The Third Kingdom (2 page)

As he was swiftly dragged by his ankles clear of the wagon bed, his upper body dropped to the ground. Even though he tried to round his shoulders, with his hands tied he couldn’t use them or his arms effectively to keep his head from whacking the rocky ground. The pain was shockingly sharp, followed by an enveloping, inviting blackness that he knew would be fatal if he couldn’t fight it off.

He focused on the surroundings, looking for an escape
route, to try to keep his mind engaged. From what he was able to see in the murky moonlight, the wagon sat alone and desolate in the wilderness. The horses were gone.

While he didn’t see anyone else about, he did spot bones nearby. The bones were not bleached by weather, but stained dark with dried blood and bits of flesh. He could see gouges where teeth tried to scrape every bit of tissue from the bones.

The bones were human.

He recognized, too, shreds of uniforms. They were the uniforms of the First File, his personal bodyguards. Some of them, at least, had apparently given their lives defending Richard and Kahlan.

The smaller man still had hold of Richard’s ankle, apparently unwilling to let go of his prize. The other man stood to the side, looking at the thing he had pulled across the floor and out of the wagon.

Richard realized that it was his sword.

The man holding the sword pulled Kahlan partway out from under the tarp. Her lower legs bent at the knees and swung lifelessly from the end of the wagon bed.

While the man was distracted looking at her, Richard used the opportunity to sit up and lunge, trying to snatch his sword. The man yanked it back out of the way before Richard could get his fingers around the hilt. With his hands and feet tied, he hadn’t been free enough to grab it in time.

Both men stepped back. They hadn’t thought he was conscious. Richard had lost the advantage of surprise and gained nothing in return.

In reaction to seeing him awake, both men decided not to waste any more time. Snarling like hungry wolves, they descended on him, attacking him like animals in a feeding frenzy. The situation was so bizarre that it was difficult to believe.

The smaller of the two pulled Richard’s shirt open. Richard could see a glaze of ferocious savagery in the man’s eyes. The
bigger one, teeth bared with a feral fury, dove straight for the side of Richard’s neck. Richard reflexively drew his shoulder up, deflecting the lunge at the last instant. In protecting his exposed neck, the move instead presented his shoulder to the attack.

Richard screamed out in pain as teeth sank into his upper arm. He knew that he had to do something, and do it quick.

He could think of only one thing: his gift. He mentally reached down deep within, desperately summoning deadly forces, urgently calling on the power that was his birthright.

Nothing happened.

With his level of anger and desperation, along with his fear for Kahlan, the essentials were there for his gift to respond. In the past it had answered such critical need. The power of it should have come roaring forth.

It was as if there was no gift there to summon.

Unable to call it forth, with his wrists and ankles bound, he had no effective way to fight off the two men.

Frustrated and angry that he couldn’t get the mysteries of his gift to respond in order to help himself and Kahlan, Richard knew that he didn’t have the time to try to figure it out. Instead, he resorted to using what he could depend on—his instincts and experience.

As the men lunged for him, Richard thrashed wildly, trying to prevent them from being able to hold on to him and muscle him under control. Being on the ground with the weight of his attackers above him left him at a decided disadvantage, but he knew that he couldn’t let that stop him from doing everything he could to fight them off.

Their eyes wild, both men threw themselves over the top of him to hold him down. At the same time they tried to rip into him with their teeth. Richard had heard stories of people being attacked and eaten by bears. The two men piling onto him reminded him of the helplessness that came across in those stories, but with the frightening new dimension of human malevolence behind it.

Several times their teeth began to sink into his flesh, but each time Richard managed to jerk, twist, or elbow them away before they were able to get a good enough bite to rip off pieces of him. He couldn’t understand why they didn’t simply stab
him to death. They were both carrying knives, and they had his sword.

It was almost as if they knew what they wanted to do, but their inexperience was making them less effective than they might have otherwise been. Still, the partially successful attempts left gaping, horrifically painful wounds that gushed blood. With Richard quickly tiring from fighting under the weight of the two men, to say nothing of losing blood, he knew it was inevitable that they were going to succeed in what they intended.

