Severed Souls

There was nothing they could do about it, of course, but it added a frightening dimension to the evolving nature of the fight.

The men, as well, fought fiercely to keep the ghostly figures back behind their lines. Wherever the chalky figure of a Shun-tuk made it through and appeared out of the darkness, a soldier of the First File was there, running him through with a sword, cleaving limbs with an axe, or crushing skulls with a mace. Irena shared a look with her daughter and then ran off to help the soldiers.

“Samantha, hurry,” Richard said. “We’re running out of time. I need you to give me some strength and keep me conscious for a few minutes longer.”

Kahlan thought that was more than a puzzling thing to say. He needed to have strength to recover enough to get up and help convince the Shun-tuk that he was back and strong enough to fight them off so that they would withdraw.

She wondered if maybe he was delirious and simply didn’t know what he was saying. Maybe he just wanted the pain to stop, if even for a few minutes.

Kahlan hoped the young woman could handle it. She was suspicious, though, that Richard had something more in mind. She especially wondered what he meant about keeping him conscious for a few minutes longer. Why wouldn’t he ask her to give him strength so that he could fight?

Samantha bit her lower lip as she hurriedly scooted around so that her knees were touching the top of Richard’s head. She hesitated, then put her palms on his temples.

“Lord Rahl, I, I …”

Richard put his left hand over hers. “You can do it Samantha … like before …”

“Like before,” she muttered. “I wish I remembered what I did before.”

“You don’t know?” Kahlan asked in alarm as she shifted closer to the young woman.

As Samantha looked up, a tear ran down her cheek. “I don’t know … I’m not sure.”

“Strength …” Richard whispered.

“Strength—I know—strength.” She removed her hands from his head and squeezed them in fists. “But I don’t remember what I was thinking at the time, what I was trying to do.”

“Ignore the sickness,” he said. “Don’t try to heal anything. Just support me with your strength so I can fight it myself.”

She gasped with realization. “Of course.” Her faced brightened. She placed her hands back on the side of his head. “Strength. I remember now. I just gave you some of my strength so that you could endure it on your own.”

Richard tried but did a poor job of smiling as he nodded in her hands.

Kahlan could hear the sounds of the battle raging behind them. Half people cried out as they ran up on razor-sharp steel. Men grunted with the unrelenting effort of hacking at the endless horde rushing in at them. Skulls cracked, bones broke, men yelled orders, the wounded cried out in agony. Ghostly bodies with ghastly wounds lay sprawled here and there.

To the other side of the encampment, Kahlan heard another attack beginning. The half people were trying to divide the camp and make it more difficult to defend.

In the firelight, Kahlan saw one of the pale figures leap over the crowded front line of men of the First File. He didn’t last long, but he was followed by another, and then another. The camp was being overrun. She saw men dragged to ground under the weight of chalky figures as other soldiers chopped at arms and heads, frantically working to get the Shun-tuk off them.

Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye Kahlan saw one of the Shun-tuk leap over the fire, racing right at them. There was no one close enough to stop him in time.

Out of reflex honed by years of training and combat, Kahlan pulled her knife as she sprang up, spun, and with a powerful backhanded swing slammed the knife square into the center of the man’s bare chest. The big Shun-tuk, his face covered in the caked and cracked white paste, stopped dead in his tracks, the knife buried up to the hilt right through the center of his breastbone.

Samantha stared, frozen, her eyes wide.

The blade Kahlan carried had been honed to a razor edge by Richard, and it was easily long enough to go all the way through a man’s heart. It clearly had.

Kahlan hadn’t even really felt any resistance. A knife of that weight, that sharp, and with that much speed behind it was virtually unstoppable. As the man’s eyes rolled back in his head and his legs buckled, Kahlan yanked her blade free. She kept it in her fist where it would be handy if needed again. She was sure that it would be.

“Samantha, help him, please,” Kahlan said.

Samantha swallowed and bent back over Richard.

CHAPTER 18

We don’t have much time,” Richard whispered.

