The Spider

by Leo Carew

  Roper and Pryce observed each other for a few heartbeats. “We turn back here,” said Roper, quietly. “I fear very much that Gilius is beyond our aid.” His eyes were very wide in the dark, but neither he nor Pryce moved. Pryce thought that Roper would be trying to decide if he had made the decision out of wisdom, or fear.

  And something moved behind him.

  In an instant, Pryce had drawn Tusk. The flash of steel caused Roper to begin a rapid turn, but he was only halfway through it when he was yanked from his feet. Cold-Edge slipped from his grasp, landing with a clang on the stone floor, and he was hoisted off the ground by an immense pale fist bunched around his ankle. Holding him was a huge shadow, which stepped forward and became a silhouette. The head was vast, the shoulders round, and one arm held Roper suspended, where he flailed and shouted. That abominable waft of urine swept over Pryce, and he stepped forward, teeth bared, blade flashing, eyes searching for where he might begin attacking this dark monster.

  He was distracted by a sudden roaring behind him. Pryce did not turn, occupied by the beast holding Roper, but he could hear Tekoa’s bellow, Vigtyr swearing, and knew his companions outside were being similarly assaulted. Roper was shouting in unintelligible Saxon, trying in vain to reason with his captor, to make it understand that they were here to talk.

  And then the cave’s last light was blotted out.

  Something vast had smothered the entrance, and was advancing through the passage. Pryce could hear its heavy footsteps slapping nearer and half turned, eyes flicking between Roper and the shadow now advancing from his other side, blocking the escape. If this thing had made it past his companions outside, then they must have been overwhelmed. It shambled down the rough passageway, one hand reaching out before it, groping greedily for Pryce.

  The sprinter’s reflexes took command, and he dodged. This situation was new to him: never before had he been prey, rather than predator, and his instincts were not accustomed to such a role. So he did not step back, but aggressively forward, ducking beneath the reaching hand, his own snatching up towards the head of the creature, high above him in the dark. His fingertips felt matted, shaggy hair and he seized a fistful, dragging it down and raising Tusk so that its flashing tip came to rest beneath the chin of the Unhieru.

  “Stop!” he howled.

  The cave went still. The shouts from outside continued: feral growls and Anakim yells, but everything inside the cave had frozen. The creatures attacking them may not have understood the word, but they understood the tone, and the naked blade which Pryce twisted a little, digging it beneath his enemy’s jaw. The Unhieru growled.

  “Release my companion!” Pryce demanded, voice echoing through the cave. The creature did not move. Perhaps it had not understood. “Drop him!” He jerked on the cord of hair clutched in his left hand. “Drop him!”

  The shadowed face above him uttered a few guttural words, and at Pryce’s back came a heavy thump as Roper crashed to the floor. Pryce turned his head and saw the Black Lord seizing Cold-Edge and scrambling upright. He backed against the wall of the cave, holding the sword levelled before him.

  “Now those outside,” Pryce demanded, jerking the matted hair in his hand towards the mouth of the cave, his sword still beneath the creature’s jaw. His prisoner did not react, and Pryce began twisting and drilling the sword upwards, slowly boring into the skin. The creature began to grunt and growl, trying to jerk its head back, and Pryce gestured to the entrance of the cave once more, from which he could still hear Tekoa’s voice bellowing in Saxon. Under Pryce’s encouragement, the Unhieru turned its massive head towards the cave mouth and gurgled into the dark. The commotion from outside hushed.

  “Now,” growled Pryce, looking up into the dark face above him and finding the two spots of light that marked wide, wet eyes. “Take us to Gogmagoc.” There was a slight movement in the dark as the enormous head was cocked in his direction. “Gogmagoc!” Pryce repeated, the word bouncing again and again from the walls.

  The figure before him was silent. “Hokhmakhoc?” it repeated at last.

  “Yes, Gogmagoc,” snarled Pryce. “Your king. Lead us to him. Gogmagoc. Now. Take us to Gogmagoc.”

  It was the first word this monster had truly understood. There was silence in the cave.

  And the creature began to laugh.

