Faith of the Fallen (Sword of Truth 6)

“Cara!” Putting her left hand to Richard’s chest, Kahlan pushed herself up on one arm to call out. “Cara! I killed Richard!”

Cara, not far off, laying on her belly at the edge of the ridge as she watched out beyond, said nothing.

“I killed him! Did you hear? Cara—did you see?”

“Yes,” she muttered, “I heard. You killed Lord Rahl.”

“No you didn’t,” Richard said, still catching his breath.

She whacked him across the shoulder with her willow-switch sword. “Yes I did. I killed you this time. Killed you dead.”

“You only grazed me.” He pressed the point of his willow switch to her side. “You’ve fallen into my trap. I have you at the point of my sword, now. Surrender, or die, woman.”

“Never,” she said, still gasping for breath as she laughed. “I’d rather die than be captured by the likes of you, you rogue.”

She stabbed him repeatedly in his ribs with her willow practice sword as he giggled and rolled from side to side.

“Cara! Did you see? I killed him this time. I finally got him!”

“Yes, all right,” Cara grouched as she intently watched out beyond the ridge. “You killed Lord Rahl. Good for you.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “This one is mine, right, Lord Rahl? You promised this one was mine.”

“Yes,” Richard said, still catching his breath, “this one goes for yours, Cara.”

“Good.” Cara smiled in satisfaction. “It’s a big one.”

Richard smirked up at Kahlan. “I let you kill me, you know.”

“No you didn’t! I won. I got you this time.” She whacked him again with her willow sword. She paused and frowned. “I thought you said you weren’t dead. You said it was only a scratch. Ha! You admitted I got you this time.”

Richard chuckled. “I let you—”

Kahlan kissed him to shut him up. Cara saw and rolled her eyes.

When Cara looked back over the ridge, she suddenly sprang up. “They just left! Come on, before something gets it!”

“Cara, nothing is going to get it,” Richard said, “not this quickly.”

“Come on! You promised this one was mine. I don’t want to have gone through all this for nothing. Come on.”

“All right, all right.” Richard said as Kahlan climbed off him. “We’re coming.”

He held his hand out for Kahlan to help him up. She stabbed him in the ribs instead. “Got you again, Lord Rahl. You’re getting sloppy.”

Richard only smiled as Kahlan finally offered her hand. When he was up he hugged her in a quick gesture, and before turning to follow after Cara, said, “Good job, Mother Confessor, good job. You killed me dead. I’m proud of you.”

Kahlan endeavored to show him a sedate smile, but she feared it came out as a giddy grin. Richard scooped up his pack and hefted it onto his back. Without delay, he started the descent down the steep, broken face of the mountain. Kahlan threw her long wolf’s-fur mantle around her shoulders and followed him through the deep shade of sheltering spruce at the edge of the ridge, stepping on the exposed ledge rather than the low places.

“Be careful,” Richard called out to Cara, already a good distance ahead of them. “With all the leaves covering the ground, you can’t see holes or gaps in the rock.”

“I know, I know,” she grumbled. “How many times do you think I need to hear it?”

Richard constantly watched out for them both. He had taught them how to walk in such terrain and what to be careful of. From the beginning, marching through the forests and mountains, Kahlan noted that Richard moved with quiet fluidity, while Cara traipsed along, bounding up onto and off of rocks and ledges, almost like an exuberant youngster. Since Cara had spent most of her life indoors, she didn’t know that it made a difference how you walked in such terrain.

Richard had patiently explained to her, “Pick where to put your feet in order to make your steps comparatively level. Don’t step down to a lower spot if you don’t need to, only to have to step up again as you continue your climb up the trail. Don’t step up needlessly, only to have to step down again. If you must step up on something, you don’t always need to lift your whole body—just flex your legs.”

Cara complained that it was too hard to think about where to put her foot each time. He told her that by walking the way she did, she was actually climbing the mountain twice for each time he climbed it. He admonished her to think as she walked, and soon it would become instinctive and would require no conscious thought. When Cara found that her shin and thigh muscles didn’t get as tired and sore when she followed his suggestions, she became a keen student. Now she asked questions instead of arguing. Most of the time.

Kahlan saw that as Cara descended the steep trail, she did as Richard had taught her and used a stick as an improvised staff to probe any suspicious low area where leaves collected before stepping there. This was no place to break an ankle. Richard said nothing, but sometimes he smiled when she found a hole with her stick rather than her foot, as she used to.

Forging a new trail on a steep slope like the one they were descending was dangerous work. Potential trails often withered into dead ends, requiring that you retrace your steps. On less severe slopes, hillsides, and flatter ground especially, animals often made good trails. In a valley, a suitable trail that shrank to nothing wasn’t a big problem because there you could beat through the brush to more open ground. Making your own trail on a rocky precipice, a thousand feet up, was always arduous and often frustrating. In such conditions, particularly if the hour grew late, the desire not to have to backtrack a difficult climb tempted people into taking chances.

Richard said that it was hard work that demanded you put reason before your wish to get down, get home, or get to a place to camp. “Wishing gets people killed,” he often said. “Using your head gets you home.”

Cara poked her stick into a pile of leaves between bare granite rocks. “Don’t step in the leaves here,” she said over her shoulder as she hopped onto the far rock. “There’s a hole.”

“Why, thank you, Cara,” Richard said in mock gratitude, as if he would have stepped there had she not warned him.

The cliff face they were on had a number of sizable ledges with rugged little trees and shrubs that provided good footing and the safety of a handhold. Below, the mountainside dropped away before them into a lush ravine. Beyond the defile, it rose up again in a steep slope covered with evergreens and the dull gray and brown skeletons of oaks, maples, and birches.

The raucous coats of autumn leaves had been resplendent while they lasted, but now they were but confetti on the ground, and there they faded fast. Usually, the oaks held on to their leaves until at least early winter, and some of them until spring, but up in the mountains icy winds and early storms had already stripped even the oaks bare of their tenacious brown leaves.

Cara stepped out onto a shelf of ledge jutting out over the chasm below. “There,” she said as she pointed across the way. “Up there. Do you see?”

Richard shielded his eyes against the warm sunlight as he squinted higher up on the opposite slope. He made a sound deep in his throat to confirm that he saw it. “Nasty place to die.”