“I’m trying.” Samantha pushed some of her mass of black hair back out of the way as she bent lower over him. “There’s just so much noise and distraction …”

Kahlan knew that it had to be hard for a sorceress as young and inexperienced as Samantha to concentrate on finding that calm center in order to use her gift. It took concentrated effort in the best of times. Now there was a battle raging all around her and she was frightened. But it was what it was and if she didn’t do something, Richard was going to be lost to them for the fight, and if that happened then they would all soon be dead.

In this, as in so many things, the difficulty didn’t really matter, only the results counted.

For just an instant, Kahlan had a flash of the memory of what the prisoner had told them, that Sulachan had dark ones waiting for her and Richard in the underworld to drag them down into eternal darkness and torment.

Banishing the memory, Kahlan leaned close, and whispered in Samantha’s ear. “There’s no one else but you and Richard. Ignore everything else. None of it matters. You are the one in control of this. You alone command your own quiet center. You command your power. You alone command what you do with your gift. No one can take that from you but you.”

Samantha looked up at Kahlan with the oddest expression, as if to say she didn’t know that anyone else would understand about using the gift. Kahlan knew a great deal about finding that quiet place inside, even in the middle of a raging battle, even on the brink of death, and still releasing her power.

Except that now they were in the middle of a raging battle and on the brink of death, and she could not reach that power.

Samantha’s eyes closed in concentration as her head bowed again over Richard’s.

Richard’s eyes were closed as well, not in concentration but in pain.

Kahlan took up one of his hands and held it to her heart. “Richard,” she whispered, “I love you.”

He smiled through the pain. Looking like he wanted to answer, to say he loved her, but he couldn’t. She didn’t need to hear it though. She knew.

Kahlan could see Samantha’s fingers trembling as they held Richard’s head. She was afraid. Afraid of failing, afraid of the Shun-tuk coming for them all, afraid of the responsibility resting on her shoulders.

“Use anger,” Richard whispered to her before his hand went slack and he once again slipped into unconsciousness.

His words seemed to spark some memory in her. “Anger … of course.”

Almost immediately, through the hand she held, Kahlan could feel the warmth of Samantha’s gift flowing into him, finding its way through the darkness and pain that was overwhelming him. Kahlan hoped that it could give him the strength to force the darkness back.

She could feel a bit of the tension return to his hand. He took a deeper breath as he again came aware.

He said one word to Kahlan.

“Sword.”

She stared for a moment, and then she understood.

She lifted his right hand and pulled it over, placing it over the hilt of his sword. He was only partially conscious and didn’t seem to have enough strength to grip it, so she pressed his fingers around the hilt for him.

When his fingers formed around the hilt, gripping it, she could see that something changed in him. He drew an even deeper breath.

When his eyes opened, they were filled with the magic from the sword, its power feeding strength into him.

Richard was the true Seeker, and the sword was bonded to him in every way. It responded to his touch in a way it responded to no other; it recognized its master.

“There is no time to lose,” Richard said. “We have to act quickly. Where’s the commander?”

Kahlan frowned and leaned in a little. “No time to lose? What do you mean?”

“Fister. Where’s Commander Fister?” The anger of the sword was now clearly powering his voice. “I need him.”

Kahlan didn’t know what Richard could be thinking, or if he really was thinking. It was possible that in the semiconscious state he was in, drifting in and out of comprehension of what was going on around him, he was having some kind of dream or delusion and it was purely the anger from the sword enabling him to voice those delusions.

Rather than question him, Kahlan turned to the scene of the fighting. She saw the big man not far away.

“Commander! Commander! We need you!”

When he heard Kahlan calling for him, he turned from angrily hacking a Shun-tuk to pieces. Almost immediately another half person rammed a shoulder into the commander’s side, attempting to tackle him and take him down. The crusty, chalky figure might as well have tried to topple an oak tree. The big commander casually put a headlock on the man and twisted. Kahlan heard tendons pop and bone crack. Commander Fister let the limp form drop in a heap. On his way toward Kahlan, without pause, he smashed the heavy pommel of his sword into the face of another Shun-tuk racing in toward him.

