“So, do you see the way we need to go?” the commander asked.
“I do,” Richard said.
As Commander Fister and a number of the men leaned close, Richard pointed out the route, explaining the crossovers, the walls of rock they needed to follow, and the impractical, dangerous climbs and descents they needed to avoid. The scouts all nodded their agreement as Richard explained the plan.
“There are some things down there we still can’t see,” one of the men said. “We might get down there and find out we can’t make it through.”
Richard heaved a sigh. “I know. But I don’t see any other way. Sometimes there is only one pass through mountains without going a long distance to find another. As far as I can see, that area down there is the best chance to make it through. Even so, the difficulty is likely the reason there are no trails.” He looked back at all the men studying the lay of the land. “If anyone has a better suggestion, speak up.”
All the men, eyes scanning the land below, shook their heads. They all saw the same problems he did with going any other way.
“Far as I can see,” one of the scouts said, frowning as he studied the chasms, “you’re right that this is the only pass. We either get through this way or we have to spend extra days getting around those peaks over there.”
“I’ve scouted that direction,” another man said. “You hit the skirt of those mountains and have to keep pushing in the wrong direction, hoping to finally be able to make the turn. It would likely take an extra half a dozen days.”
“We don’t have any extra days,” Nicci told the men, wanting to bring a halt to them even considering it. “We don’t have any extra hours.”
Her words were sobering to everyone.
The men all knew the consequences of not making it to the citadel in time. Commander Fister had given all the men a talk, explaining exactly what was at stake. These were men devoted to protecting the Lord Rahl. They had competed all their lives to be members of the First File. They were not about to entertain the possibility of failure.
Richard was even more committed, though, because it meant Kahlan’s life, and nothing meant more to him than that. But they needed to get through a lot of rugged territory, first. They weren’t going to make it that day, but Richard thought it might be possible, if they were able to cover enough ground, that they would reach Saavedra the next day.
Having the cure that close, yet so far, was tormenting.
Richard checked the sky for any sign of a threat. He saw birds, but none of them looked panicked. He didn’t see anything more threatening than a red-tailed hawk.
“That’s it, then,” one of the scouts said. “We will have to come in through the back door to Saavedra.”
“Have you heard the old adage advising to always grow oleanders at your back door?” Nicci asked.
The man frowned. “No. Why would you want oleanders at your back door?”
“For protection,” she said. “Oleanders are poisonous. Saavedra was probably in part established where it was for a very good reason—because this place guards its back.”
The men all shared looks.
“Let’s get moving,” Richard told everyone.
Some of the scouts who had discussed the best route took the lead. Richard, Kahlan, Nicci, Irena, and Samantha, along with the rest of the men, followed behind as they plunged back into the woods.
CHAPTER
59
By late in the afternoon, as they worked their way ever downward through the dense, forested landscape, the ground became more rugged as fractures and rifts widened and deepened into wooded chasms. It wasn’t long before they found themselves descending between soaring walls of gray granite. Low, heavy, wet clouds scudded by between the mountains soaring up overhead, conspiring with the close walls to make for a confining, gloomy journey. Drizzle dampened the walls and their faces.
Some of the horizontal sections of slick stone in the walls to the sides overhung the stacked slabs of rock below, so there was no hope of climbing out. They were going to have to follow the twisting course of the chasms if they were going to find a pass through the mountains. Richard knew from having seen the crooked canyons from above that it was going to be a confusing, difficult maze to traverse.
If there was ever a natural barrier guarding the back door of a city, this was it. He just hoped it wasn’t also poisonous.
As they descended deeper into the main chasm leading them into the only possibility of passage through the mountains, they found it to be surprisingly broad. From up high on the distant prominence behind them it had been hard to tell precisely how big it really was down in the canyons. Now, Richard could see that in places the walls were hundreds, and in places thousands, of feet high. In some spots the floor of the twisting gorges broadened out, with the walls closed in closer overhead, almost touching, to create a murky, sometimes subterranean landscape of thick growth down below. In spots the rock bridged the walls high overhead.