Page 87 of The Third Kingdom (Sword of Truth 13)

As his full weight flew toward her, Kahlan kicked him square in the face, crushing in his nose and left cheekbone. He was stopped cold, clutching both hands over the gushing wound. The blood flooding back into his throat immediately started drowning him.

He fell blindly, rolling over on his back, writhing on the floor, struggling in vain for air. Without a moment’s delay Kahlan used the heel of her boot to hammer his face as hard as she could. It broke his fingers, but it also crushed in the more fragile bones in the center of his face. She used her boot twice again in quick succession, battering his face, until he went still.

The first man, still tangled in the chain, had finally suffocated and was hardly moving any longer. Kahlan panted, catching her own breath.

She could hear people racing up and down the hall, searching the other rooms. She knew that at any moment they would find her chained to the wall. She knew that if she was to have a chance, she had to get away.

She could see the key to the manacles hanging from Dora’s belt. Kahlan unwound the chain from the dead man and tried, but couldn’t quite reach the key with her fingers. She switched positions, throwing her legs out instead because they would have a longer reach. She stretched the chain to its full length and was able to get her boot over Dora’s middle.

With all her strength, she pressed down on her foot to keep hold of the body as she struggled to drag the woman closer. She needed the key off Dora’s belt or she was going to be killed and eaten while still chained to the wall.

With grunts of effort, she made jerking pulls. She kept at it until she had dragged the Mord-Sith closer. The pool of blood helped make the floor somewhat slippery and the black leather Dora wore also helped her slide a little easier in the blood. At last she had pulled the dead weight close enough to be able to snatch the key from the belt.

As she heard people running up and down the halls, and distant screams and pleas for help, or mercy, Kahlan fumbled frantically with the key, trying to get it into the manacles.

At last the iron on one wrist sprang open. Kahlan shoved the shackle off her wrist and went to work to open the other. With one wrist free, the second was easier and she quickly got it open. She tossed the chain aside and ran to the door.

Catching her breath, she flattened herself back against the wall behind the door just as several more of the same kind of people charged through the doorway and into the room.

Like a pack of hungry scavengers, the people dove onto the body of the Mord-Sith. Some of them tore into the exposed flesh of her face and neck while others lapped at the blood. Others, unable to get in to feed, ripped open the black leather to get at her.

Kahlan, her eyes wide at the ghastly sight, quickly slipped out of the room behind them. Once out of the room, she raced down the dark hallway, not knowing where she was going. She saw Otto, or what was left of him, down a side hall with at least a dozen of the whitewashed savages growling and tearing at him with their teeth. She realized that the thud she had heard at first was probably the attackers taking Otto down.

When she heard someone in the distance, and saw shapes coming around the corner, Kahlan quickly ducked down a stairwell. She bounded down the stairs three at a time and then raced down the dark hall at the bottom. She didn’t know how many bloodthirsty monsters were after her, or how close they might be. She ran for her life without looking back.

She could hear the noise of other terrified people running. Racing past rooms, she looked through one open door and saw a number of the whitish figures piled on several servants lying dead on the floor, tearing at them with their teeth or lapping up the blood. She thought that the underworld itself must have opened up and the dead were feasting on the living.

As she raced down the hall, she heard someone coming from the other end. As they rounded a corner, she saw that they were more of the cannibals. When they saw her, they broke into a dead run toward her.

Kahlan ducked into a room to the side. She slammed shut the door but there was no bolt.

Fortunately, there was no one inside. She stood with her back against the door, panting to get her breath. There was a small fire going in the fireplace.

Bodies crashed against the other side of the door. She used all her weight and strength and managed to hold it shut each time an attacker rammed into it. As she looked around, she spotted a sword on a table.

After the next time they thudded into the door, she let go and raced for the table. Behind her, the door crashed open.

Kahlan drew the sword as she turned, flinging the scabbard aside. Without an instant’s pause, she swung, nearly decapitating the first man to rush at her. She spun out of the way of the next man and as she came back around she thrust the blade through his heart from behind.

Kahlan had grown up learning how to use a sword, but it wasn’t until Richard had given her lessons that she really became an expert with the weapon.

Now, with a weapon in her hands, she felt that she at least had a fighting chance. She used all her skill and knowledge to desperately slash, hack, and stab the onslaught of attackers and defend herself. It wasn’t as hard as it might have been, because the men all rushing in at her were not armed, and they weren’t trying to fight back. They only seemed to want to bite her, so the only weapon they used was their teeth.

Still, there were too many of them. More were rushing into the room all the time. As they raced into the room, some fell over the bodies on the floor. Kahlan stabbed them as fast as she could.

Between frantic slashes and stabs, she glanced over her shoulder at the window. The room was on the ground floor.

Right after a particularly frenzied, hacking attack to drive the men back, when she had a brief opening before they piled in at her again, she turned and raced across the room.

She dove feet-first through the window. Fortunately, the two side-hinged halves of the window flew open rather than the glass breaking and slashing her. She landed hard and rolled across the ground.

As she sprang to her feet she saw the ashen people pouring like a flood out through the window. Others prowling the grounds outside saw her come out of the building and joined in the pursuit. There was no way she could fight them all.

Kahlan turned and ran. The enemy was right on her heels.

CHAPTER

84

Rounding the corner of a vine-covered stone outbuilding at full speed, branches of shrubs flashing past her face, slapping her arms, the savages right behind her, Kahlan ran headlong into a wall of a man.

It was Richard.

In that first fraction of an instant, that infinitesi

mal spark of time, her thought was that she had to be mistaken. It was impossible for it to be Richard. She thought she must be dead and this was some afterlife delusion. In that spark of time, she was heartbroken and crushed because she thought that she had to be wrong.

In the second infinitesimal spark of time, she knew that it was real. As impossible as it was, it was real.

Richard had his sword out. She could see the magic of its rage in his gray eyes.

Without pause, as Kahlan crashed into him, he smoothly circled a powerful arm around her waist, lifted her around behind him, set her down, and as he turned back, beheaded the first man to run in toward him.

The moment of seeing him, of realizing that it was really him, seemed frozen in time to her.

None of it made any sense. The whole world didn’t seem to make sense. Being attacked by savage cannibals didn’t make any sense. But then in that fraction of a second, that spark of time, they shared a look and she knew that nothing else mattered.

Richard was there.

The rest of the horde descended in on him before the severed head had hit the ground.

And then the killing began in earnest.

Kahlan knew enough to stay out of the way of his blade when he had it out. She turned and cut down one of the pale savages to the side—a woman. As the half-naked people with the black-painted eyes rushed in at her, she drove her sword through some of them, and as she drew it back, slashed others.

As Kahlan struck, thrusting her blade through a man, Cara threw an arm around Kahlan’s waist and pulled her back out of the way of the rushing men. The Mord-Sith, with a knife in each hand, turned back to the savages and used both her blades whenever one of the ashen figures got close enough. Against their skin smeared with chalky coloring, blood looked all the more shocking.

It had seemed forever since she ran into Richard, but Kahlan knew that it actually had only been mere seconds. Suddenly, within those seconds, men of the First File flooded in all around Kahlan, shielding her, protecting her from the onslaught of the attackers smeared with white. Cara pressed in close beside her as well, protecting her from any of the strange brutes.

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