by James Silke
She tore through shrubs and boulders, reached a crevice filled with loose rubble, and dashed down. She did nicely for ten strides, then slipped on the loose earth, pitched forward, hit the ground and rolled and slid for thirty feet raising a cloud of dust. The decision to stop was made by a flat wall, a painful decision to which Robin replied with a thud and a groan. When she opened her eyes, she was bruised and bloody, smothered with dust, sweat and sunshine. The crevice now angled west, and she was looking directly into the blazing ball of white gold still low in the morning sky.
The light, streaming through billowing dust, blinded her. Shading her eyes with a hand she started forward, blinking, trying to see the ground. Suddenly a rubble of rocks came loose under her feet. She staggered forward trying to keep her balance. The loose ground was not of a mind to help her. It abruptly dropped away at a steep incline, and she went racing down, arms flailing, into the dusty golden light.
This time she came to a sudden standing halt, arms spread, and bounced; but snapped back. Her body was stuck flat against a wall of light. All except one leg. It dangled helplessly, like a noodle just before it is swallowed.
Dazed and astounded, she wrenched wildly at whatever held her, but could not get free. She pulled her head back, looked down, and a spasm of horror tore through her. Just below her chin was a hairy, thick rope, coated with a sticky wet substance which glistened in the golden sunlight. Her hands, arms, and body were glued to a huge spider web. It spread like a target to the sides of the crevice. Her right leg, from the knee down, hung loosely over the open center of the web.
She thrashed helplessly against the gooey threads. The effort only secured her more firmly to the web.
Her strength ebbing, Robin hung in place like the last bite on a plate. Tears welled up under her lashes, but she fought to see the source of a grating sound below her. At the base of the web, a circle of ground three feet across was lifting. She screamed. Her body shuddered, shaking tears loose from her eyes.
Staring down into widening darkness, she watched spellbound as hairy clawlike legs grasped the rim of the dark hole. The legs flexed, then lifted the dark umber body of an enormous spider out of the darkness. It was a Chupan, about forty pounds, the color of dirt and in bad need of a haircut. Its body was all belly. It was mostly mandible, except when the curved mandibles were open, as now. Then it was all bad intentions. A meat eater.
Robin flailed, and long strangled cries leapt past her trembling lips. Music to the Chupan’s ears.
The spider watched Robin’s right leg flail wildly at the open center of its web, then started for it, but reconsidered, as if the leg were too great a bother. Instead it moved sideways for the other leg. That sandaled foot was securely stuck to the web.
Robin wiggled furiously and managed to twist her head under her shoulder until she could see the hairy creature nearing her foot. She yanked frantically on her left leg and freed it slightly so that its sandled foot sank even closer to the advancing mandibles.
The Chupan lurched upward, snapped at Robin’s trembling foot and came away with the sandal.
Her eyes sliding back, Robin sank, semiconscious.
The spider chewed on the sandal for a while, then its pea-sized brain seemed to decide there had been some kind of mistake, and it spit the sandal out in pieces. Seeing the pinkish underside of Robin’s bare foot, it started up the web again.
When the spider was positioned to dine, with a choice of five perfect toes as appetizers, spreading jaws crashed over its pulpy body.
The jaws belonged to Sharn. He was still in midair when they snapped shut, cleaving the spider in two. He landed cleanly on all fours ten feet beyond the web, then calmly spit bits of its chitin and hairy pulp from his mouth as he watched the two oozing pieces of the Chupan roll past him and down the crevice. Calmly the wolf began to pick off the bits of web which had caught in his fur.
A short time later, when Robin’s eyes flickered open, Gath’s shadowed body blocked out the sun. He was cutting her free of the web with his dagger. She whimpered, looked into his dark face and found his slate-grey eyes wandering across the rise of her breast, the turn of her neck. His cheeks felt like flames against hers as they brushed past.
Leaning her head against his cheek, she moaned, “Gath!”
