The Third Kingdom

When the tumbling head hit the ground with a heavy thud, Richard saw that the glow was still there in the eyes. Before the rest of the body could fall he crushed in the face with a quick strike from his sword and then kicked the head out of the cave opening. Richard saw the reddish glow in the eyes fade away as the head sailed out into the rainy night.

But the headless body didn’t collapse. It took a step forward. As it took another step and kept coming, the arms reached out for Richard. Hands clawed, one arm swung at him. Richard lopped off the arm before it could be withdrawn. With two more quick slices from the razor-sharp blade he took off the other hand and then the arm it belonged to at the shoulder.

The armless, headless body kept coming, as if unaware that it was missing anything. With a scream of rage Richard brought his sword around again, slicing through the middle of the body. The blade shattered bone and crusted, dried skin. Bits of flesh with shredded cloth stuck to it and jagged bony pieces flew across the broad cavern.

As the disintegrating body was finally falling, the other man, the one with only one arm left, stalked resolutely toward Richard to continue the attack, roaring as he came. He looked to be fresher dead than the first man, and the stink of death and rotting flesh from him was even worse. Although he was clearly a walking corpse as well, he was not dried and shriveled like the other. Instead, the second man glistened with slimy decay. Places on the flesh of his bloated body had split open and oozed liquid. His swollen tongue protruded partway from his mouth, to an extent muffling his angry growls. Like the first man’s, his joints occasionally cracked and popped as he moved, yet it didn’t much hinder or slow him.

Richard instinctively thrust his sword through the killer’s chest. Much like the sword that had been run through the first man and then broke off, Richard’s sword didn’t appear to do any harm with this man, either. As he yanked his sword back out of the man’s chest, Richard took a step back. The man kept coming.

This second corpse had the same reddish glow to his dead eyes, like a window into the inferno of black art burning within him and powering his movements.

One of the men off to the side rushed up and in an attempt to help rammed a knife through the attacker’s neck. It did no more good than Richard’s sword had. The dead man staggered to a stop and with his one remaining arm backhanded the man who had come to Richard’s aid. The man cried out as he tumbled back across the cavern floor.

In that opening, Richard’s blade came around again. This time, Richard didn’t want to merely decapitate him like the first man. As the dead man turned back he was just in time to see the blade right as it met the side of his head. With an awful sound, the sword shattered the killer’s skull. Gooey chunks smacked the rock walls and stuck while bits of bone bounced off. Unlike the first man, this time there was nothing left of the head.

Without waiting to see if it would stop or slow the man, in quick succession Richard rained more blows down on the invader, taking off his other arm, then swiftly hacking his body into several pieces, finally taking the legs that were still standing before him down at the knees.

The roars of both attackers were finally ended. Injured people around the cavernous room screamed or moaned in pain. Others wept in terror. Many of those not hurt rushed out of hiding places to help those who were.

Richard nodded his thanks to the man who had tried to help by stabbing the attacker through the neck. Now back on his feet, the man stood wide-eyed at all that had just happened.

Panting from the effort and repulsed by the nauseating smell, Richard covered his mouth as he turned to the group of men who had been throwing rocks to try to stop the attack.

He took his hand away from his mouth. “What happened? Why wasn’t anyone watching? Didn’t you see these men coming up to your home?”

The men blinked in surprise and confusion, still clearly startled from the unexpected attack and stupefied by the bloody consequences.

“I’m sorry, Lord Rahl,” the man with the knife said. “We do keep a watch, but I guess not a very good one. With as dark as it is, and the rain, and with the dark clothing the men were wearing, we didn’t see them coming or even realize they were here until we heard the screams. Some of us came out to see what the trouble was but by then they were among us and it was already too late. That’s when we found ourselves in the middle of a fight for our lives.”

Richard clenched his jaw with the anger of the sword raging through him. He supposed that with the darkness and rain it would have been difficult to have seen the men or hear them coming.

“If someone had done a better job of standing watch,” he said, “all they would have had to do would have been to put a boot to these men as they tried to climb into here and that would have sent them crashing down the mountain.”