  7

  The Man in the Mountains

  Salbjorn’s awareness returned long before any desire to open his eyes. He could hear the whoosh and crackle of flames. He could feel their heat on his face. He could smell hot, fragrant tea. And he could smell something else too, muddy and juicy and slightly burnt.

  He opened his eyes. He was lying by the hearth in the upstairs room of a longhouse, seldom lit but now roaring with flames. Above them hung a sooty kettle, and three trout were skewered beside the fire, their wounds leaking clear juices. Outside the window it was dark, and he could see white snowflakes passing by. Leon was crouched beside him, cloth in hand, removing the kettle from its hook and filling a birch-bark cup with steaming pine-tea. “Leon?” he tried, voice emerging as a caw. “How did I get here?”

  “You crawled,” replied his mentor, without looking at him. “We heard you yesterday evening, calling from behind the longhouse. There was a freezing trail behind you leading from the mountains.”

  “Yesterday evening?” Salbjorn shifted on his nest of goatskins and felt pins and needles burst into his limbs. He had no memory of his return, and his head swam. “I’ve been asleep since then?”

  “Of course. You were in a terrible state. Bruised, covered in dried blood, your lips blue. Did you find him?”

  Salbjorn tried to think who Leon might mean. Then he remembered why he had been in the mountains at all. The assassin. “No,” he said. “I think…” he broke off, until Leon nudged him with his foot. “I think I nearly did. His trail was clear right up until it crossed a cliff-face. I don’t know if he took a different path to me…” Salbjorn paused again, frowning. “Maybe he is just a better climber. But I tried to follow, and I fell.”

  “How far?”

  “Far,” said Salbjorn, suppressing the memory of that terrible plunge. “I must have been knocked out. It was dark when I woke.” He tried to explain what it had been like, but Leon would never understand, and he was too hazy to try and make him. How he had lain in the dark, waiting for the dawn to see where he was, snow gathering on his prone form. He had lingered, the heat leaching out of him, until he heard movement in the dark.

  The creak of wind-packed snow as something trod upon it. A creature passing slowly by, not twenty yards from where he shivered.

  Battered, Salbjorn had propped himself upright, staring sightlessly into the black. He could hear the hiss of snow settling around him; could feel his stiff fingers and wide, wide eyes, but there was nothing to see. The footfalls were slow and heavy. It could have been anything: a wolf, a bear, a goat. A murderer. Whatever it was did not seem to notice him. It kept moving through the dark, passing beyond the range of his ears. Salbjorn stared out for a long time after the noise had passed, darkness pressing on his eyeballs, before he collapsed back, heart thumping.

  “When dawn came, I started crawling back. I don’t remember finding you, though,” Salbjorn concluded the garbled account. Leon did not seem to be listening. He was using a metal poker to slide two of the trout off their skewers and onto a large piece of hard flat bread. He put it down in front of Salbjorn and pushed the steaming cup towards him. “Thank you,” he said, propping himself on an elbow and sipping the tea.

  “Are you injured?” Leon asked.

  Salbjorn assessed himself for a moment. He was consumed by weariness, every muscle slack and heavy, and had so many different sources of pain that it was hard to disentangle them. “My ankle is not right. I don’t know if it’s broken. And I can’t feel anything with my fingers.”

  “They were frozen,” said Leon brusquely, helping himself to the final trout and some burnt bread. Salbjorn set down his tea and picked
off a strip of trout. It was chewy and oily, and he was suddenly ravenous. For a while they feasted, tossing bones and fins into the fire. Salbjorn had consumed every morsel of fish in moments and began to eat the bread, stale but soaked in warm juices.

  He thought they were both considering the same thing: an assassin who could outsprint one guardsman, then climb across a cliff-face in the dark and the rain where another guardsman was dislodged in the light. They were after no common murderer. Whoever was working against them in these mountains was skilled and ruthless.

  “Where is the boy?” asked Salbjorn.

  “Meditating in the longhouse. He’s safe.”

  Salbjorn glared at Leon for a moment. “The assassin has an accomplice working in this school. He’s not safe unless you’re with him.”

  “I have been looking after you,” Leon pointed out.

  “The boy needs your care more than I,” said Salbjorn, though he was embarrassed.