When there was a heavy clash at the perimeter defenses, the struggle of holding the weight of the enemy back allowed others the opportunity to slip by. It was not a planned, coordinated tactic, but rather individuals seeing an opening created by others and taking advantage of the opportunity.

All of the half people were ultimately out after souls for themselves, not dedicated to winning battles. In a way, that made them easier to fight, because they didn’t coordinate their attacks or make skillful, strategic moves, but at the same time it made them as unpredictable as a cloud of blood flies. They randomly came in from every direction, each interested only in biting and getting at your blood.

Kahlan saw the ghostly figures of Shun-tuk stalking through the camp, trying to stay hidden in the shadows as they hunted for an opportunity to catch a soldier unaware. Whenever they were spotted by soldiers of the First File they were swiftly cut to pieces, but the fact that they were getting into the camp at all was a very bad sign. You never wanted to let an enemy flank you and get in behind to attack from the rear while you fought the enemy in front.

Commander Fister raced in close and went to one knee beside Richard, across from Kahlan. With the help of the power from his hand on the sword, Richard sat partway up, propping himself on his other elbow, and seized the edge of the commander’s leather armor chest plate to pull him closer.

“Listen to me, this is what they have been waiting for—for the sickness to weaken me and put me down. They have been waiting for this opportunity to attack. Without me helping, they are going to overrun us like they did to you before.”

“No, Lord Rahl, I won’t let—”

“You weren’t able to stop them before, when you were captured, were you?”

The commander grudgingly shook his head.

“You have fewer men this time,” Richard said. “A great many were lost in that battle, and more yet while you were being held captive. The numbers you started with have dwindled dangerously low. We couldn’t fight them off before with all the men, so how do you expect that we will be able to fight them off this time, using the same tactics, but with even fewer men?

“We will lose such a fight—that’s why they are pressing us into it. They are making the rules and we are obliging them. They waited until I was weak and down, and then they attacked the rest of you. That’s their way: simple, brutal, and effective.

“We have to change the rules or we are going to lose.”

Commander Fister shared a look with Kahlan and then looked back at Richard. “I understand what you’re saying, Lord Rahl, and I’ve had the same worry, but I don’t know what we can do about it. We fight or we die. That’s the only way for us to survive—fight or die. There is no way to change that rule.”

Richard was shaking his head. “They’re fixated on me. We need to use that against them.”

The commander wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand holding a bloody sword. He stole a worried look over at the battle before once again looking back at Richard.

“I’m sorry, Lord Rahl, but I don’t follow.”

Kahlan thought that it was more like he didn’t want to follow. He wanted to get back to the battle. His blood was up for the fight, and he was thinking with that anger.

“What do they want?” Richard asked through gritted teeth, both from the pain and from the rage of the sword.

Samantha tried her best to keep her hands pressed to the sides of his head, but she was not having a great deal of success. It was the magic of the sword, mostly, added to what she had started, that was powering Richard at the moment.

“What do they want?” The commander glanced back over his shoulder, quickly appraising the battle, then heaved an unhappy sigh. “Lord Rahl, they want to kill us, that’s what they want. They want to bloody kill us all.”

Richard shook his head insistently. “No—yes, that too—but that’s not the point. You heard the prisoner. They sense my spirit. They know when the life force in me weakens, when I start going unconscious. They know when I am drifting closer to that pull of death. That’s why they attacked now—because they knew I was down.”

“So?”

“So, that’s what they want, what they are using, what they are counting on and waiting for. That’s their strategy. It’s no more complex than that. Wait until the prey is weakest and then attack. We need to use that to lay a trap.”

The big commander slicked a hand back over his closely cropped hair as he let out a sigh. “Seems to me, Lord Rahl, that it’s us that the mouse caught in the trap—especially you.”

“You have it backward. I’m not the mouse; I’m the bait.”