Ignoring this inadequate effort to restart their conversation, he continued to cut at the web. Suddenly she dropped and landed hard on her backside at his feet. She groaned and pushed herself up onto her hands, and looked at him. Did an amused glitter pass behind Gath’s eyes? She was too dazed to be certain.
She caught her breath, then dragged herself to the side of the crevice and let her exhausted body sink back against it. Her mouth trembled. “I…1 thought I was going to die.”
Her dark feathery eyes grew wet. He squatted facing her. A cheering grin lifted the corner of his mouth, defying her to cry. She dropped her dusty head in her hands and began to sob.
The grin went away, and he stood abruptly. “You are not hurt.” •
She looked up past her hands, startled by his abrasive tone, and stammered, “But that… that thing almost killed me.”
“In The Shades one is always almost dead.”
She flinched, glanced at the wolf then back at him, and saw no opening in the armor of his eyes. Had they been watching the whole time? She indicated Sharn, said uncertainly, “You ordered him to… to save me.”
“No. No one orders him to do anything.”
She nodded and looked off at Sharn gratefully as she pulled at the sticky residue on her cheeks.
He picked up her walking stick and extended it to her. “You are too far from home.”
She nodded. “I know, but I believed you would listen to me.”
She passively accepted the stick, and he lifted her off the ground as if she weighed no more than a basket of peaches. She staggered slightly and caught herself against his arm. He did not pull it away. A smile leapt back into her cheeks and her eyes lifted to his, but the armor was still in place. She withdrew her smile.
“Go,” he said quietly.
She nodded, removed her remaining sandal and tucked it in the bundle hanging from her walking stick. She sighed, then barefoot moved down the crevice towards Sharn. As she came alongside the wolf she stopped, kissed him on the head before he thought to protest, then continued on down until she was swallowed by the sunlight.
At the bottom of the crevice, she looked back up at the two predators standing in the dusty glow. Massive. Impressive. As one with the rocks and forest.
She turned and started through the forest. After traveling over a mile, she could still feel Gath’s presence, and see him in her mind. Held there by the fingers of her imagination.
Seventeen
HOME
Robin Lakehair traveled Summer Trail heading east. She crossed through The Shades and the Valley of Miracles to Thieves Trail, which she took south until she reached Border Road at Lemontrail Crossing. There she paused and drank greedily from her waterskin. As she did, she gazed across the gorge and her heart sank.
Just beyond the remnant of the bridge, a heavy Kitzakk spear stood upright in the ground in plain view. Impaled on it was the fresh cadaver of a Wowell witch.
Robin’s mouth gaped open. One hand covered her mouth, the other held her stomach as it convulsed. She grabbed up her things and scrambled back to her feet.
Hurrying east along Border Road, and passing only occasional travelers, she soon reached Amber Road. It was the main merchant road. It started far to the north in the Empire of Ice, stretched across the forests, then south through the cataracts and across the deserts to the jungles. There was some traffic to the north, but none coming from the cataracts to the south.
Robin’s eyes darted about suspiciously as she dashed across Amber Road and hurried on. An hour later she rounded a bend and stopped to catch her breath. She had been traveling for four hours, but now, in the distance, she could see Three Bridge Crossing and her Cytherian home, Weav
er. It waved in the midday sun like a giant, multicolored flag. She dropped to the grassy ground, leaned back against a rock and sighed with relief. She was no longer too far from home.
The village stood on a reddish hill cleared of trees except for occasional clumps. It was shielded on three sides by forest. The border gorge guarded the southern side. Sheep and herders cluttered the wide clearing which Robin knew surrounded the village. Past it rose a palisade wall with a gate at the northern corner. The wall stopped just before reaching the southern end of Weaver. There the village fell apart and ended in rubble just short of the gorge spanned by the three bridges where workers were building gates. The village’s three main interior streets crossed over the bridges of Three Bridge Crossing, then joined together and moved south up into Weaver Pass.
Weaver itself rose above the palisade in irregular tiers. Mud and wood houses crowded the lower tiers. They were well-made structures with outside shutters on the windows and the stone chimneys rising from flat roofs exhaled white smoke. Clean-clothed and freshly scrubbed residents were active here sorting wool, cleaning and washing it, and combing and carding it into fluffy readiness for spinning.
