The Third Kingdom

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 to 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.”

Samantha nodded as she thought it over. “That makes sense. They would be jealous of others getting first chance at any souls, so they would all want to be right here, like a pack of hungry wolves, where they can hide in the woods at the beginning of the trail north.”

“That’s what I’m thinking.” Richard turned, looking back the way they had come. “I bet that fellow back there by your animals got the idea that he would wait even closer. He probably thought that he would get first pick of the souls living here. By the looks of him, he was desperate and not a very clear thinker. Being alone like that didn’t give him as good a chance at success as some of them working together to overpower people.”

“Well then, it seems that you’re saying that you expect them all to be waiting just up ahead.”

She started to lift her hand to point. Richard pushed her hand down.

“Don’t point. If there are half people out there, they will be watching us.”

Samantha was looking alarmed again. “So, what do we do?”

“I think we should try to go around them and pick up the trail farther north.”

“Maybe we should wait until dark, so they wouldn’t see us doing that. I mean, if you’re worried about pointing where we are thinking of going because they might be watching us, they will certainly be able to see where we head off to skirt the trailhead unless it’s dark out.”

“That certainly makes the most sense, and I’d rather wait until dark, but there’s two problems with that.”

“Like what?”

“First, it’s overcast. That means there won’t be any moonlight or even stars to help us navigate through strange countryside in the pitch black. It’s dangerous enough when you know where you are and you’re following trails you know. In the dark, in unfamiliar country, trying to cross trackless woods, it’s really dangerous.

“It only takes one mistake in the dark and your journey is done. You could hit dried branches that could blind an eye, or step in a split in the rock and snap the bone in your leg, or you could even fall over a cliff. Even a small cliff, not much higher than I am tall, is enough to kill you in the dark.”

“I could heal you if you got hurt like some of those things.”

“And what if it was you who fell and split your skull open on a rock?”

Samantha made a sour expression as she thought it over for a moment. “What’s the second reason?”

Richard started off across the field to the left. “The second reason is that we can’t afford to lose any time. Every moment we’re delayed could mean the lives of the people we’re on our way to help could be lost.”

Samantha hurried to follow after him across the rough, plowed ground, stepping high over clods of dirt to keep from tripping.

“Well, I know that I would hate to arrive the day after my mother was killed and for the rest of my life wish I would have hurried just a little faster.”

“Exactly,” Richard said as he steered a course across the rough, open ground for a small opening into the woods that he had spotted off in that direction. It looked like a small deer trail, but it was their best option.

The only problem was that if there were half people back at the trail, they would be watching and know where the two of them were headed. It wouldn’t give the two of them much of a head start.

It couldn’t be helped. It was the best of a bad situation.