CHAPTER 19

Commander Fister’s brows drew together as he put an elbow on his bent knee and leaned closer.

“What?”

“I’m the bait.”

“Well, yes, we know that they want you. But we’re holding most of them back. Our lines will hold.”

“I don’t want them to hold.”

The man was confused, frustrated, but most of all alarmed by what he was hearing. “Lord Rahl, I think you had better let Samantha, here, heal you as best she can, let your head clear, and then we can talk. Right now I need to get back to my men.”

As the man started to stand to rejoin the battle, Richard lifted his sword a few inches from the scabbard. Commander Fister could not help but notice. He paused. Richard didn’t look to have the strength to pull it the rest of the way. He sank back a little as he looked up at Kahlan.

“Help me draw it.”

Kahlan was not liking the sounds of his plan and she hadn’t even heard it yet, but she did as he asked of her. She suspected that he was counting on the sword, once it was out of its scabbard, inundating him with the full force of its power to give him strength. Kahlan thought that maybe when he had his sword out and finally had that strength, he would recognize the dire circumstances of the battle. Then maybe he would be able to think straight and see that the commander was doing all he could—the best he could—in a very difficult situation, and Richard was needed in that fight.

As Kahlan glanced around at the furious battle raging mostly at the edge of their camp, she saw that there were also fights going on in some places inside their ranks. She wondered if maybe Richard wanted his sword out in order to join the fight. The men at the lines were hacking furiously at the Shun-tuk rushing in at them. Fresh enemy forces were continually pouring in. Such effort was tiring and couldn’t go on much longer before exhaustion caused the men to begin to lose their effectiveness.

Zedd was casting some sort of conjuring but it didn’t look to be halting a lot of the enemy. He stopped and knelt at wounded men and helped where he could. Nicci was doing the same. Kahlan could see at least half a dozen of their men down.

She didn’t see Irena. There were any number of places she could be where Kahlan wouldn’t see her. She hoped that Samantha’s mother hadn’t been taken by the Shun-tuk. Samantha had endured that once before and now that Irena was back with them, it had drawn Samantha even closer to her mother.

Kahlan closed both of her hands tightly around Richard’s big hand on the hilt as she helped him pull. As the Sword of Truth finally slid all the way out, the blade sent its clear, distinctive ring of steel out across the scene of the battle. The sound of it caused a few men of the First File to pause for just an instant and look over. She knew that seeing Richard with his sword out rallied their spirits.

Kahlan could see that having it fully drawn, his hand now firmly on the hilt, had ignited a storm of rage from the sword. She could see in his gray eyes that the power of that ancient weapon was now providing him needed strength. Still, the power of the sword was the twin to his, and that meant that it might have been providing strength, but it needed Richard’s strength to fully complete it, and at the moment Richard didn’t have sufficient strength of his own.

When Richard held his other arm out, Commander Fister gripped it and helped pull him to his feet. Samantha tried her best to maintain contact with him, but to her frustration once he was standing she could no longer keep her hands on his head.

With the sword in his fist, Richard didn’t need Samantha’s help. The sword’s power was far stronger than any strength she could give him, but she stayed close just in case.

Once up, Richard quickly scanned the battle scene. “We can’t keep fighting by their rules or we are soon going to lose.”

“It’s not like we have a lot of choice,” Commander Fister said, his exasperation barely contained.

“Again, you are thinking of the problem, not the solution,” Richard told him, absently, as he carefully looked around, studying everything.

Jake Fister assessed Richard’s face for a brief moment, as if trying to tell if he really was thinking clearly or maybe still suffering from a delusional fog from the sickness.

Kahlan knew better. She knew the way Richard thought. While she didn’t know what he had in mind in this instance, she knew that he was not delusional—he was thinking like the Richard she knew so well. In a way, it heartened her. While everyone else was focused on the problem they faced, he was thinking of a solution.

Richard looked off to the side, studying the darkness. Kahlan didn’t know what he was looking at, but she knew that he could see better in the dark than she could. Richard could see at night almost as well as a cat.

