CHAPTER 4

Richard crashed down among the chalky figures, his fury at last unleashed. His blade swung around in an arc, lopping off a shaved head with startled, dark painted eyes. The speed of the weapon was so great that the tip whistled through the air even as the blade continued on to gash open the shoulder of the Shun-tuk beside the headless man, almost completely severing his arm. Richard immediately delivered a powerful side kick to the man rushing in on his other side.

As some of the half people around Richard toppled to the sides, Kahlan saw the soldier down on the ground under the white figures crowded around him like a pack of wolves in a feeding frenzy. Despite Richard killing several as he charged in, others only glanced sideways up at him, unwilling to relinquish the flesh clenched in their teeth. Others, lost in bloodlust, seemed oblivious of the danger to themselves as they tore flesh from the soldier.

Even with the half people piled in on him, the soldier still had his sword in his right hand and a knife clutched tightly in his left fist. He kicked and swung his sword past the bodies trying to hold him on the ground and at the same time used his knife to stab at others still trying to get in on the feast.

His screams were as much rage as pain. Wherever it was not protected by his leather armor his flesh was torn and bloody, but he was quite alive and full of fight.

It was clear that the soldier had fought fiercely, as any of the First File would have. A number of the white figures lay strewn along the forest floor, a line of bloody bodies marking a trail along which they had fought him to a stop.

A few of those downed Shun-tuk lying around the soldier were still alive and lay panting in agony as they bled out. Their wounds were clearly unsurvivable. Others, horrifically wounded from the soldiers’ blades, writhed among the ferns and mosses at the side of a small brook as their blood ran down the rocks, turning the moss and water red. Some moaned, but none of them screamed in pain as did most of the wounded Kahlan had seen injured in battle.

The majority of the downed Shun-tuk, though, were clearly dead. The soldier had not gone down easily and the enemy had paid a heavy price to get him to ground.

The problem was, there simply had been too many of the half people for him to fight them all off. The danger to themselves seemed less important to these soulless beings than getting at their victim and having a chance to try to steal his soul.

Richard’s sword arced around to cleanly cleave the head off a chalky figure rising up to grab him and try to pull him down with the soldier. A few others rose up, eager to rip into the new people coming their way in an effort to devour a soul for themselves.

To Kahlan’s alarm, though, most of them charged Richard as if they recognized him and wanted him more than anyone else.

Before the Shun-tuk could overwhelm Richard and take him down under the weight of their numbers, the soldiers crashed into the pack of whitewashed figures, driving most back away from Richard. The half people, oblivious of the danger, immediately attacked the soldiers descending on them.

But teeth were no match for razor-sharp steel.

The terrible sight reminded Kahlan of blades scything down wheat. It was brutal butchery of savages bent only on murder.

None of what the soldiers did could match the violence Richard’s sword brought to them. As half people reached for him, his sword took off fingers, hands, arms, heads, and split their bodies nearly in half. It seemed that his blade never paused and each time found its mark, shattering skulls and severing flesh and bone.

Knowing that the gift didn’t work well against these half people, Nicci was at least able to use her ability to gather air into a powerful fist to knock back a number of them coming at Kahlan from the side. Soldiers hacked them to pieces as they stumbled back, trying to recover their footing. Kahlan used her knife to slash several of the whitewashed figures that got in too close to her. Their blackened eyes were terrifying up close, especially when they had their mouths open, baring their teeth.

Zedd, too, fought fiercely to protect Kahlan, as well as Irena and Samantha. Irena, though, broke away from Samantha’s grip and Zedd’s protection to run in toward Richard. She cast her hands out, clearly attempting to use her gift to protect him, but Kahlan didn’t see that it was working at all. The half people saw her as an opportunity to have a gifted soul for themselves. Chalky white arms and clutching fingers reached out toward her.

Before they could snatch her, Richard severed their arms and cut down the ones racing in to dive atop her. As they fell, he circled an arm around Irena’s waist and tossed her back out of his way and out of the way of immediate danger. Clearly relieved, Samantha clutched her mother’s arm and tugged her back away from the danger.

Just as it seemed they were gaining control of the situation and putting down the half people who had attacked the soldier, brush and tree limbs shook as the woods came alive with Shun-tuk pouring out from the darkness all around them.

Kahlan had suspected that it had been a trap, with the soldier as the bait. These were predators and they were acting in a coordinated fashion to attract and then down their prey.

Back away from the battle, she spotted several of the chalky figures bent over the dead of their own kind. They weren’t taking part in the attack, and the figures on the ground were clearly dead and not simply injured, so she couldn’t imagine what they were doing. Their topknots waved around as they tossed their heads from side to side and moved their arms in a ritualistic fashion over the motionless corpses. They spoke words Kahlan couldn’t hear.

As one of them finished his work and swiftly moved on to another body sprawled on its side, the first dead man sat up, then stood, rising to his full height as if brought back to life. His eyes, which a moment before had been glassy, now had an inner red glow. In the gloomy darkness it was difficult to see much of anything clearly, but those eyes pierced the gloom like hot, glowing coals.

