Faith of the Fallen

Kahlan endeavored to show him a sedate smile, but she feared it came out as a giddy grin. Richard scooped up his pack and hefted it onto his back. Without delay, he started the descent down the steep, broken face of the mountain. Kahlan threw her long wolf's-fur mantle around her shoulders and followed him through the deep shade of sheltering spruce at the edge of the ridge, stepping on the exposed ledge rather than the low places.

"Be careful," Richard called out to Cara, already a good distance ahead of them, "With all the leaves covering the ground, you can't see holes or gaps in the rock."

"I know, 1 know," she grumbled. "How many times do you think I need to hear it'?"

Richard constantly watched out for them both. He had taught them how to walk in such terrain and what to be careful of. From the beginning, marching through the forests and mountains, Kahlan noted that Richard moved with quiet fluidity, while Cara traipsed along, bounding up onto and off of rocks and ledges, almost like an exuberant youngster. Since Cara had spent most of her life indoors, she didn't know that it made a difference how you walked in such terrain.

Richard had patiently explained to her, "Pick where to put your feet in order to make your steps comparatively level. Don't step down to a lower spot if you don't need to, only to have to step up again as you continue your climb up the trail. Don't step up needlessly, only to have to step down again. If you must step up on something, you don't always need to lift your whole body just flex your legs."

Cara complained that it was too hard to think about where to put her foot each time. He told her that by walling the way she did, she was actually climbing the mountain twice for each time he climbed it. He admonished her to think as she walked, and soon it would become instinctive and would require no conscious thought. When Cara found that her shin and thigh muscles didn't get as tired and sore when she followed his suggestions, she became a keen student. Now she asked questions instead of arguing. Most of the time.

Kahlan saw that as Cara descended the steep trail, she did as Richard had taught her and used a stick as an improvised staff to probe any suspicious low area where leaves collected before stepping there. This was no place to break an ankle. Richard said nothing, but sometimes he smiled when she found a hole with her stick rather than her foot, as she used to.

Forging a new trail on a steep slope like the one they were descending was dangerous work. Potential trails often withered into dead ends, requiring that you retrace your steps. On less severe slopes, hillsides, and flatter ground especially, animals often made good trails. In a valley, a suitable trail that shrank to nothing wasn't a big problem because there you could beat through the brush to more open ground. Making your own trail on a rocky precipice, a thousand feet up, was always arduous and often frustrating. In such conditions, particularly if the hour grew late, the desire not to have to backtrack a difficult climb tempted people into taking chances.

Richard said that it was hard work that demanded you put reason before your wish to get down, get home, or get to a place to camp. "Wishing gets people killed," he often said. "Using your head gets you home."

Cara poked her stick into a pile of leaves between bare granite rocks.

"Don't step in the leaves here," she said over her shoulder as she hopped onto the far rock. "There's a hole."

"Why, thank you, Cara," Richard said in mock gratitude, as if he would have stepped there had she not warned him.

The cliff face they were on had a number of sizable ledges with rugged little trees and shrubs that provided good footing and the safety of a handhold. Below, the mountainside dropped away before them into a lush ravine. Beyond the defile, it rose up again in a steep slope covered with evergreens and the dull gray and brown skeletons of oaks, maples, and birches.

The raucous coats of autumn leaves had been resplendent while they lasted, but now they were but confetti on the ground, and there they faded fast. Usually, the oaks held on to their leaves until at least early winter, and some of them until spring, but up in the mountains icy winds and early storms had already stripped even the oaks bare of their tenacious brown leaves.

Cara stepped out onto a shelf of ledge jutting out over the chasm below. "There," she said as she pointed across the way. "Up there. Do you see?"

Richard shielded his eyes against the warm sunlight as he squinted higher up on the opposite slope. He made a sound deep in his throat to confirm that he saw it. "Nasty place to die."

Kahlan snugged the warm wolf fur up against her ears to protect them from the cold wind. "There's a good place?"

Richard let his hand drop from his brow. "I guess not."