The Third Kingdom

CHAPTER 40

Richard had to swing Samantha down off his shoulder as he dove into the woods for fear that he would smack her face into a limb and break her delicate little neck. He held her against his right hip, slung on his arm. He had to duck forward himself as he ran into the deer run to keep from hitting low limbs and saplings that were bent in over the tunnel-like trail. Like others Richard had used before, the deer trail was not very tall but it was wide enough. As he ran, small saplings leaning in here and there slapped at his arms.

Samantha’s arms finally stopped their frantic flailing and spinning. She slumped, panting with exhaustion from the effort. He could see that it had taken every ounce of strength that she had.

Now, it was up to him to get them away from the horde of half people who had been after them. He didn’t think that they had seen which way Richard had run, but he imagined that they could probably guess that he would head for the woods. He expected them to show up at any moment.

Through the blur of branches, brush, and green flashing by, Richard spotted one of the half people. He was dressed better than the man Richard had beheaded, but not much better. As soon as he spotted Richard and Samantha he raced in from the left side. As he got close, he bared his teeth. Richard could see that he was missing a few. His jaws started snapping in anticipation of catching flesh and ripping it off.

Without pause, as soon as the man was within reach, Richard put his hand behind the man’s head and used his momentum to propel him forward. Richard, bigger than the lone man and already running while he carried Samantha under his right arm, used his hand on the back of the man’s head to steer him onward, moving him so fast that it not only took control of his direction but almost took him from his feet.

As they raced up on a tree, Richard ran the man’s face hard into the thick trunk, right over the stump of a dried, broken-off limb, driving it straight through the man’s face. The impact was so hard Richard could feel the man’s head crack apart like a melon on a rock. With fluid movement, Richard released the man as he smacked into the tree and kept running. That was one attacker who wouldn’t be following them.

After he had gone on a short distance more, Richard stopped to listen for signs that they were being closely pursued. He panted, catching his breath as he quickly appraised the situation. He tried to breathe as quietly as possible so he could listen. Samantha pushed at his arm, wanting down, so he eased her down to the ground.

She bent forward, her mass of black hair hanging down around her face, hands on her knees, as she panted, trying to catch her breath after the exertion of creating the windstorm.

“That was brilliant,” Richard whispered to her.

She could only nod as she gasped for air. Richard let her recover as he listened for sounds of the half people in hot pursuit.

And then in the distance he heard them crashing through the woods, coming toward him and Samantha. It sounded like hundreds of people charging through the woods. Even though they were still a ways off, it wouldn’t be long before they reached their prey.

“Can you run, or should I carry you?” he asked.

She answered by snatching up his hand and starting out at a trot. Richard started running, rapidly passing her and half pulling her along with him as he raced up the deer trail. As fear overcame her exhaustion, she had no trouble racing to keep up with him. The trail wound haphazardly through the woods as it made its way past trees, steep ledges, and drops, so they didn’t encounter any obstacles in the path. As open as it was, Richard was able to keep moving along the winding deer trail at a rapid pace.

It seemed, though, that no matter how much ground Richard covered, the half people were still coming and getting closer all the time. He noticed that while they were mostly coming in from the direction of the trail off to Richard’s right, some were coming up from behind, back in the direction of the field.

Richard knew that he had to do something to slow them down so that he and Samantha could vanish. He just couldn’t imagine what would slow them. He was only one person, and it sounded like there were hundreds in pursuit. He knew that he could fight them off for a while in the woods, but if their numbers were great enough it would eventually be a losing war.

“How did you know to do that?” he asked Samantha.

“My mother taught me the wind trick,” she said, gulping for air as she was sometimes pulled up and over steeper places by his hand holding hers.

“And the heat to dry out the dirt?”

“I don’t know. I guess it was just something I put together on my own out of desperation.”

Richard smiled down at her. “Inventing magic?”

She smiled back with a breathless “I guess.”

“Well, do you have any magic tricks to use to slow them down so we can escape and disappear into the forest?”

“Sorry, Lord Rahl, but I don’t know what else to do.”

Richard nodded as he pressed onward. The trees around them were becoming larger and farther apart, while at the same time the forest floor began to thin out of underbrush that couldn’t grow in the deep shade. The Dark Lands seemed to have precious little sunlight in the first place, but on the hushed floor in under the massive pines it was darker yet.

Although that made it easier to run, the problem was that as the forest became more open, they could more easily be spotted.