Incomprehensibly, between trying to bite off pieces of him, the men paused to lap at the blood as if they were dying of thirst and didn’t want to let a drop of it get away and run into the ground. The interruption from biting to go after all the blood at least gave Richard time to get a breath.

Frustrated by not being able to get him under their control, the bigger man pressed a muscular forearm against Richard’s throat and leaned his weight on it. Richard fought to breathe as he tried to squirm out from under the pressure of the arm compressing his throat. It was terrifying to have both men on top of him, trying to tear him apart with their teeth, and not be able to move, much less get them off.

Pressed down with all his weight, the man’s arm abruptly slipped on all the blood. As he fell forward he had to throw a hand out onto the ground for balance. In a flash, with strength powered by fear and desperation, Richard pulled his own blood-slicked arms up from under the man stretched out over him and looped one arm over the man’s head.

Richard elbowed the man’s arm, knocking it aside. Without a hand on the ground, he lost his balance and fell farther forward. Richard arched his back, at the same time blocking with his knees, forcing the man around onto his back. Finally in a position to apply leverage, Richard pulled the rope binding his wrists together tight across the man’s throat.

Straining with every ounce of strength, Richard hauled back on the coarse rope binding his wrists, using it as a garrote to choke the big man.

Surprised, the man hadn’t had time to draw a breath before Richard had control of him. He gasped, straining for urgently needed air as he desperately clawed at Richard’s forearms. His fingernails ripped gashes across Richard’s flesh, but all the blood made for a greasy grip on Richard’s arms and the man couldn’t get himself free. Not able to escape the hold, he reached back, trying to claw Richard’s face or gouge out his eyes, but Richard’s face was out of reach and the man’s fingers caught only empty air.

The second man rushed in to help. He, too, tried to lever Richard’s arms away from his companion, but could find no spot to get his fingers under for a solid hold. Richard, fighting for his life, kept the first man locked in a death grip.

Not able to break Richard’s hold, the second man hammered his fists against Richard arms, trying to make him let go of his companion. Lost in rage, Richard hardly felt the blows.

Seeing that his efforts were doing no good, the man quickly realized that he had to try something else. Yelling for his companion not to give up, he struck out with a fist at Richard’s face, trying to get him to let go. With the way Richard had the big man pulled in tight against himself, the blows weren’t direct enough. Several times the man’s fist glanced off Richard’s jaw as he screamed for Richard to let go.

Richard had no intention of letting go. To let go would mean certain death.

The big man Richard was choking squirmed frantically, his arms flailing as he desperately reached for something, anything, that would help him escape or at least get a breath. He kicked with his heels, aiming for Richard’s shins. Richard pulled his knees up to keep his lower legs out of range. Most
of the blind kicks landed on the ground and the ones that did connect weren’t direct enough. Gritting his teeth with the effort, Richard tipped the man back even farther just to make sure that he couldn’t do any damage with his heels.

Richard saw a knife blade rising in a bloody fist of the second man. He pulled the man he was strangling over on top of himself as best he could to shield himself against a knife attack. He didn’t know how effective it would be, but it was the only thing he could do.

Suddenly, there was a loud, bone-cracking thump. The man faltered as he tried to turn. Another, sharper thump swiftly followed. With the third blow, blood rained down.

The man dropped the knife as he collapsed in a limp heap across the top of the man Richard was choking.

Richard wasn’t sure what had happened, but he was not about to let go to find out. Without the second man fighting him, he was able to focus all his strength on the task at hand. The big man’s movements had already become slow and weak as not only his wind was being cut off, but also the blood to his brain.

Richard screamed with rage to power his own aching muscles. As the man’s struggling became sluggish, Richard swiftly changed his hold, throwing an arm around the man’s neck, getting him in a headlock. Hard as he he could, he twisted the man’s head. In the quiet drizzle, when he reached the point of resistance, he pulled back a bit to gather more force, then slammed the man’s head over even harder. When he did, he finally felt the neck snap. The man’s whole body immediately went slack.