  “Well he can’t rely on your care any more, can he, Salbjorn?” said Leon flatly. “You went too far. You overreached yourself and now you will be no help until you’re healed.”

  “We should send for assistance,” Salbjorn muttered.

  Leon paused. “We can’t,” he said. “This snow has resealed the passes. And there’s no sign of it stopping.”

  Salbjorn turned to the window and the flakes floating past. Trapped, then, in these mountains with a murderer and at least one accomplice working against them. “So it’s just us.”

  “For the next while. Us, and the Inquisitor.”

  “Who is where?”

  “Working still. She’s cross-examining the tutors, trying to find that accomplice. She thinks that’ll be the assassin’s weak-spot.”

  “I want to help too,” said Salbjorn.

  “Well you’re damn well not lying around here,” Leon replied. “The Inquisitor is most suspicious of the tutors, and will leave interviewing the students to us. So that’s what we’ll do tomorrow, and until then, I’m going back to guard the boy.” He got to his feet, muttering on his way out, “You’ll manage now you’re awake.”

  Leon was an energetic soul, not used to compromising his rigid training routine for anything. Being trapped in the mountains, tethered every waking moment to a boy, was a particular struggle for such a man.

  Salbjorn, aching profoundly, settled to try and rest before they began interviewing the next day.

  He and Leon conducted the interrogations in the same room, so that all Salbjorn had to do was prop himself upright behind a table fetched by Leon. They began to interview witnesses for clues as to who the accomplice could be, and the morning passed without the faintest sign of progress. Leon was less than helpful, growing swiftly bored and making this clear by occasionally tutting and thrashing like a gaffed eel. Salbjorn had a cup of steaming pine-needle tea on the table, while Leon’s lay empty and knocked over on the floor next to him.

  “So you didn’t see anything on the night the intruder was driven away?” he asked a student.

  “Nothing, lord,” said the boy, his gaze unusually bright before it dropped to the floor.

  “Are you all right?” asked Salbjorn, leaning forward.

  The boy nodded, dislodging a tear onto his cheek. He spoke, still looking down at the floor. “Is the intruder here to kill one of us, my lord? Everyone’s saying he’s trying to get Ormur, but what if he isn’t? You could be protecting the wrong person.”

  Salbjorn felt his heart give a slight twist. “He’s certainly not here for anything good,” he said. “That’s why you must tell us if you see anything. But there is a Maven Inquisitor and two Sacred Guardsmen here, and we will find him before he can hurt anyone. Here,” he said, rummaging in the leather bag at his side. He produced a crumbling biscuit of sedge, purple with dried sloe, and held it out. The biscuit was snatched away and crammed into the boy’s mouth without a word. “You can go,” said Salbjorn, smiling at the student and gesturing him towards the stairs at the far end of the room.

  “Thank you,” said the boy thickly, getting to his feet and retreating.

  “Where do you keep getting these bloody biscuits from?” asked Leon, staring flatly at the boy as he passed.

  “I make them,” said Salbjorn.

  “From what?”

  “Whatever’s in season. But these are left over from autumn.”

  “Great Catastrophe,” said Leon. “That boy isn’t upset. He knows you’re a trout and will give out treats to anyone who blows their nose.”

  “So they want to please me,” said Salbjorn. “And that means we get the information we want.”

  “I want to question someone.”

  “I’ll let you question someone when I’ve decided they’re not going to say anything and I want them punished,” said Salbjorn, without looking up.

  “I’m your mentor, you can’t stop me.”

  “In fact I can,” said Salbjorn grandly. “You see, I am acting as deputy Inquisitor. Who next?” He nodded his head towards the courtyard where they boys were waiting.

  “Check yourself, Inquisitor.”

  Salbjorn laughed. “I’m injured, Leon.”

  Leon thrust himself upright and poked his head through one of the small windows. Outside it was a day of hazy cloud and swirling snow. Salbjorn could hear a tutor bawling a war-hymn, the students dutifully repeating it.

  The end has come, the sun is low, the journey’s just begun.

  From the mortal side of earth, to this frosted path I’ve come.

  Walking my whole life, my shadow at my side,

  The wind is at my back, the stars will be my guide.

