Irena met Samantha’s gaze and then nodded. “I understand.”
Zedd urgently leaned in and placed his fingers under his grandson’s chin. Richard’s eyes squeezed closed in pain. “Hold on, my boy. We’ll be back to help you just as soon as there is enough of a break.”
Richard inexplicably shook his head, but there was no time to try to wait for him to explain what he meant.
Without pause, Zedd turned and cast out a fist of air that knocked back a man who seemed to come out of nowhere to dive in toward them. Kahlan realized that some of the half people had already breached their defensive line and were in the camp. The soldiers fell on the man when Zedd’s blow threw him back into their midst.
Nicci paused, then turned back and went to a knee, quickly placing her fingers to Richard’s temples, assessing for herself. “I know,” she said in a very low voice to comfort him. “I know. I can feel it. Hold on, Richard. Zedd and I will be back as soon as we can. Hold on. Fight it until then. Samantha will help give you strength.”
Kahlan swallowed back the lump in her throat as she watched Nicci and Zedd stand and turn to the sounds of the battle erupting at the edge of camp. She wanted them to help Richard, but she knew it would have to wait. For now, their gifted ability was needed to fight off the attack and to try to keep the area around Richard clear of Shun-tuk. She hoped it was enough to help the men of the First File keep the enemy from taking the camp.
CHAPTER
17
Suddenly alone with Samantha and Richard as battle erupted in the night around them, Kahlan put a hand on Richard’s chest, unable to do anything more than to offer him silent comfort.
Kahlan had been in enough combat to know that what was raging around them wasn’t a conventional battle. This was different. This was fighting off predators possessed by a maniacal drive to devour them. She knew the nature of these soulless people, and their numbers, and she knew that she was soon going to have to join the fight. She didn’t have her powers, but she did have a knife and knew how to use it.
What she really needed was a sword. She had learned to use a sword from her father, but she had become truly adept with such a weapon only under Richard’s guidance. Richard was in so many ways a master of the blade, any blade, even a knife or chisel he used to carve the most astoundingly beautiful statues.
Behind her, Zedd sent a thundering bolt of fire slamming into a ghostly figure trying to climb up on the back of a big soldier fighting the enemy to the other side. The soldier was trying to elbow the man off his back, teeth snapping at his neck, while he used his other hand to stab his sword at half people rushing him from the front. The flash sent by Zedd ignited the Shun-tuk in a ball of fiercely glowing flame. He twisted in horrific pain as he sloughed from the soldier’s back into a heap on the ground. His entire body aflame, his flesh bubbling, the man rose up and stumbled blindly through the camp as he screamed. With a battle raging all around, no one noticed his desperate screams. They didn’t last long.
Unfortunately, many more of the ghostly figures seemed immune to the effects of ordinary Additive Magic, such as the fire Zedd was casting. In the tight confines of the camp, Zedd was unable to unleash wizard’s fire. Such a conflagration was not selective enough, and would have engulfed their own men in that lethal, sticky fire that burned with fierce intensity. So, Zedd was forced to use lesser, more targeted forms of fire.
Kahlan saw a number of the Shun-tuk emerge unscathed from those rolling balls of flame sent by the wizard, as if they were untouched by it. One of those men gave Zedd a murderous look, and started for him, only to be run through from behind by a lance. The soldier who had speared the man heaved him off to the side, like a carp speared in a pond, letting the body slide from the weapon so it would be free to use against the next intruder.
Kahlan and Richard had been unconscious and hidden in a wagon at the time, but it must have been very much like this before, at the first battle, when they had all been captured. Without Zedd and Nicci being able to bring the power of magic to bear effectively, the sheer numbers of Shun-tuk had been too much and they had overrun the men. The appalling number of casualties taken by the Shun-tuk in that attack didn’t seem to discourage them in the least. Nor did it seem to faze them in this battle, either.
After hearing the prisoner, Kahlan now understood why. Without souls, without the higher reasoning ability that having a soul implied, these people had no empathy for their own who were injured or killed. Even though they hunted in packs, they didn’t actually care about one another, the way these soldiers did. Men in battle fought to protect their friends as much as they fought to defeat the enemy. They cared about their fellow soldiers.