Powered by fury, Richard continued strangling the man even though he was no longer fighting.

A hand gently reached down with a reassuring touch to Richard’s bulging biceps.

“It’s all right. He’s dead. They’re both dead.” It was a
woman’s voice he didn’t recognize. “You’re safe,” she said. “You can let go now.”

Still panting from the effort and the rage, Richard blinked as he looked up into several shadowed faces crowded in over him.

They were not soldiers. From their simple clothes, they appeared to be country folk. Two women and two men leaned in, looking down at him. Back beyond those four, a handful of other men crowded in closer. They, too, looked like country folk.

Richard gradually released the pressure on the dead man’s neck. As the remaining air hissed from his lifeless lungs, his head flopped crookedly to one side.

One of the men standing above him lifted the limp arm of the other, smaller of the two dead men atop Richard and pulled him off to the side. Even in death, there was still a bloody snarl frozen on the face.

A mask of blood had run down to cover the side of the man’s face. Fragments of bone stuck up from his matted hair. Richard saw that the back of his head had been bashed in with a large rock that one of the other men crowded in close still held in a tight grip.

As the man with the broken neck began to slowly slip off to the side, one of the women, the one who had touched Richard’s arm, used a foot to shove the bigger of the two dead men aside. It was a relief to have the suffocating weight finally off.

The woman picked up the bloody knife that the second attacker had dropped when his skull had been crushed in. Leaning close, she sliced at the rope binding Richard’s hands and they at last parted. She moved down and cut the rope tying his ankles together.

“Thank you,” Richard said. He was more than relieved to at last be free. “You saved my life.”

“For the moment,” a man in the shadows said.

“We hope you will return the favor,” another added.

Richard didn’t know what he meant, but he had bigger worries at the moment.

With an angry gesture, the woman with the knife hushed the men before turning her attention back to Richard.

He saw in the weak light of the full moon that illuminated the cloud cover that she was middle-aged. Fine lines creased her face in an agreeable way. It was too dark to tell the color of her eyes, but not the determination in them. Her expression, too, was one of grim resolve.

The woman leaned closer to press a hand to the bite wound on the side of his upper arm to try to stop the bleeding. Her gaze turned up to his as she held pressure in the wound.

“Are you the one who killed Jit, the Hedge Maid?” she asked.

Surprised by the question, Richard nodded as he looked around at all the stony faces watching him. “How do you know that?”

With her free hand, the woman pulled stray strands of her straight, shoulder-length hair back from her face. “A boy, Henrik, came to us a little while ago. He told us that he had been her captive, and that she intended to kill him like all the others she had killed. He said that two people rescued him and killed the Hedge Maid, but now they were in trouble and needed help.”

Richard leaned forward. “Was there anyone else with him?”

“I’m afraid not. Just the boy.”

Even though Richard had killed the Hedge Maid, he and Kahlan had both been grievously hurt. Their friends had brought a small army to get the two of them out of the Hedge Maid’s lair and take them home. Now, those friends were all
missing. He knew that none of them would have willingly left Kahlan and him alone like this.

“Henrik was the one who told my friends what had happened and where they could find us,” Richard said. “They should have been with him.”

The woman shook her head. “I’m sorry, but he was alone. Terrified, and alone.”

“Did he tell you what happened, here?” Richard asked. “Did he tell you where those who were with us are now?”

“He was winded and in a panic to find help. He said there was no time to explain. He said we had to hurry and help you. We came right away.”

Now that Richard was free and the rush of the fight was over, the shock of pain had begun to bear down on him in earnest. He touched his forehead with trembling fingers.

“But did he say anything else at all?” Richard asked. “It’s important.”

The woman glanced around in the darkness as she shook her head. “He said that you had been attacked and needed help. We knew that we had to hurry. Henrik is back at our village. When we get back you can question him yourself. For now, we must get in out of the night.” She gestured urgently to the woman behind her. “Give me your scarf.”