“We should eat them now, before they die and go bad,” a gruff voice said.
Richard was only distantly aware of the low buzz of voices. Still only half conscious, he wasn’t able to figure out who was talking, much less make sense of what they were talking about, but he was aware enough to be disturbed by their predatory tone.
“I think we should trade them,” a second man said as he tightened the knot in the rope he had looped around Richard’s ankles.
“Trade them?” the first asked in a heated voice. “Look at the bloody blankets they were wrapped in and the blood all over the floor of the wagon. They’d likely die before we could ever trade them, and then they’d go to waste. Besides, how could we carry them both? The horses for their soldiers and the wagon are all gone, along with anything else of value.”
The second man let out an unhappy sigh. “Then we should eat the big one before anyone else shows up. We could carry the smaller one easier and then trade her.”
“Or save her and eat her later.”
“We’d be better off trading her. When else would we ever get a chance like this to get as much as she would fetch?”
As the two men argued, Richard tried to reach out to the side to touch Kahlan lying close up against him, but he couldn’t. He realized that his wrists were bound tightly together with a coarse rope. He instead pushed at her with his elbow. She didn’t respond.
