CHAPTER 4

On their swift journey through a forest so dense that the floor of the trail remained nearly untouched by moonlight, all of the people around him kept a wary watch of the surrounding darkness. Richard, too, scanned the woods, but he could see little beyond the weak lantern light. There was no way of telling what might be back in the black depths of the woods, no way of telling if the mysterious, half-naked people who had slaughtered his friends might be following him.

Every sound caught his attention and drew his eye. Every branch that brushed against him or snagged on his pant leg elevated his heart rate.

From what he could see, the people he was with carried nothing more than utilitarian knives. They had used a rock to dispatch the man attacking Richard. He would hate to encounter the hordes of killers on the dark trail and have to fight them off with little more than rocks.

He was glad to have the tooled leather baldric back over his right shoulder and his sword again at his left hip. From time to time he absently touched the familiar hilt of his sword for reassurance. He knew, though, that he was in little condition to fight.

Still, just touching the ancient weapon stirred its latent power and the silent storm of rage it held within it, stirring its twin within him and enticing him to call it forth. It was reassuring to have that faithful weapon and its attendant power at his beck and call.

Because some of the people had lanterns, Richard scanned the blackness for eye shine that would reveal the presence and position of animals beyond the limited range of the lantern light. While he did see some small creatures like frogs, a raccoon, and some night birds, he didn’t see any eyes of larger animals watching them.

Of course, it was always possible that something larger could have been hidden among the dense clusters of ferns and shrubs or back among the tree trunks so that Richard wouldn’t have seen them.

And, of course, there would have been no eye shine if the eyes watching them were human.

Since he couldn’t really see anything in the black depths of the woods, he depended instead on sounds and smells that might tip him off to a threat. The only thing he smelled, though, was the familiar scent of balsam, ferns, and the mat of pine needles, dried leaves, and forest litter covering the ground. The only sounds he heard were the buzz of insects and sometimes the sharp call of night birds. Distant, faint cries of coyotes occasionally echoed through the mountains.

All of the people taking Richard and Kahlan to the safety of their village refrained from talking on the journey. The wary group walked swiftly but nearly silently, the way only those who had spent a lifetime in the woods were able to do. Even the man ahead who was carrying Kahlan made little noise as he moved along the trail. Richard, unable to walk very well and sometimes dragging his feet as the men on either side helped him, was making more noise than any of the rest of them, but there was little he could do about it.

With all the bodies of strange people he had seen back near the wagon, to say nothing of the two men who had attacked him and the things he had overheard, as well as all the warnings he’d previously gotten about venturing into the Dark Lands, Richard could easily see why these people were nervous and being so careful. The two men who had attacked him had looked nothing like the bodies he had seen. If those two men had been right, then the dead were the mysterious people they had mentioned, the Shun-tuk.

It seemed that unlike other country folk Richard knew back home, the people with him had more reason for their fears than simple superstition.

He appreciated it when people took real dangers seriously. The people who most often invited trouble were the willfully ignorant who didn’t want to believe trouble was possible, so they dismissed the potential for it. You couldn’t be ready for what you never considered or were unwilling to consider. Worry was sometimes a valuable survival tool, so Richard thought it foolish to ignore it. But still, since they were so lightly armed, he didn’t think these people took the threats seriously enough.

Either that, or perhaps the threats they faced were something new to them.

It wasn’t long before they abruptly emerged from the confining, oppressive darkness of the forest into the open. A light mist borne on cooler air dampened Richard’s face.

In the distance across the slightly rolling ground out ahead of them, lit by the muted moonlight, Richard saw a sheer rock wall rising up. Partway up the cliff face he could see faint, flickering light, probably from candles and lanterns, in passageways that looked to go back into the rock.

Making its way ever onward toward the cliff, the trail passed between large fields, some planted with grain, others with vegetables. Once among the fields spreading out from the foot of the soaring cliff, the people with him finally felt safe enough to start whispering among themselves.

As they got closer to the rock wall, they came upon pens made of split rails. Some of the pens held sheep, others rather skinny hogs. A few milk cows stood together in a tight cluster in the corner of one pen. Long coops set among boulders fallen from the mountain towering over them looked like they were for chickens that were no doubt roosting for the night. Richard saw a few men tending to the animals.

One of the men was checking on the sheep, patting their backs to make them move aside as he wove his way back through the small but dense flock crowded together in a large pen.

“What is it, Henry?” Ester asked as she got closer. “What are you men doing down here at this time of night?”

The man couldn’t help staring for a brief moment at the strangers being carried in, one being helped on foot and a woman with a long fall of hair draped over a man’s shoulders. He lifted a hand out, gesturing to the neat grid of pens.

“The animals are restless.”

Richard looked back over a shoulder. The palm of his left hand rested on the familiar hilt of his sword as his gaze swept the fields between them and the dark mass of woods. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

“I think you had better leave the animals and get inside,” Richard said as he scanned the dark tree line.

The man frowned as he lifted his knit cap to scratch his thinning white hair. “And who might you be to tell me what to do with our animals?”

Richard looked back at the man and shrugged, but then, feeling his legs about to give out, he put his left arm back around the shoulder of one of the two men standing beside him. “I’m just someone who doesn’t like it when animals are restless, and I’ve seen a lot of frightening things this night not all that far behind us.”

“He’s right,” Ester said as she started out again toward the rock wall. “You’d best get up inside with the rest of us.”

Henry replaced his cap on his head as he cast a worried frown toward the silent wall of the woods hard against the far edge of the fields. The tall spruce looked like sentinels keeping the moonlight from entering.

Henry conceded with a nod. “I’ll bring the others up right behind you.”