The Third Kingdom (53 page)

At least the fallen general would not be eaten by the beasts. He had given his life to slow the enemy in the hopes of saving the rest of them.

Tears streamed down Cara’s face as she shoved Richard. “Go! Hurry! Go!”

And then Richard was running.

Cara’s hand on his back made sure she was in contact with him as she pushed him ahead of her while watching his back. Behind them, Zedd was a dark, sticklike silhouette against the brutally intense yellow blaze. In the roaring heart of that blinding light, the dark bodies of the Shun-tuk were reduced to skeletons and then ash in little more than an instant.

The lethal fire roared back through the tunnel, engulfing the leading edge of the horde coming for them. The screams of the Shun-tuk were bloodcurdling.

Those screams were not enough for Richard.

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.

The glowing red eyes of the walking dead stood out in the murky, late day light. They were slower than the Shun-tuk—that was why so many of the Shun-tuk had emerged from underground first. Now, the dead were lumbering out of the caves, come to help reap those with souls.

Richard furiously hacked his way through the half people as he crossed the bloody ground to intercept the dark shapes of the animated dead. Their clothes hung in rotting tatters. Their dried flesh was as dark as the dirt-covered clothes they wore, so that they all looked like filth formed into men.

As slimy and grimy as they were, it didn’t matter to Richard. He needed to stop them before they could get to the others. He knew how dangerous these dead driven by occult magic could be. The soldiers would have more than a difficult time handling such a threat. Even the gifted’s powers were no match for the occult magic that had been invested in these monsters.

Richard vaguely perceived a figure in red—Cara—close behind him, going in for the attack with him, guarding his flank from Shun-tuk turning to come after him.

Richard redirected his attack from the Shun-tuk and instead went for the dead. With their glowing red eyes they were
easy enough to spot. Even the Shun-tuk kept clear of them now that they had been set with the task of killing.

Richard gritted his teeth as he swung his sword with all his might, hacking apart the dense, dark forms. Arms and legs fell, littering the ground. Legs continued to twitch. Fingers continued to grasp. Heads and parts of heads spun through the air and cracked apart as they bounced off rock walls.

All the while, fire tumbled and rolled across the ground, swamping the severed but still-moving limbs behind Richard as he drove onward through the dead coming at him and the Shun-tuk baring their teeth, hoping for a bite of him. They tasted only steel. The air all around was filled not only with the smoke from all the fire, but the stench of burning flesh. Dust boiled up as stone spires crumbled and fell among the Shun-tuk. The night air was filled with screams of the mortally injured and those trapped under the crushing weight of toppled stone.

Everywhere the mostly naked bodies lay sprawled across the ground. Their chalky white forms only served to display the blood in stark relief. Each slash that laid them open only looked more shocking because of the way their ash-covered bodies made the terrible wounds all the more horrifyingly obvious.

Richard heard his name. It was Zedd, calling out to him.

“Richard,” he called again.

In a rage of blood lust, Richard brought the sword up before him, looking for any threat. Even though it still felt like hundreds of the snarling, growling half people were rushing at him, he realized that there were none.

It was only the terrible images of them that he was still seeing flashing through his mind that made him think they might still be coming. But they weren’t.

He blinked. There were no more Shun-tuk charging in at him. They were all down. There were no more of the walking dead. They, too, were all down.

In the stillness of the gathering darkness, Richard could hear the men panting from the effort of the battle. Some with wounds groaned. Some walked among the wounded Shun-tuk on the ground, stabbing any still alive.

All the axes and swords the men carried dripped blood. All of the men were covered in blood and gore. Richard was covered in more Shun-tuk blood than any of them. He was soaked in red.

Richard turned to Cara, a knife in each of her blood-soaked fists. One was a steel-bladed knife, the other stone—a Shun-tuk weapon. She had been using that weapon to put down the dead.

Cara met his gaze. The rage in her eyes was frightening to see.

It broke his heart.

With his sword still gripped in his fist and the anger of the magic still coursing through every fiber of his being, Richard put his arms around her.

Cara’s arms hung at her sides as he embraced her tightly, and then she threw her head back and let out a single, long wail.

He held her close as she buried her face against his chest with a helpless sob. He held her in a comforting shelter for a long moment. He finally let her go and looked into her tear-filled blue eyes.

There were no words as they looked into each other’s eyes. There could be no words.

When Richard finally turned back to Zedd and Nicci standing close, the crushing weight of the world seemed to suddenly descend on him.

He dropped to a knee, abruptly unable to stand. Cara helped hold him on the way down so that he didn’t fall on his face.

Nicci and Zedd were both right there, both helping keep him upright on his knees, letting him sit back on his heels.

Through a torrent of every kind of pain imaginable, the power of the sword still in his fist sustained and supported him. He felt too tired to breathe and had to will himself to draw each breath.

Both Nicci and Zedd pressed their fingers to his forehead. Richard could feel the telltale tingle of the gift probing the poison deep within him.