Richard spotted them first, though. He saw ten or twelve of the half people in tattered clothes racing through the woods, dodging trees and jumping rocks and rotting logs as they steadily angled in to intercept Richard and Samantha. The deeper into the woods they went, the more open the forest down below became. The immense pines had no boughs down low. The huge trunks stood in sprawling beds of fern, beside streams, and among exposed rock ledges. The more ground that Richard and Samantha covered, the rockier the ground became and the broader the girth of the trees grew.

To make progress, Richard had to start climbing over the occasional layer of rocks and lines of ridges thrusting up through the leaf litter of the forest floor. The problem was that while he was slowed by the lay of the land, the half people, still some distance off on flatter ground, were able to run faster and close some of the distance.

More than that, though, they ran headlong, utterly careless as they ran, driven by the mad need to devour a soul. Richard saw one man hit a tree square, rebound, and go down. Another tripped jumping over a log. He didn’t rise out of the brush. Another caught a limb across the throat. His feet went flying out and he went down on his back onto rock with a heavy thud. The odd person running would occasionally catch a foot in a hole or under a downed limb and snap their leg.

But for every one who went down, it seemed like a dozen more showed up to join in the chase.

Richard frantically tried to think of a way to slow them, or to gain enough distance that he and Samantha could disappear into the trackless forest. He couldn’t come up with a way to slow so many people. The trick with the wind that Samantha had used to such great effect in the open field would not work in the forest. It might be inconvenient and distracting, but it wouldn’t stop their pursuers.

Richard had a sudden idea. He looked over at Samantha running beside him. Having to take two or three steps for every one if his strides, her feet seemed to fly over the ground, sometimes not even touching as he occasionally pulled her over an obstacle as they raced through the woods.

“That thing you did with heat, to dry the dirt and make dust, how did you do that?”

“Just gathered heat out of the air,” she said, sounding a bit perplexed by the question. “It was pretty simple.”

“Did your mother teach you to gather heat like that? Did she teach you how to make things hot?”

Samantha made a face. “I don’t know. A little, I guess. She taught me a lot of things growing up. Not necessarily a lesson, just little things, like pulling heat out of the air and putting it someplace.”

“Did she teach you how to heat rocks to keep you warm on cold nights?”

Samantha smiled even as she ran, still trying to catch her breath. “Yes. When I was little, she would do that and put the warm rocks in my bed. Then later she showed me how so that someday I could do the same thing for my little ones.”

“So you know how to put that heat you gather from the air into things? You can focus it.”

She nodded when he looked back at her, perplexed by what he was getting at.

Richard dove behind a long ledge, pulling her over it with him. He caught her around the waist and pulled her down behind the far side of the rock. He squatted down, turning her face toward him to make sure that he had her attention.

“Did she ever teach you how to make trees explode?”

Samantha’s brow lifted in surprise. “Make trees explode? Are you serious?”

“Yes, I’ve seen it done. Especially in war. Wizards and even sorceresses would focus the heat they gather, kind of like you gathered it to dry the dirt. Only they would then focus that heat into a spot inside the trunks of trees, kind of like you do inside rocks to warm them. When they focused enough heat, and it was intense enough, it would make the sap in the tree trunk instantly boil and vaporize. They would do it so quickly, so suddenly, that as the sap vaporized it would make the tree trunk explode.”

Her jaw was hanging open. “Really?”

“Really. The flying splinters and pieces of wood could cut down anyone nearby. It would shred them to pieces. It could stop a line of troops, bring a headlong assault to an abrupt halt.”

“But, I don’t know how to do such a thing.”

Richard peered out over the rock ledge and then leaned back down close to her. “You need to learn fast. It may be the only thing that can save us.” Richard carefully lifted his head and pointed off into the distance. “There, see that handful of men over there who stopped, trying to see where we went?”

She peeked over the edge of the rock. “Yes. I see them.”

Richard put his hand on her head and pushed it back down so the men wouldn’t spot her. “Try to gather heat and put it into that tree trunk beside them. See if you can focus the heat really fast. If you can, if you can do it fast enough and with enough intensity, you can make the trunk explode. I’ve seen it done, Samantha. I know it can be done. You’ve got to try.”

She pressed her lips tight for a moment and then peeked over the rock again. She took a deep breath and then laid both arms on top of the rock, aiming her palms out at the tree.

She squinted with the effort, her fingers trembling as she tried.

Finally, the breath she had been holding left her lungs in a rush. “I’m sorry, Lord Rahl, but I can’t do it. I just can’t.”

Richard let out a disappointed sigh of his own and finally nodded. “I know you did your—”

A man suddenly dove over the top of the rock behind them. Richard seized the man’s ragged clothes in his fists as he came diving in and used the man’s momentum to heave him out over the rim of ledge.

As the man tumbled away, three more men came over the top of the rock.