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Richard’s brow drew together. He looked up. “You were awake?”
“Yes. The howl of a wolf woke me.”
Chapter 5
With sudden intensity Richard leaned in a little toward the blacksmith. “You heard wolves howl?”
“No,” Victor said as he frowned in recollection, “there was just one.”
The three of them waited in silence as Richard stared off into the distance, as if he were mentally trying to fit together the pieces of some great puzzle. Nicci glanced over her shoulder at the men back near the maple tree. Some yawned as they waited. Some had found seats on a fallen log. A few were engaged in hushed conversation. Others, arms folded, leaned against the trunks of trees and watched the surrounding woods as they waited.
“It didn’t happen this morning,” Richard whispered to himself. “When I was waking up this morning, when I was still half asleep, I was really remembering what had happened the morning Kahlan disappeared.”
“The morning of the battle,” Nicci said softly in correction.
Lost in thought, Richard didn’t appear to hear her correction. “I must have been remembering, for some reason, what happened back when I woke that morning.” He turned suddenly and seized her arm. “A rooster crowed when I was being carried back to the farmhouse.”
Surprised by his abrupt change of subject, and not knowing what he was getting at, Nicci shrugged. “I suppose it could have. I don’t remember. Why?”
“There was no wind. I remember hearing the rooster crow and looking up and seeing motionless tree limbs above me. There was no wind at all. I remember how dead still it was.”
“You’re right, Lord Rahl,” Cara said. “I remember when I ran into Victor’s camp seeing the smoke from the fire going straight up because the air was dead calm. I think that was why we could hear the clash of steel and the cries from so far away—because there wasn’t even a breath of breeze to cut the sound from carrying.”
“If it helps,” the blacksmith said, “there were a few chickens roaming around when we brought you to the farm. And you’re right, there was a rooster and it did crow. Matter of fact, we were trying not to be found so that Nicci could have the time to heal you, and I was afraid that the rooster might attract unwanted attention, so I told the men to cut its throat.”
After hearing Victor’s account, Richard drifted back into thought. He tapped a finger against his lower lip as he considered yet another piece of his puzzle. Nicci thought he might have forgotten they were standing there.
She leaned a little closer to him. “So?”
He blinked and finally looked at her. “It had to be that when I woke today I was really remembering that morning—remembering for a reason. Sometimes you do that—remember because there was some part of it that doesn’t make sense, remember for some reason.”
“What reason?” Nicci asked.
“The wind. There was no wind that morning. But I remember that when I woke that morning, in the faint light of false dawn, I saw tree limbs moving, like in a breeze.”
Nicci was not just confused by his concern for wind, but worried for his state of mind. “Richard, you were asleep and just waking up. It was dark. You probably just thought you saw the tree branches moving.”
“Maybe” was all he said.
“Maybe it was the soldiers coming,” Cara offered.
“No,” he said, dismissing her suggestion with an irritable wave of his hand, “that was a little later, after I’d discovered that Kahlan was missing.”
Seeing that neither Victor nor Cara was going to argue the point, Nicci decided to hold her tongue as well. Richard seemed to put the puzzle from his mind. He turned a deadly serious expression on the three of them.
“Look, I have to show you all something. But you need to realize, despite how little you may be able to make out, that I know what I’m talking about. I don’t expect you to take my word, but you need to understand that I have a lifetime of experience in this and routinely used such ability. I trust each of you in your area of expertise. This is mine. Don’t close your minds to what I have to show you.”
Nicci, Cara, and Victor shared a look.
With a nod to Richard, Victor set his reservations aside and turned to the men. “You boys keep your eyes open, now.” He circled a finger in the air. “There could be soldiers about, so let’s keep it quiet and stay alert. Ferran, double-check the area.”
The men nodded. Some came to their feet, apparently glad to have something to do other than just sit there wet and cold. Four men set out through the trees to set up guard.
Ferran handed his pack and bedroll to one of the other men for safekeeping before nocking an arrow and slipping quietly into the brush. The young man was learning the trade of blacksmithing from Victor. Raised on a farm, he also had a natural talent for scouting unseen in the woods. He idolized Victor. Nicci knew that Victor was fond of the young man as well, but because he was fond of him he was probably harder on him than on the other men. Victor had told her once, referring to his tough demands of his apprentice, that you had to pound the imperfections out of iron and work it hard if you wanted to shape it into something truly worthwhile.
Since the battle, Victor had had sentries and lookouts on constant watch while Ferran and several of the others scouted the surrounding forest. None of them had wanted to take any chance that enemy soldiers would unexpectedly come upon them while Nicci was trying to save Richard’s life. After she had done all she could for Richard, Nicci had healed a nasty gash to one man’s leg and taken care of a few other less serious wounds suffered by a half-dozen other men.
Since the morning of the battle and Richard being hurt, she had gotten little sleep. She was exhausted.
After watching the men set about the tasks assigned them, Victor clapped Richard on the shoulder. “Show us, then.”
Richard lead Cara, Victor, and Nicci past the clearing with the dead men and then off through the woods. He took a route between trees where the ground was more open. At the crest of a gentle rise, he stopped and crouched down.
Seeing Richard on bended knee, his cloak draped over his back, his sword in a gleaming scabbard at his hip, his hood pushed back to expose strands of wet hair lying against his muscular neck, his bow and quiver strapped over his left shoulder, he looked at once regal—a warrior king—and at the same time like nothing so much as the wilderness guide from a distant land that he had once been. With intimate familiarity, his fingers brushed the pine needles, twigs, crumbles of leaves, bark, and loam. Nicci could sense, just by that touch, his breadth of understanding of the seemingly simple things spread out before them, yet to him those things revealed another world.
Richard remembered, then, his purpose and gestured, urging them to squat down close beside him.
“Here,” he said, pointing. “See this?” His fingers carefully traced a vague depression in the dense tangle of forest litter. “This is Cara’s footprint.”
“Well, that’s no surprise,” Cara said. “This is the way we came in from the road on our way to where we set up camp back there.”
“That’s right.” Richard leaned out a little, pointing as he went on. “See here, and then off there? Those are more of your tracks, Cara. See how they come in here in a line showing where you were walking?”
Cara shrugged suspiciously. “Sure.”
Richard moved to his right. They all followed. He again carefully traced a depression so they could make it out. Nicci couldn’t see anything at all in the forest floor until he carefully drew the outline with a finger just above the ground. In doing so, he seemed to make the footprint magically appear for them. After he pointed it out, Nicci could tell what it was.
“This is my track,” he said, watching it as if fearing that were he to look away it might vanish. “The rain works to wear them down—some places more than others—but it hasn’t made all of them disappear.” With a finger and thumb, he carefully lifted a wet, brown oak leaf from the center of the print. “Look, you
can see under here how the pressure of my weight under the ball of my foot broke these small twigs. See? Rain can’t obliterate things like that.”
He looked up at them to make sure they were all paying attention and then pointed off into the shadowy mist. “You can see my tracks coming in this direction, toward us, just like Cara’s.” He stretched out and quickly traced two more vague depressions in the matted forest floor to show them what he meant. “See? You can still make them out.”
“What’s the point?” Victor asked.
Richard glanced back over his shoulder again before gesturing between the sets of tracks. “See the distance between Cara’s tracks and mine? When we walked in here I was on the left and Cara was to my right. See how far apart our tracks are?”
“What of it?” Nicci asked as she pulled the hood of her cloak forward, trying to shield her face from the frigid drizzle. She pulled her hands back under the cloak and snugged them in her armpits for warmth.
