The Third Kingdom

When they finally reached the boulder field at the bottom of the mountain, he again scanned the gloomy countryside out beyond the small sheds, buildings, and shelters housing the village’s animals and tools. The open fields out beyond allowed him to see a goodly distance, all the way to the dark swath of sodden forest in the distance. What he could see looked deserted.

The chickens and geese were making a racket. They had been quiet until Richard and Samantha had made it down near their coops and that was probably what disturbed them, so he wasn’t alarmed.

Moving out of the boulders, he noticed that the rest of the animals seemed strangely quiet. The sheep huddled together under a roof of a small pole building. They were either staying out of the drizzle, or they were afraid of something. The hogs were likewise quiet and crowded together in corners of their pens.

Richard checked the damp ground, looking for fresh tracks that would indicate someone was about. There were tracks everywhere from people going about the work of looking after the animals. In fact, there were so many tracks through the mud that it made it difficult to make out anything suspicious.

But then he spotted a track that bought him to a halt. The people of Stroyza all wore shoes or boots. The print from this particular left foot was bare. What was so disturbing, though, was that the right footprint wasn’t bare, but it wasn’t a bootprint, either. It was a soft, irregular impression. It looked like the person’s foot might have been wrapped in cloth.

At the same time as he saw tracks that concerned him, Richard looked up just as a man with dark, sunken eyes stepped out from behind the chicken coop.

CHAPTER

37

The man wasn’t one of the villagers. His clothes were little more than tattered rags draped over his bony frame, exposing oozing lesions. In places, corners of different kinds of cloth hung like rotted flags.

His left foot was bare. His right foot was wrapped in muddy rags.

Considering his clothes alone, as filthy and frayed as they were, Richard’s first thought was that this was another of the walking dead dug up out of a grave somewhere and sent on a mission to attack the people of Stroyza.

But this was no walking corpse. This man was alive, although by the looks of him he was well on the way to being dead. He stared with sunken eyes rimmed with dark, reddish circles. The skin of his exposed arms was riddled with open sores and scabs. Except for not looking to have any other deformities, he looked to be a leper.

There was no time to feel sorry for the man.

Almost as soon as he spotted Richard, the man rushed at him, his lips curling back. As he came, he let out a bellowing roar, an otherworldly, feral, fierce sound, a sound born of savage hunger. His jaws were open wide, and his teeth were bared for the attack.

Richard pivoted to his left as he threw his leg out, planting his boot squarely in the center of the man’s chest as he charged in. The swift, powerful blow drove a grunt from the man and also drove him back, gaining Richard precious fighting room.

The man stumbled backward several steps as he struggled to catch his balance. As soon as he regained his footing, he immediately lunged toward Richard again.

Twisting to the left, coiled like a spring, Richard now had not only the time he needed, but also the fighting room.

The clear ring of steel in the still midday air announced the Sword of Truth clearing the scabbard.

The sword’s rage came out with the blade. Richard’s own anger was already there, waiting. Together, those twin storms fired the fury powering the blade’s magic.

Samantha let out a squeak as she dove behind Richard both for cover and to get out of the way of his deadly blade.

Richard’s gaze was fixed on the threat again rushing toward him. As his sword cleared the sheath, Richard uncoiled and whipped the blade around in a backhanded arc, following the path needed to take it where he was looking.

Before the man could take another step, the blade was already there to meet him. The silence was broken by the crack of bone. A red mist filled the damp morning air.

Before Samantha had finished diving behind Richard, the man’s head was off and tumbling up through the air. It bounced down on the top rail of a hog pen, leaving a splash of blood, and then came down with a thud in the mud among the pigs. The pigs snorted, pushing back against one another, at first trying to get away from the threat, and then, as the head rolled to rest, the smell of fresh blood swiftly overcame their fear and they were on it, jostling one another to get at the gory prize.

The headless man toppled forward, hitting the ground hard at Richard’s feet, splashing blood and mud across his boots.