On the upper tiers were rows of steaming wooden vats of dye the size of small houses. Workers, male and female, stirred the fabrics in the vats with long, heavy, wooden paddles. Golds, yellows and mustards made from safflower and fustic stained their naked bodies and loincloths, as did reds, rusts and oranges made from madder, and the roots of Teima, Arrashad and Fantell berries which had been harvested and dried in spring. The Cytherians dyed the huge squares of finished cloth rather than the spools of thread. Consequently, there was considerable spillage and the heights of the village, as well as many of the residents, tended to change colors with the seasons. Even the supervising priests in their formal tunics of spun gold and silver sported red and yellow stains.
Above the steaming vats was a level space, circled by unpainted wooden buildings, and a wooden temple. Weaver Court. In its sunny yard the children of Weaver were taught the village trade by the elders. Within the temple the virgin maidens of Weaver spun cloth to the music of their own voices.
Weaver Court was surrounded on three sides by sheer bluffs called the Heights. They rose twenty feet above the roofs of the temple and formed a large, irregular spread of flat ground fed by many footpaths. Here the wet dyed cloth was spread to dry on poles. The resulting effect was a single multicolored patchwork flag of yellows, oranges and reds, the gigantic banner of a fairy-tale village.
Robin picked herself up and half-skipped toward the village. Nearing it she drank in the familiar scents of the hot, moist steaming dyes that mixed with the pungent odors of lye, lime and the fresh urine used in the washing. Reaching the clearing she heard footsteps behind her and turned around to see Gath coming down the road. The wolf waited behind at the edge of the forest. Neither looked at her.
Gain’s eyes were fixed on the frantic activity at the bridges. Groups of men, half-hidden by dust, were noisily working on the gates with hammers, nails, saws and curses. When he neared Robin, he looked up at Weaver Pass and tilted his head slightly, listening to something she could not hear.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
He looked at her as if he had not realized she was there, and said, “Nothing.” He glanced at the village. “Is this your home?”
“Yes,” she replied proudly.
He looked at her warily and said accusingly, “You are a sorceress. You brought me here?”
“What?” she exclaimed. “Me? A sorceress!” She almost giggled. But, seeing he was deadly serious, she stopped herself and spoke evenly. “I didn’t bring you, honestly. I’m not magic, not at all! I only weave cloth.”
He scratched his shin with the shaft of his spear, then growled, “Tell me your name.”
She blushed, averted her head slightly and watched his eyes with the corners of her own. “Robin… Robin Lakehair.”
She waited, but no other question came. With artless sincerity, she said, “I want to thank you again. I owe you my life, and I won’t forget it. If there’s anything I…”
“We are finished now,” he said abruptly.
She hesitated and her lips curved up slightly. “Then why did you follow me?”
He said, “You healed the she-wolf,” as if it explained everything.
She nodded solemnly, then tried again to communicate. “Can… would you let me explain now? I’ll only take a…”
He shook his head.
She dropped her eyes, turned without speaking and headed directly across the clearing toward the Forest Gate. But her feet betrayed her, and dragged. She felt, for the first time in her life, as if she were doing something absolutely and terribly wrong. But there was no explanation for it.
At that moment Dirken and Bone emerged from Border Road behind Gath. They were wheezing and grumbling. Robin, then Gath, turned and saw them, and they, humiliated, edged back out of sight into the forest.
Robin hesitated thoughtfully, then turned back toward the gate and wandered directionless through women herding goats and spinning wool not seeing their welcoming smiles. She passed through a crowd of boys battling with stick swords, reached the gate and suddenly stopped, looked off at the cataracts.
A distant thundering was coming out of the massive shelves of grey rock. It grew louder by the heartbeat.
Spellbound, Robin looked back across the clearing at Gath.
He stood facing the cataracts, head lowered. He unbuckled his helmet from his belt, lifted it above his head and lowered it into place, waited. A predator scenting blood.
