to reach the doorway, the big, dark shadow of the man flew backward out of the room and crashed into the wall on the opposite side of the tunnel. Dust billowed up from the impact.
The man was clearly stunned but he recovered quickly. As he regained his footing, Sammie appeared in the doorway.
Richard was almost there, but he wasn’t yet close enough. Sammie and her attacker were too far away for Richard to help her.
The man again let out a thunderous roar of rage as he rushed the girl. Sammie lifted both arms out straight, with her palms up, as if she actually thought she could stop the charge of the big man.
To Richard’s surprise, the man flew backward again, again slamming into the wall.
This time, as he came off the wall, flying toward the girl, she shrieked when she tried a third time to stop him and it didn’t work.
But this time Richard was there. With one mighty blow, the sword cleaved away the monster’s head and one shoulder. A second strike came like lightning, severing the other arm as it tried to strike at Richard. With quick swings, Richard hacked the body down to the waist, and then chopped the legs down at mid-thigh.
The head, with the neck, a shoulder, and one arm still attached, lay on the ground, looking up with menacing, glowing red eyes. The hand reached out and snatched Richard’s ankle. Richard brought the sword down a half-dozen times in quick succession, hacking the arm and head apart. He crushed the hand with his boot after smashing the head to bits.
Richard stood panting, sword in his fist, feeling the rage of it storm through him, drawing yet more of his own rage forth. He cocked his head, listening, but he didn’t hear any other screams or roars. It seemed that this was the last one.
Sammie stared up at him.
“Are you all right?” he asked her.
She nodded as she let out a deep sigh of relief.
He pulled her to him and with his sword arm, embraced her around her small shoulders, thankful that he had been in time. She had managed to buy a few precious seconds until he could get to her and end the threat for good.
“You’re sure you are all right?” he asked again. “You’re sure that he didn’t hurt you?”
She held some of her dusty, frizzy black hair back out of the way as she looked down, taking a good look at the remains.
“No, I’m fine,” she assured him. She sounded remarkably calm.
“Then do you mind telling me what you were doing?” Richard gritted his teeth as his fist tightened around the hilt of his sword. He leaned down toward her. “I told you to protect the Mother Confessor. When I left, I clearly told you to stay there and watch over her.”
“I was watching over her.”
“Until you ran. I trusted you to protect her, and instead you ran. I can’t fault you for being afraid, but I was counting on you and you didn’t stay there and protect her.”
Sammie shook her head. “I was protecting her—”
“They came back in the caves after her. You ran.”
Sammie folded her spindly arms and glared up at him. “They weren’t after the Mother Confessor. They were after me.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes I do.” She was still glaring from under a lowered brow. “That’s why I ran—to protect her by drawing the attackers away from her. That was the best way to keep her safe.”
Richard straightened. “What are you talking about?”
“Is she hurt? No. Are there monsters back there ripping her to pieces? No. Why do you suppose that is?”
When Richard didn’t answer, she leaned toward him. “They aren’t back there killing her because they were after me. When they came into the room they didn’t even look at her. They were both looking at me with those glowing red eyes. As they came toward me I moved to the side of the room to see what they would do. Their gazes stayed locked on me. Do you know what they did then?”
“They came after you instead of her,” Richard guessed in a considerably quieter voice.
“That’s right. They didn’t even seem to see her. They were focused only on me. They came after me. I tried every bit of magic I knew to stop them. I admit that I don’t know a lot about such things or have much experience, but I tried everything I know. Nothing worked.
“Then I remembered what Henrik said about what your friends did, so I threw a fist of air like they had done. It didn’t harm those two the way it should have, but it did knock them back just long enough for me to get to the door. When I did that, they left the Mother Confessor and came after me. Once I saw that they really were after me and not her, I ran to get them to chase after me so I could lead them away from her. They weren’t interested in the Mother Confessor. They both came after me.”
She tapped her chest. “Me, not her. Me. So yes, I ran, but I ran to protect her the only way I could—by getting those monsters to chase me so I could lead them away from her.
“I was afraid. Even though I was afraid, I knew that I had to think of something. I wondered if I could somehow trap them in a dead-end tunnel. Then, when I got down here, I had the idea to get them into that room and slip past them like I had before, and then I would collapse the hallway in to bury them down here in this room.”
In the light from the lanterns carried by the men waiting back a ways up the passageway, Richard looked around. It was indeed a dead end, with only the one room at the end. If he hadn’t gotten there in time her plan might have worked. Of course, it might not have. She very easily could have been slaughtered.
Yet, of all the people in the small village, she was the only one who had thought of something to stop the threat. She was the only one with a plan and she acted on it.
Richard ran his fingers back through his hair as he let out a sigh. “Sammie, I’m sorry. You’re right. You did a very brave thing. Thank you for doing what you did to protect Kahlan.”
“You don’t need to apologize,” she said as she showed him a small smile. “I can see in your eyes that you are in the grip of the magic of the sword. I can also see that its anger is all that’s keeping you on your feet. I need to heal you. It can’t wait any longer.”
As he nodded, he realized that his wounds had opened back up in all the fighting. The blood running down his arms dripped off his fingers. Now that the urgent demand of fighting off the attack was over, he was feeling increasingly light-headed and the pain was again pressing in on him.
“Listen, Sammie, there are a lot of your people back there who are hurt. Some are hurt pretty badly. They need your help. Please, tend to them first.”
He was frantic to have help for Kahlan, but he knew that helping some of the others was more urgent. Without help, many would die. He thought he could wait.
Sammie’s gaze swept over the remains on the floor outside the room where she had intended to trap her pursuers. She didn’t merely look worried for her people who were injured; Richard thought that she looked somehow older than she had earlier.
She started back out of the dead-end tunnel. “We’d better hurry, then,” she said back over her shoulder.
“Right,” Richard said as he sheathed his sword.
When the blade slid home, the anger from it extinguished. His own rage went out with it.
In that instant, the entire weight of the ordeal and the staggering pain of all his wounds set in with a vengeance. The sword had been all that had been holding it back.
He couldn’t feel his fingers.
It felt like the tunnel was collapsing in on him and the suffocating weight of it was crushing him.
He managed to take one step, and as he did the