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.
She nodded. “It’s dark and dreary here a lot. I’ve often wished that I could live someplace sunny, rather than in the Dark Lands.”
Before they reached the edge of the fields, off ahead among the towering trees, Richard thought that for just a brief moment he spotted eyes back in the darkness of the thick forest.
CHAPTER
38
Richard put his right arm out when he stopped, bringing Samantha to a halt as well. She looked up at him with a puzzled expression.
“Do you notice anything up ahead?” Richard asked in a hushed tone, gesturing with a slight nod of his head.
Samantha look toward the trees and then frowned back up at him. “I see trees. What do you mean? Like what?”
“I mean, do you see eyes watching us?”
She turned her frown toward the dark forest rising up before them.
“Eyes?” she asked in a voice drawn thin and high with alarm. She leaned a little bit to each side, then forward a little, peering into the dark places among the trees.
Richard carefully, methodically, studied the dark shadows back in behind the trees. The woods weren’t too far off. In fact, at the moment, they were feeling uncomfortably close. He saw a few sparrows darting among the pine boughs, and a squirrel or maybe a mouse rummaging among the leaf litter, nothing larger.
“No, I don’t see anything,” she finally said. “You saw eyes watching us? Where?”
“I think I saw them up ahead, back in the trees, just off to the right of the trail.”
Samantha’s gaze darted back to the forest, checking where he said he saw something. “Are you sure?”
“No. I only saw it for a moment. I’ve spent most of my life in the woods and I know that sometimes light reflecting off wet leaves, or a few light patches of moss—things like that—can sometimes look like eyes. Sometimes it can really fool you.”
“Maybe that’s what you saw this time.” She sounded more hopeful than confident.
“It’s possible. But now I don’t see it.” Richard took two steps back to replicate where he had been, trying to see if it was a reflection off wet leaves when seen from just a certain angle. He didn’t see it again, so he doubted it was a reflection he’d seen. As he came forward to step up beside her, he still didn’t see it again.
“That’s good, if you don’t see it, right? That means it was nothing, right?”
Richard stared into the dark recesses of the forest, back among the bases of the towering trunks and the smaller shrubs. “Maybe. It might have been a trick of the light, or some water dripping off leaves. But it could also mean that it was somebody, and when I spotted them they moved back and hid behind cover.”
Samantha scanned the fields to their left. To the right the rocky ground rose up sharply into the mountain home where she lived. She looked back to the forest waiting for them at the end of the lightly traveled trail.
“What should we do?” she asked.
Richard surveyed the lay of the land. To the right the mountain made passage impossible. To the left, skirting the path, looked like an option but not a good one.
“Are there any other paths or roads going in this general direction?”
Samantha shook her head. “There are more populated areas to the south. Very few people live in this direction. This is the only path going north and it only goes north for a ways.
“If we go off the path it will be slow going through the forest. We will have to do that eventually because the path doesn’t go all the way north to the wall. It turns off to the west less than halfway to where we’re going. It eventually turns some more to go to the southwest as it makes its way around rugged, rocky ridges. But to the north, after the trail turns away, is uncharted wilderness.
“It only goes north as far as it does because of rugged mountains due west of here. The trail only goes north as far as it has to in order to get around impassable country, then it turns on its way to the few other villages to the west and south.”
“Do many people travel through here?”
She tilted her head to the west. “Those villages are distant over those mountains. Most of the people there trade with places to the south of them, which are closer, so people rarely travel here because Stroyza is not only pretty isolated, it’s not on the way to anywhere. This part of the Dark Lands is just too rugged and uninhabited to be worthwhile for most traders to have any reason to come this way, so we don’t see many people other than a few trappers, merchants, and traders trying to scratch out a living.”
Hands on his hips, Richard nodded as he studied the lay of the land. “I should have realized it.”
She looked up at him. “What do you mean?”
“Well, in Naja Moon’s time, they were trying to save everyone from the danger of the half people and the walking dead, right?”
“Right,” Samantha said, not really following what he was getting at.
“Well if you wanted to stick something dangerous somewhere where it would have the least chance to harm anyone, where would you put it?”
Samantha’s gaze shot back to the north. “Someplace deserted. Someplace people never went. Someplace where no one was likely to ever go near.”
“Right.”
She lifted her arms a little. “So what are we going to do? We have to head north if we’re to get to the north wall. You saw it through the viewing port. The barrier that runs between a gap in the mountains is to the north. That gap in the mountains isn’t very wide and there doesn’t seem to be another way in. We have to go north if we are going to get into the third kingdom. This is the only path that heads in that direction, at least for part of the way, and then we’ll have to go through uncharted woods.”
“That’s exactly why I don’t like walking up this path into the trees. It makes a perfect place to ambush any unsuspecting traveler”—Richard looked down at the concern on her face—“in order to try to steal their soul.”
Samantha rubbed her arms as if having a sudden chill in the damp but warm air as she contemplated people who would try to eat them alive to get at their soul.
“They have just as much chance of that as our pigs have of becoming human by eating that fellow’s head.”
Richard huffed a chuckle of agreement.
She peered up expectantly. “Then what are we to do? We haven’t really even begun the journey. We’ve only been walking for a short time. We have a long way t
o travel.”
Richard flicked a hand to the field off to the left of the path. It was mostly dirt with a few clumps of weeds here and there. Whatever had been growing in it had been harvested and the ground plowed in preparation for planting another crop.
“Let’s cut through this field. Maybe we can find a trail used by animals to go through the woods. Deer runs often make a usable path, then at least we wouldn’t have to fight our way through dense brush.”
“All the way?” she asked, incredulous. “You think we should follow deer trails all the way north? Lord Rahl, deer trails usually run hither and yon. Deer aren’t looking to make time and get somewhere. They just wander around looking for forage.”
Richard was nodding as she was talking. “I know, but what I’m thinking is that if someone is lying in wait, they would be right up there, waiting to catch anyone unsuspecting who follows the trail into the woods. I’m thinking that if we can make our way through the woods and around the path for a while, then we can finally catch back up with it farther north, in a few hours, maybe, and then make time on the regular trail.”
“But if someone is waiting in ambush on the trail, they could be waiting in ambush all along the trail.”
“Possibly, but if these half people are as desperate for souls as Naja says, then they wouldn’t want others to get the first chance when people follow the trail north into the woods. They have probably already learned from the planted fields and animals that people live here, and they have probably been watching, so they know that very, very few people travel north like this.”
“So? What good does that do for us?”
Richard rested the palm of his left hand on the hilt of his sword, still surveying the lay of the land, looking for an opening they could use.
“Well,” he finally said, “if their pickings are slim, if there are few souls for the taking, then they aren’t going to want to leave those souls to other half people who are waiting right at the trailhead. If the first in line caught anyone happening by on the trail, then there wouldn’t be anyone left for other half people lying in wait farther north. It seems to me that half people would be eager and want to be first to get any soul.”