The Third Kingdom

CHAPTER 77

When they broke free of the caverns, racing out of the underground openings and out among the dark stone spires, they found themselves in the gloom of dusk. The day was dying in deep grays that made the craggy stone pinnacles look like shadows of spirits crowding in from all around. Yet, after the darkness of the tunnels, even this somber light seemed harsh. The silence, too, was oppressive.

The silence was short-lived.

The Shun-tuk, howling in wild fury, poured out of openings everywhere in the rock. They were aroused by the smell of blood and had their prey in sight. The lethal fire Zedd had unleashed in the tunnel had only slowed them. It couldn’t reach through all the passages to reach the masses of half people after them.

They hungered for those with souls. There would be no stopping them.

They flooded out of places in the rock that Richard didn’t even know were caves. They rushed out into the dying daylight, a howling, ravenous horde, pouring out from the rocks and flowing around the stone spires in unending numbers.

Once out of the confining caves and in the open, seeing the masses of the unholy half dead coming from almost every direction, Richard knew that if they tried to get away, they would be run down and overwhelmed. He skidded to a halt.

As he stopped, he seized Cara by her wrist and tossed her behind him, out of his way. The storm of magic from the sword thundered through him, demanding that he strike.

It was his turn, now, to unleash his own merciless hunger for blood.

He turned to the Shun-tuk, then, and unleashed his lethal rage, both his and his sword’s, against the chalky figures charging in at him with lips drawn back and teeth bared. They came at him from every direction.

His blade met the snarling faces, shattering the skulls of those diving toward him. Each swing splintered bone or severed heads. Bone, brains, and blood smacked the rocks all around Richard as he swung the sword without pause. Blood fell in a red rain.

The Shun-tuk were being cut down by the dozens. Headless bodies, or bodies with only the lower part of their head, toppled and tumbled across the ground.

Richard lost himself in the storm of anger raging through him. He gave himself over to it without reservation or restraint. All he wanted to do was kill these soulless monsters. The blade demanded ever more blood and he was only too happy to oblige. He needed the blood of these animals more than he needed to live himself.

He abandoned himself to the need to kill, to his rage at what they had done to Ben and so many others. Each body that fell only made him want to kill more of them. There was no way that he would ever be satisfied if even one of them still stood.

As he killed men and women to one side, half people on the other side thought they had an opening to get to him and take him down. Richard let them come, then spun, cutting two men in half with one swing. Legs without bodies folded and collapsed. Torsos trailing innards and blood hit the ground with heavy thuds. The severed, ashen heads of yet more half people thunked down on the rock, cracking as they hit from their violent, tumbling fall. Empty eyes set in darkly painted rings stared up at nothing from tangles of bloody limbs.

As he screamed in rage while swinging the sword, the chalky figures toppled to the ground around him, headless, armless, lifeless.

He didn’t try to run, to get away. There was no getting away. There was only the killing.

He stood his ground, slaughtering them as they came, until there were so many bodies that he needed to move out from the tangled mass of sprawling carcasses and severed body parts just in order to be able to fight. Gore from those cut in half spilled across the rocky ground. Blood covered everything. Where there had been the pale, ash-covered figures, there were now only bodies covered in a sheen of wet red.

Running recklessly, many of the Shun-tuk slipped on all the blood and gore and fell sprawling across the ground. Richard stabbed downward at forms wriggling through the blood and the dead to get at him.

Those who raced in toward him fell dead and dying around him as fast as they came, adding their numbers to those already piling up around him.

It was not skillful fighting, not a gruesomely elegant dance with death. There was no artful cut and thrust, no graceful evasion and counterstrike.

It was, instead, violent, mad, bloody butchery, nothing more, nothing less.

Not far from him, Cara, with a knife in each hand that she had gotten somewhere, fought with a wild ferocity that was frightening to witness. Richard understood her savage wrath.

He usually saw her fight with her Agiel, but her Agiel would not work because his gift did not work. His gift powered the bond, and without that bond her weapon was dead in her hand, so she had instead found knives. She was no less deadly with knives than an Agiel. If anything, at the moment it looked like she preferred them for the manifest, ripping damage they did, visible evidence of her rage.

Off to the sides behind him, the soldiers of the First File fought with the same kind of grim fury, wanting to avenge the death of their general, a leader they admired and loved. The First File were the elite of D’Haran troops, the deadliest of fighters, and they were more than proving it this day.

By the way they fought, though, Richard could see that they were not fighting to save themselves. This was purely for vengeance. The First File in want of retribution was a sight to behold.

Yet, even as hard as they fought, some of those soldiers were swamped by the flood of howling half people. He saw them go down, covered with dozens of the unholy half dead wildly tearing into them with bared teeth.

Beyond them, beyond the killing field immediately around Richard littered with hundreds of dead and dying Shun-tuk, Zedd and Nicci were unleashing their gift with deadly effectiveness.

Off in the distance, at the outer margin of the raging battle, Richard could hear the roaring wail of wizard’s fire racing though the murky air, lighting the stone spires with an intense yellowish orange radiance before splashing down among the Shun-tuk as they raced out of the rocks. They were incinerated by the hundreds before even having the chance to join the battle. Despite how many of the savages died, more yet poured out to replace them.

Richard heard rock columns crash down on the chalky figures as the great spikes of spires toppled among them, no doubt brought down by Nicci, or Samantha and her mother. The falling stone crushed great numbers of them at a time. Great boulders and whole sections of fractured spires tumbled down and bounced across the ground, collecting helpless Shun-tuk before they were able to get out of the way.

The earth shook with the thunderous explosion of wizard’s fire as well as the boom of rock towers hitting the ground and shattering. Massive rocks hitting the ground and splitting sounded like the crack of lightning.

Yet even the roar of wizard’s fire, the booming crack of exploding rock, the shouts of the soldiers, and the screams of the dying were all only a dim drone somewhere beyond Richard’s immediate attention.

He was focused on the waves of chalky white figures as they raced in to try to get his soul. These were half people who clearly wanted him above all the others. They recognized that it was his blood that had brought back their king. They wanted that blood. They wanted his soul for themselves.

That was just fine with Richard. He was pleased that they were coming for him with such passion, that they wanted at him above all else. It gave him more to kill.

Despite how weary his arms were, and how out of breath he was, Richard never for a moment paused in killing them as they came. He never slowed. If anything, his rage was only building, fed by the unleashed anger from the sword. That anger fed his, powered the blade, made him more deadly, drove his need to kill. He was lost in a world of his own, focused entirely on the task.

Yet somewhere in the back of his mind, Richard knew that he wasn’t going to be able to keep it up. There were just too many continually coming for him. There seemed no way to defeat them all. Their numbers were just too great.

And then, in the failing light, in among the half people, Richard saw the hulking forms of the walking dead finally emerging out of the caves.