The Third Kingdom

As he fought, Richard had to be careful not to fall over the bodies or slip on the gore as he swung his sword and dodged fearless charges. The ground everywhere was spattered with a red rain. Blood dripped from the tips of leaves on the trees closest in all around and ran down the face of rocks. Severed fingers from people trying to grab the blade of his sword lay scattered over the rock, like fallen red leaves in autumn.

Richard’s arms began to feel as heavy as lead. It was tiring to swing the sword without pause. There was no time to catch his breath. Stopping for any reason would mean certain death.

He remembered the pain caused by the men who had attacked him, the pain of them biting him, trying to tear his flesh off with their teeth. That memory, that fear, that terror of such a gruesome end, not only for himself but for Samantha as well, drove him on with renewed fury.

Bodies and body parts lay in tangled heaps. The people running in to attack were tripping and falling over them before they could even get to Richard. Others were slipping on the blood and gore. Sprawled on the ground, they were all the easier to kill. As the ones still alive scrambled to their feet, they were covered in the blood of those they had fallen among, making it hard for Richard to know who he had cut and didn’t need to cut again, and who might still represent a threat, so he simply cut any of them within range.

The most they ever did to defend themselves was to lift an arm before their faces. That cost them the arm and then their head. It was ridiculously easy to kill such single-minded half people, but their sheer numbers were going to win out in the end, and then he and Samantha would be the ones butchered.

Richard turned when he heard Samantha suddenly scream in terror. He saw a clot of people crowded in around the narrow opening in the rock, all of them leaning in the opening from every direction at the same time, dozens of arms reaching, hands grabbing at her, trying to get even a fingerhold on her to try to drag her out.

Richard swung the sword in a wild frenzy, severing half a dozen arms at a time as if he were hacking away a thicket of brush. When he had slaughtered all those around the opening to her hiding place, he could see her wide eyes back in the darkness, tears of terror streaming down her face.

She reached out to him, pleading with her open arms, wanting him to come to her.

It was a sight of such abject misery that it nearly broke his heart.

Richard looked out at all the masses of people flooding in toward him from every direction.

There was nothing he could do.

He dove into the split in the rock, over Samantha, covering her, protecting her, with his own body. He put his back to her. He felt her arms close around him, clutching him in tight against her.

Richard pointed his sword outward to try to stall the inevitable as he waited for the end.

CHAPTER

42

Richard felt Samantha’s arms tighten around him.

“I’m sorry” was all he could whisper back over his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Samantha.”

He felt shame for letting himself so easily be talked into allowing her to come along, for how miserably he had failed to protect her, how he had failed Kahlan, failed Naja, Magda, and Merritt’s efforts, failed everyone else who depended on him as the Lord Rahl to be their protector.

He should have never agreed to bring Samantha. She was one of the watchers. She was supposed to warn others. She had done that. She was not meant to fight the evil she was born there to warn others of.

He was supposed to be the one to end prophecy and end the threat. It was his responsibility, not hers.

Zedd had always told him to think of the solution, not the problem. He tried, but this time he had no solution. He had failed. He wanted to think that sometimes there simply wasn’t a solution, but that would be absolving himself of responsibility, when it had been his responsibility. To think there was no solution was to surrender.

It was to come to nothing, though. Despite how hard he tried, he could think of no solution, and he couldn’t fight any harder, couldn’t fight off such an overpowering mass of half people all wanting to rip him and Samantha apart and steal their souls. Not even Zedd, Nicci, Cara, Cara’s husband, Ben, the general of all those elite troops of the First File, had been able to hold off such overwhelming numbers.

Still, that was no excuse. He was the Lord Rahl. In the end it didn’t really matter that they failed. It only mattered if he failed.

Richard watched out through the opening in the rock. He could see all the hands reaching back into the darkness for him. Fingers clawed the air, trying to catch hold of his clothes. Some of them grabbed the sword instead, and lost those fingers.

He could see the shapes of hungry mouths growling with sick need. They bared their teeth for the task for which they so desperately lusted, for the taste of human flesh.