“Casualties are irrelevant to them,” he said, “especially since those with occult powers are soon going to start reviving the dead. The more we kill, the bigger the supply of dead they have at hand to turn into those walking dead. Those unholy monsters are a lot harder to take down than the Shun-tuk. Our men are tiring. Matters can only get worse from this point on.”

“These are men of the First File,” the commander insisted. “They will fight with all their heart and soul.”

“The Shun-tuk don’t fight very well, though, or use weapons,” Richard added, mostly to himself, not seeming to really notice what the commander had said.

“Our men are the best,” the commander again insisted. “You know that, Lord Rahl. They are the best fighters there are. The Shun-tuk aren’t quality fighters.”

Richard finally refocused his attention on the commander. “Yes, but vast numbers have a quality all their own. They don’t care how many people they lose. We do.”

The commander scratched an eyebrow, deciding against further argument. “You have something in mind, Lord Rahl?”

Richard gestured with his sword. “This camp, set up the way it is with the cliff blocking the back side, is not the worst place to fight from. But it’s not the best, either, especially in this case because it works to their advantage. They can surround us from several directions and keep us pinned down. We can’t move easily, so they can keep us here and keep coming at us to wear us down.

“We need to draw them into terrain that is to our advantage, not theirs. We need to flank them and get some men behind them.”

Commander Fister scanned the battle, looking around at the open area and the dark forest beyond where Shun-tuk kept running in from every direction.

“But how can we hope to do that? We’re out in the open. They’re scattered all throughout the woods. We have no idea where all of them are. How are we supposed to flank them?”

“By changing the battle. We need to be able to come at them from both sides at once and crush them.”

The commander lifted an eyebrow. “Lord Rahl, what you say makes sense—theoretically—but in this case it would be like trying to flank ants. They’re all over the place out there.”

“Again, you’re telling me the problem. I already know the problem.” Richard pointed with his sword to the rock wall backing the encampment. “This cliff face, where it goes around over there, is formed by the side of a gorge coming down from higher ground. That ravine turns out here, in this cliff face, as the terrain broadens into this lower, flatter ground. Look there. See that brook over to the side, where we’ve been getting water? That brook comes down through that ravine.”

“What of it?” the commander asked.

“We need to draw the Shun-tuk in there. The terrain climbs from here and the sides are steep, so the Shun-tuk wouldn’t be able to spread out. If they want to come after us, their only choice will be to follow us up the gorge. There is no practical way to go around and catch us. If they tried that, we’d be able to get away from them.”

The commander rubbed his chin as he peered off at the gorge.

“Before we go in there,” Richard said, “we need to station men to either side. They can slip in over there at the edge of the camp. We need to have men climb up and hide on the slopes to lie in wait for the enemy to pass by. Meanwhile, with the other half of the men, we will run up the gorge, as if we’re panicked and running for our lives to try to escape them.”

“What if they don’t follow us?”

“They’re predators. Predators chase running prey. It’s one of a predator’s strongest instincts.”

Commander Fister was listening with more interest. “Then what? A hammer and anvil?”

Richard nodded. “Once we get them to follow half of us into that narrow gorge, the men hiding up on the sides will descend, close off the back door, and come at them from the rear, closing the trap. At that point, we turn back on them. We move in from both ends and crush them in that narrow pass. They won’t be able to escape or hide.”

Kahlan and Commander Fister peered off at the steep hillsides where the brook went around the cliff face to then go back up into the more rugged landscape. Kahlan couldn’t see it very well, and couldn’t make out much of the lay of the land, but she trusted Richard’s word in such things. He had spent his life in the woods and he knew what he was talking about.

The commander rubbed his chin as he looked back at Richard.

“How are we supposed to get them to follow us into a narrow defile like that? They may not fight well, and they may be predators, as you say, but they’re not stupid.”

“Believe me, they will follow us,” Richard assured him.

Kahlan knew that Richard already had some kind of plan in mind, and she knew she wasn’t going to like it.