Robin shuddered, looked back at the cataracts.
Dust billowed up out of the pass, and mounted Kitzakk raiders erupted from its mouth, plunged toward the three bridges screeching.
An alarm gong clanged inside the village. The women in the clearing screamed as they drove the children and animals toward the forest. In the village women cried out and raced to find their children, scurrying through men who scrambled for their weapons.
Robin, shuddering, looked back at Gath as he slipped his axe off his back, then turned sharply, hearing the sharp cries of children coming from Weaver Court. She plunged into the flow of bodies spilling out the gate, fought her way through them and ran into the village.
Eighteen
PLUNDER
Gath started after Robin, then stopped short and turned toward the charging raiders, slowly, like a nail being bent by a crowbar.
Two metal-clad commanders led the screaming, skull-faced raiders. The pair carried huge weapons that glittered, and they themselves radiated streaking spears of white light from an eerie glow at their groins.
Gath blinked. His breathing became deep, racking and noisy. A vast heat filled his world. Light obliterated sound. Nothing moved for him except the two illuminated, metallic champions. They seemed to plunge slowly as if galloping through a sky of blood. He started for the raiders in a slow steady march, his feet plodding like those of a condemned man. The piercing screech of women cut through his enchanted world, brought him back to the real world of dirt, panic and the smell of fear.
He looked back at the Forest Gate. Animals, men, women and children were spewing out, heading for the safety of the trees in wagons and on foot. Gath’s face became hard and expressionless behind the mask of his helmet, then he again turned back to the raiders, as if held in the grip of an invisible demon.
The Kitzakks had split up into two groups and were plunging across the two closest bridges. The structures shuddered and shook under the pounding hooves dislodging heavy chunks of their earthen bodies into the gorge.
Cytherian defenders, spears in hand and snarling, met the charge at the bridges. Neither their weapons nor attitudes were sufficient. All but two panicked and ran before the steel-shod avalanche reached them. The two remaining took crossbow bolts in their foreheads and dropped in place. Their fleeing comrades died soon after, catching flying steel bolts with their backs and neck
s.
Hefting his spear and axe, Gath forced himself to turn away and march to the Forest Gate, pushing through the thin remnant of fleeing bodies. Inside, panic had sucked the life out of the village. He could hear sounds of clanging steel and cursing at the opposite end of the village where Cytherian warriors were fighting the raiders. Ignoring the inviting noise, he passed a wagonload of unshaven, leather-clad mercenaries who apparently considered fighting Kitzakks not part of their contract to protect Weaver. He continued through deserted wagons jammed at a crossroads, passed a man holding his dislocated jaw with both hands, and saw another with straw held against the bleeding stump of his wrist. The incessant clanging of the alarm stopped abruptly. He hesitated, listened, then strode on passing open windows and open doors. From the shadows beyond them came the silence of empty rooms, empty beds and empty chairs.
He climbed a zigzagging deserted street at the north side of the village until he was two tiers below the Heights. There he went up a staircase siding a building. It led to a flat roof where a ladder rose to a higher roof. From there he could see the battle unfolding at the south end of the village.
Cytherian warriors, in scattered, unorganized groups, were meeting the Kitzakks’ charge amid the rubble and streets. Their long spears, twice their height, splintered uselessly against the raiders’ steel. The Kitzakks closed with them, trampled them firing crossbows at point-blank range with brutal accuracy. Steel bolts impaled staring eyes, speared open mouths. Farther off, the main body of Cytherians, some forty strong, were gathering at Weaver Court to defend the temple and its sacred maidens.
The Kitzakks joined forces in the Market Square, dismounted and split up. A small detachment ranged through the now almost empty lower tiers of the village, mopping up stragglers. A few remained in the Market Square guarding their horses. The main body, led by the two commanders, charged up the twisting street connecting Market Square to Weaver Court. Huge dye vats stood like massive sentinels along the street’s high dirt walls. At the top of the street the Cytherian defenders met the raiders with swords and daggers, and demon war drank deep of blood.