Kahlan stared in shock as the dead man began coming toward them. He half stumbled as he stepped on his own entrails hanging from a horrific diagonal gash across his abdomen and dragging along the ground. He paused to see what kept holding him back at each step. When he saw the bloody viscera stretched from the open wound in his middle to his foot standing on them, he reached down and ripped his own guts away from his abdomen so they wouldn’t interfere. Once free of the obstruction, he again started out for them.

Even as he hacked the living, Richard saw the dead man coming. His sword swung around and shattered the dead man’s skull. An equally powerful blow on the return swing severed the dead man’s legs at mid-thigh. As the headless corpse toppled forward, his arms reached toward Richard but missed. He landed hard on his chest. His fingers clawed at the dirt and clutched at a small brush to pull the headless, legless remains onward. Richard swiftly hacked arms from the torso as soldiers fought back Shun-tuk to the sides.

Kahlan could see the chalky figures in the distance bending over and awakening other of their dead. She had a flash of hopelessness that even killing them was doing no good. Even in death they would keep coming.

Richard, too, saw what was happening. He pointed with his sword.

“There!” he called out loud enough so all the soldiers could hear him. “Head for that higher ground at the base of that cliff. We need to get to a place where we’re not surrounded so we can better defend ourselves!”

In a heartbeat, with no further orders needed, some of the men of the First File formed a wedge bristling with blades. It was a formation designed to punch through enemy lines. While it was not always the most effective battle tactic, in this case they knew from training and experience that it was what they needed.

Nicci and Zedd in unison laid down a blistering wall of flame to clear the way ahead of the soldiers. Some of the white figures, probably the same ones able to raise the dead, lifted a hand as if dismissing the threat. The fire parted, arcing gracefully away from the half people before it could engulf them. Others to the sides were not so lucky and were enveloped before they could turn the fire aside. Figures in flames stumbled blindly as soldiers cut them down. As the wedge of men rushed them, the half people in the way who had avoided the conjured flames were not able to avoid the steel.

With a backswing, Richard cleaved a slender, snarling figure almost in half at mid-chest. As the stricken man’s legs buckled and Richard swung around with the follow-through of the powerful strike, he reached down with his other hand and clasped the forearm of the fallen, bleeding soldier. He pulled the man out from under several Shun-tuk still biting him. As Richard pulled the soldier to his feet, using his sword to chop the arms of half people away from the wounded man, he turned him toward their escape route and told him to hurry. Though covered with bite wounds and blood, the soldier looked able to make it on his own, at least for the moment, now that the weight of all the attackers was off him.

Richard caught Kahlan around her waist to pull her along with him and under his protection. “They didn’t kill him on purpose,” he said as he bent close to her. “They wanted him to scream. It was a trap meant to draw us in.”

She glanced up at the rage in his gray eyes, eyes that at other times could be so kind and compassionate. “I thought the same thing.”

With a tip of his head he indicated the higher ground. “We need to make it to that defensive position before they spring the rest of it on us.”

“You think there is more to come besides this?”

“Absolutely.”

With the man now rescued and the soldiers protectively surrounding them, they followed the wedge-of-steel formation toward the rise of ground backed by the cliff rising up among the hardwood trees. From time to time Zedd was able to throw a flood of flame out ahead of them. The blinding yellow light ignited trees and lit the bottoms of the clouds. Pine needles to each side flared as they ignited and went up in flames, sending a cascade of fire up the sides of the trees before they were turned to ash.

Any Shun-tuk unfortunate enough to be caught in the blinding incandescence appeared skeletal for an instant before even that much of their remains was vaporized.

Kahlan thought the heat of it might burn away her hair and eyebrows. She didn’t know what kind of power these half people had, but the flames were doing more damage to the trees than most of them. Fortunately, it had been raining so much and everything was so wet that the fire was confined to the immediate area and didn’t set the woods ablaze.

While it didn’t catch up as many of the half people in the inferno as they would have hoped, it at least helped scatter them out of the way. It seemed that the half people, once conceived with occult powers outside the Grace, were not affected by magic the way normal people would have been.

Kahlan saw more of the half people pouring out of the woods behind.

To her right, Richard tightened his arm around her waist to help her keep up, while on her left Nicci kept a hand firmly planted between Kahlan’s shoulder blades not only to help move her as swiftly as possible, but to give her strength. Kahlan hated needing the help.

Irena ushered Samantha along close behind them.

“Lord Rahl,” Samantha called out, “what can I do to help?”

“Run faster,” he called back over his shoulder.

Samantha and her mother obeyed as the troops fought the enemy off from the sides. Zedd laid down yet more fire behind them to protect their flank as best he could. Kahlan knew that using such power was difficult and exhausting. She knew that he wouldn’t be able to keep up such an intense effort for long.

With the way ahead being cleared by the wedge of men of the First File, Kahlan was feeling more confident that they could make it to the defensive position on higher ground up against a rock wall. Once they made it there, then they would only have to fight the half people from one side rather than from every direction. In that way, they would be able to continually reduce the number of enemy and eventually, hopefully, if there weren’t too many, wipe them out.

Kahlan realized that she was falling, that one of the ghostly white figures had dropped from a tree onto her back, only when she felt the impact knock the wind from her lungs at the same time as she felt his teeth sink into the muscle at the side of her neck. She hit the ground hard, face-first, and went sprawling.