“I left my wings at home,” Zedd grumbled.
Kahlan was at least cheered to hear that his impish nature was returning.
She turned when she heard a commotion coming through the woods. As a group of soldiers approached, getting slaps on the back from other soldiers, Kahlan recognized the men.
It was Sergeant Remkin and the men he had taken to block the rear of the gorge in order to trap the Shun-tuk.
“Remkin! How did you get here?” Commander Fister asked. “I feared we’d lost you. How did you manage to escape the walls falling in?”
“Blocking the rear turned out not to be so simple,” he said as he paused to catch his breath for a moment.
“What do you mean?” Kahlan asked.
“We waited and waited for the Shun-tuk to all get into the gorge so we could close it off. But they just kept coming. We were getting pretty nervous that there would be too many to fit the length of the gorge, and then we wouldn’t be able to trap them. We knew that would ruin the whole plan.
“Then we saw the wizard’s fire far off in the distance ahead. It slowed their advance at times, but rather than turning and running, they kept moving toward it. The whole time more of them coming out of the woods and racing into the gorge.”
“Did they all enter, though?” Kahlan asked. “Did all of them get into the gorge?”
The sergeant nodded. “When we saw the wizard’s fire begin and felt the ground shake, we knew we needed to get behind the tail end of them in case they decided to try to escape. Finally, we were pretty sure that they had all filed into the gorge. We waited a bit, wanting to make sure there wouldn’t be any stragglers to come out of the woods and surprise us from behind. We wanted to close the trap, not get trapped ourselves.
“So when we didn’t see more for a time, we knew that was our chance to finally close the gate on them. Despite the fire and lightning we could see off in the distance up ahead, they were so intent on chasing the rest of you they kept going. That’s when we came down the slopes to cut them off from behind.
“And then … a couple of them appeared, coming back at us. They were smiling.” He looked at each of them to make his point. “Smiling! Then they started doing something to our men.”
“Doing something? What do you mean?” Fister asked.
The sergeant rubbed a shoulder as he stared off again. “I don’t know. It sounds crazy.” He looked back at them. “I saw a man just seem to, to, I don’t know…”
“Melt,” Kahlan said.
His brow lifted in surprise. “Yes. Exactly. The skin started melting right off several of my men. Their bones came apart and they went down in a mess that no longer looked human.”
“Are you saying that there was more than one of these smiling Shun-tuk?” Kahlan asked.
“At least two that I saw. There might have been more, but I saw two for sure. Two was enough. I realized that if we stayed there trying to hold the back door, we were all going to die. I thought our best chance was to get up here and warn you of what kind of powers they had. Help you fight to get away.”
“It’s disheartening to know that the one we saw wasn’t the only one,” Kahlan said. “You did the right thing. There is no way to stand and fight such men.”
“You did,” Commander Fister reminded her. “You went after him. You killed the one we saw.”
Kahlan dismissed the notion with a gesture. “Yes, but I had Richard’s sword. Sergeant Remkin and his men would have been slaughtered for no good reason. They did the right thing. I would imagine that men with such dark talents would have been there as rear guards.”
Sergeant Remkin nodded. “I thought the same thing because after they killed several of our men and we took off, those smiling Shun-tuk rushed back like they were intent on protecting their rear.”
“But how did you get around all the rest of them and catch up with us?” Kahlan asked.
“It wasn’t easy,” he said. “Those I have with me, the ones still alive, are all mountain men. We grew up in this kind of country and we are used to traveling in mountains. We were able to get up on the higher portions of the hillsides, out of sight of those demons with occult powers.
“We knew by the lay of the land that ridges often run parallel to gorges. The higher ones can make good routes through this kind of country. We were lucky and found a ridge we could follow and quickly cover a lot of distance.”
He gestured down into the abyss. “We were following the edge of the ridge and keeping contact with the gorge to make sure we could get to you. From up there we encountered this chasm running in the same direction as some of the ridges, like a rift in the mountains. Far as we could tell, it cuts through a lot of territory. We didn’t follow the lower end to see how far it went back that way because we were trying to stay closer to the gorge. That’s when we saw you climbing up.”