  In the ghostly light of the blazing silver moon,

  The wolves unfold as I pass and follow through the gloom.

  My bones crumble as I move, my spirit set alight,

  Along the Winter Road I’m bound, my footsteps cast in white.

  “You!” Leon pointed into the courtyard. “You’re next.” Leon crashed back to his seat and his target, a boy wrapped in a wretched reed cloak, hurried up the stairs into their room soon after. He took a seat before Salbjorn, the hymn floating through the window.

  The journey is my test, my first one and my last!

  I shall not fear the wolf, I did not in the past.

  I’ve fought with those that loved me, and I’ve fought alone,

  I have fought through wilderness and war, I am coming home.

  Unaccountably, this boy was plump: a significant achievement in a place where food was as restricted as the haskoli. He sat before Salbjorn with an air of anticipation, which suggested he had indeed heard tell of biscuits.

  “Good morning,” said Salbjorn.

  The boy looked flatly back at him and Salbjorn felt a temptation to allow Leon to conduct the interview.

  “It’s rude to make eye contact with a full peer, boy.” The boy dropped his eyes to the floor. “So I imagine you know what we’re about to ask. You will have heard about the circumstances under which your contemporary Numa died. Did you see anything unusual on the day it occurred?”

  “No,” said the boy.

  “Anything at all. Take your time. Think back to that day. Was anyone behaving unusually?”

  “I didn’t see anything,” said the boy. Beyond him, Leon rolled his eyes and shifted irritably in his seat. “It’s freezing in here,” added the boy, looking around as though he might see a brazier lying untended.

  “Fine. You must have heard the commotion a few nights ago, when the longhouse was burnt down. We think that was caused by the same man responsible for Numa’s death. Did you see anything or anyone strange on that day?”

  “No. Haven’t you got another cloak I can have?” The students wove their own cloaks, and this boy’s was in tatters.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Salbjorn. “Forget it, you can go.”

  “I heard you give out biscuits,” said the boy.

  “You heard wrong,” said Salbjorn, waving a hand towards the stairs.

&
nbsp; The boy made a noise of dissatisfaction, got up and headed for the stairs. Leon and Salbjorn were exchanging a long glance when the boy paused and turned back to them. “Would you give me one if I told you something strange I saw yesterday?”

  Salbjorn folded his hands on the table and looked up at the boy.

  “There’s someone living the mountains. I saw the smoke of their fire.”

  The guardsmen exchanged another glance. “Where?” asked Salbjorn.

  “It was right between Skafta and Vatni,” said the boy, naming two mountains. “Maybe two leagues away?”

  “And you’re sure it was smoke? It wasn’t a wisp of cloud?”

  The boy rolled his eyes. “I know what smoke looks like.”

  “Thank you. That is helpful.”

  “Surely that’s worth a biscuit?”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” said Salbjorn, waving the boy away again. The boy huffed and clattered down the stairs. Salbjorn turned back to Leon. “We should tell Inger.”

  “She’s exhausted.”

  “She’ll want to know. I’ll tell her.”

  “Let me go. You guard the boy, I want to get out of here. I haven’t left this school for a week and I’m getting feverish. I want to run.”

  “I can’t guard anyone at the moment,” said Salbjorn. “You keep an eye on the boy. I should move anyway; I’ll go and speak with Inger.” Privately, Salbjorn did not trust his mentor with any part of this investigation. He was terrifying in combat, fit as the wind and stubbornly unyielding. But his direct and forceful reliability was partly a result of his limitations. The same lack of imagination that left him unable to countenance retreat or a break from his training routine, left him totally unable to follow one lead to the next. He could not empathise with an assailant, envisage what they might do next or why, or identify what information might turn out to be important.

  Salbjorn heaved himself upright and went to find Inger. He stepped outside, using his sheathed sword as a stick to supplement his swollen ankle, and spotted her dark figure perched on a cliff, high above the school. It was not the first time he had seen her sitting there, overlooking the haskoli, legs dangling off the edge and staring vacantly out into the void. The path to reach her was not direct, and he hobbled out of the courtyard and into the wind. Behind him was the burnt wreck of the longhouse they had occupied on the first night, half swallowed by snow.