bare, but it wasn’t a bootprint, either. It was a soft, irregular impression. It looked like the person’s foot might have been wrapped in cloth.

At the same time as he saw tracks that concerned him, Richard looked up just as a man with dark, sunken eyes stepped out from behind the chicken coop.

CHAPTER

37

The man wasn’t one of the villagers. His clothes were little more than tattered rags draped over his bony frame, exposing oozing lesions. In places, corners of different kinds of cloth hung like rotted flags.

His left foot was bare. His right foot was wrapped in muddy rags.

Considering his clothes alone, as filthy and frayed as they were, Richard’s first thought was that this was another of the walking dead dug up out of a grave somewhere and sent on a mission to attack the people of Stroyza.

But this was no walking corpse. This man was alive, although by the looks of him he was well on the way to being dead. He stared with sunken eyes rimmed with dark, reddish circles. The skin of his exposed arms was riddled with open sores and scabs. Except for not looking to have any other deformities, he looked to be a leper.

There was no time to feel sorry for the man.

Almost as soon as he spotted Richard, the man rushed at him, his lips curling back. As he came, he let out a bellowing roar, an otherworldly, feral, fierce sound, a sound born of savage hunger. His jaws were open wide, and his teeth were bared for the attack.

Richard pivoted to his left as he threw his leg out, planting his boot squarely in the center of the man’s chest as he charged in. The swift, powerful blow drove a grunt from the man and also drove him back, gaining Richard precious fighting room.

The man stumbled backward several steps as he struggled to catch his balance. As soon as he regained his footing, he immediately lunged toward Richard again.

Twisting to the left, coiled like a spring, Richard now had not only the time he needed, but also the fighting room.

The clear ring of steel in the still midday air announced the Sword of Truth clearing the scabbard.

The sword’s rage came out with the blade. Richard’s own anger was already there, waiting. Together, those twin storms fired the fury powering the blade’s magic.

Samantha let out a squeak as she dove behind Richard both for cover and to get out of the way of his deadly blade.

Richard’s gaze was fixed on the threat again rushing toward him. As his sword cleared the sheath, Richard uncoiled and whipped the blade around in a backhanded arc, following the path needed to take it where he was looking.

Before the man could take another step, the blade was already there to meet him. The silence was broken by the crack of bone. A red mist filled the damp morning air.

Before Samantha had finished diving behind Richard, the man’s head was off and tumbling up through the air. It bounced down on the top rail of a hog pen, leaving a splash of blood, and then came down with a thud in the mud among the pigs. The pigs snorted, pushing back against one another, at first trying to get away from the threat, and then, as the head rolled to rest, the smell of fresh blood swiftly overcame their fear and they were on it, jostling one another to get at the gory prize.

The headless man toppled forward, hitting the ground hard at Richard’s feet, splashing blood and mud across his boots.

Already, Richard was scanning the trees, fields, and nearby buildings for any other sign of threat. He expected a horde of half people to emerge suddenly and attack all at once, hoping to overpower and rip into him with their teeth before he could fight them all off, but he didn’t see anyone else. Stillness settled once more over the countryside out beyond the animal pens. The pigs snorted and squealed as they fought to get at the head. The chickens, rattled by the man’s roar, were in a frenzied, flapping panic.

Samantha, clutching his cloak, peeked out from behind Richard. Her face was white.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice still alive with the twin rage within him.

Samantha’s mass of black hair jiggled up and down as she nodded, her eyes wide.

Richard, still holding the sword, looked back up the mountain to the cave opening. All the people up top gaped down in horror. He didn’t think it was necessary to yell up to them to ask. They got the point.

“He was right here, among us,” Samantha said, clearly surprised that one of the half people had been hiding this close. “They’ve found where we live.”

“They will find where everyone lives,” Richard said. “They’re on the hunt for souls.”

Richard laid a hand on Samantha’s shoulder, holding her back, and told her to wait where she was while he checked the area. She looked forlorn as she waited, standing all alone with her elbows pulled in tight to her sides and her hands clenched in a tight knot under her chin as she watched him searching the area around the small buildings.

More than anything, seeing that thin, frail young woman standing there all alone made him realize how alone she really must feel with her father murdered and her mother missing. She was only now stepping away from being a girl into a world that demanded she grow up or die. Richard reminded himself again that if there was anything he could do to rescue her mother, he was going to do it.

Samantha watched as Richard looked inside the buildings and coops and all around the firewood piles for anyone who might be hiding. As he went around each structure, making sure there was no one hidden behind them, she snatched glances to the sides for any sign of trouble.

After Richard had satisfied himself that the area was clear and that there was no one lying in wait, he signaled for Samantha to come on ahead. She raced to catch up with him as he started down the lane between the pens.

“Are you starting to see why coming along with me is going to be so dangerous?” he asked as he slid his sword back in its sheath. As he released the hilt, he let the anger go as well.

“I’d rather be with you than back there with my people,” she said. “They have numbers. You have a sword. After seeing them attacked the other night, and after seeing you use that sword just now, I’d rather be with one of you and your sword than with all of them.”

Richard had to admit that she had a point.

“Did you sense that man at all with your gift?”

Samantha frowned. “Sense him?

What do you mean?”

“Gifted people—wizards and sorceresses—can often sense when there is someone around. They can often sense someone in the darkness, or someone hiding like that man was hiding.”

“Really?” Her mouth twisted with displeasure. “I wish my mother would have taught me that trick.”

“Stroyza doesn’t have any horses, do they?” he asked, even though he thought he knew the answer.

Samantha shook her head. “Just oxen to help in the fields.”

It struck him that they lived here; they had nowhere to go. Unless, of course, in their duty as sentinels they had need to put out a warning about the gates to the third kingdom being open, but that had not been necessary for thousands of years.

Since they didn’t have horses, there was no choice but to walk. From some of the terrain he had seen through the viewing port, horses could not make it all the way to where they needed to go, so it wasn’t as big a hindrance as it might seem. They would have to make do and cover the most ground they could on foot.

As they took the turn, making their way down the path leading north through the fields, Samantha pulled the hood of her cloak up over her hair. The drizzle was getting thicker. By the look of the overcast, Richard thought that it might soon be raining. It was going to be miserable traveling weather.

At least the forest, still some distance off, would offer them some protection. He hurried his pace to make it to the trees quicker.

Samantha didn’t look to be bothered by the gloom.

“Does it get gloomy like this often, here?” he asked her.

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