The Third Kingdom

CHAPTER 36

The climb down the side of the mountain in the damp drizzle was harder than the climb up had been. As he led the way, Richard idly wondered how many people from the village of Stroyza, over all the time the cave village had been up there, had slipped in the wet on the narrow trail and fallen to their death.

Looking up at one point, Richard saw crowds of people lining the rim of the cavern, gazing down at him and Samantha as they made the treacherous descent on the way to an even more treacherous unknown land beyond the mysterious barrier they knew as the north wall. They were probably wondering if the two would ever be seen again.

Richard dared not entertain such doubts. Kahlan was up there and he needed to bring help back for her. If he failed, he was failing her and she would die.

As Richard and Samantha had swiftly put together their supplies, he had briefly explained the dangers from the barrier failing to those gathered around helping. With no time to explain things to all the people of Stroyza, Richard told Ester and those gathered around that they would have to be the ones to let all the rest of the people know what had happened with what they called the north wall and fill them in with more of the details of the new dangers.

The Dark Lands were already a dangerous place. With the menace of the Hedge Maid recently appearing out of nowhere and mysterious hordes attacking, killing, or carrying off all the soldiers and gifted who had been with the Lord Rahl, to say nothing of the grotesque creatures that had attacked and killed so many people up in the caves, the people of Stroyza were already on high alert. He had no doubt that they would take the warnings seriously.

While he’d had the chance, Richard had impressed on those gathered around the previously unknown sort of threat that those from the third kingdom represented. Like him, none of them had ever imagined people, or half people, who thought they could steal another person’s soul by eating them alive.

He had told the people listening to come down the mountain only for something essential, and then only in groups prepared to fight off an attack. He’d been glad to hear that they had already avoided coming down ever since the attack by the walking dead. They told him that groups of men had quickly rushed down to tend their animals as necessary, but they didn’t linger. They feared that more of those corpselike monsters might be lurking down below. Richard had told them that they could very well be right. That was before they knew of the threat of the half people. Fortunately, as of yet, they had not encountered any more of the awakened dead.

He was glad that the trail up was so strenuous. The difficulty of coming up that mountainside trail to attack the cave village was probably the best defense these people had, now that they were properly on alert. They had been careless in keeping watch before, but he doubted that they would be that inattentive again.

As he paused to gaze out over the gloomy wilderness, the thought occurred to him that those back in Naja Moon’s time probably planned the cave village high up in the mountain with defensive safety in mind. It was even possible, if not likely, that they were the ones who had constructed the cave homes in the first place for just this eventuality. The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed.

Still, whether it was by initial intent or the village had come to be this way over time, these were not a people who were schooled in the art of fighting. They had, after all, fought off his attackers with a rock, even though they carried simple knives. He had to admit, though, that in that instance it had been pretty effective. He had told them that they shouldn’t depend on such methods in the future, and told them that when they went down to tend the animals to always have knives on them. A rock was all well and good, but a blade would serve them better in a fight for their lives.

These people, though, were meant to wait and watch. They were sentinels, watchers, the ones who were supposed to raise an alarm. It was clear to Richard that it was never intended that they would be the ones to be the first line of defense and fight the war they were here to warn about. Now that the ancient war had flared anew, they were going to have to defend themselves as best they could until Richard could do something to stop the threat.

Henrik had seen all the rushed preparations and had wanted to come with Richard and Samantha. Richard asked the boy to instead stay and help watch over Kahlan. When she woke, Henrik would then be able to fill in a lot of the blanks for her about what had happened after Richard had killed Jit. Ester could fill Kahlan in on what Richard had since learned about the barrier failing, and what he and Samantha had gone to do.

Kahlan had rescued Henrik from the Hedge Maid’s clutches. Because of that, he had a special kind of loyalty and attachment to her so it hadn’t taken a lot of convincing for Richard to get the boy to stay behind and help Kahlan.

Richard hiked the bow up onto his shoulder before negotiating a particularly treacherous turn on the steep trail. Between frequently looking down to watch his footing and looking ahead for handholds, he scanned the forest spread out in the distance below, looking for any sign of half people lying in wait. He didn’t see anyone or anything out of the ordinary, but that didn’t allay his concern. The unseen threats were what worried him the most.

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.