He Drank, and Saw the Spider

by Alex Bledsoe

  If she noticed my discomfort, she didn’t let on. She continued, “I couldn’t sleep, either. I keep thinking about how scared Izzy must be right now. She’s a strong girl, but she’s lived a very simple life. She has no experience of anything like this.”

  Not many people do, I thought, but kept it to myself. I said, “If it’s any consolation, if I really thought she was in life-or- death danger, I’d be halfway to Mahnoma by now.”

  “I know. It’s not much consolation, but it’ll have to do.” She rubbed her jaw. “You girlfriend hit me.”

  “Yeah. Sorry about that. Did she leave a lump?”

  “See for yourself.” She took my hand and put it to her face, where I felt a small, hot bit of swelling.

  While my hand touched her, she looked up into my eyes with the same look I remembered from that night so long ago. There was something unfinished between us, and while I’d had a life that thoroughly distracted me from it, she’d had a decade and a half of relative quiet to nurse it, whether she meant to or not. The promise I saw now was that of a grown woman who knew what a man liked. If I took her up on it, she’d never let on. Liz would never know.

  But I would. I pulled away my hand.

  “You haven’t changed much,” she said.

  “That’s the first thing you’ve said that’s been dead wrong,” I said.

  She joined me in looking out the window. Another pair of shooting stars went over. “It wasn’t you,” she said.

  “What?”

  “The man who broke my heart. It wasn’t you. I was pissed off at you, yes. But that’s all.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re not going to ask who it was?”

  “It’s none of my business.”

  “But you’re a sword jockey, aren’t you? You spy on lovers for a living.”

  “I try not to take cases like that, actually. Neither side usually tells me the whole truth.”

  “He was the son of a neighboring farmer,” she said, her voice turning somber. “We were betrothed. A month before the wedding, he did something stupid, then took ill and died.”

  “Something stupid?”

  “He went out on a winter’s night to meet me. On his way, he fell through the ice into a stream. He caught a fever and never recovered.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It was a long time ago.”

  “It seems pretty fresh to you.”

  She turned sharply away. “Are you always so tactful?”

  I could tell she was crying. “You blame yourself, don’t you?”

  “Are you still talking to me?” she said sharply. “A woman turns away, it means she doesn’t want to talk anymore.”

  “Yeah. But if it matters, I know how you feel. Two people I loved died because of me. One was my teenage girlfriend, the other a woman I knew after I left here.”

  Slowly she turned back, wiping her tears. “And now you have Liz.”

  “Yes. Because I’m very, very lucky.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not.”

  “No, you just haven’t been. Maybe you still will be.”

  “No, that’s wrong. I’ve got Izzy. She’s the luck of my life.”

  Tatterhead’s half-heard word came back to me: Sister. I didn’t know what he meant by it, so I saw no need to mention it to Beatrice. But it hovered here, like a shadow with nothing casting it. “And we’ll get her back,” I assured her with all the sincerity in me.

  She said nothing. I put an arm across her shoulders and we stood watching the sky. No more shooting stars appeared.

  Ellis wanted to send Ajax back to his castle for reinforcements, but Jack would brook no further delay. I agreed with him; Tatterhead would move slowly and leave a pretty easy trail to follow, but I didn’t want him to get too far ahead. I did believe he was supposed to bring Izzy to Mahnoma unharmed, but after what I’d seen him do to her before they left, I wasn’t sure he quite got the definition of “unharmed.”

  Just before dawn I visited Strato, who was kept confined in a storeroom with his fellow soldier. They were also chained together by their left ankles, an efficient way to prevent them making a run for it. I closed the door behind me and said, “We’re going after Tatterhead.”

  “You know where he’s going,” Strato said.

  I nodded. “We could use your help. Except for the king’s bodyguard and me, no one here has ever fought in a real battle.”

  “You can’t take him on,” Strato’s companion said belligerently. “He’ll tear you into bite-size chunks.”

  “Martius,” Strato warned. To me he said, “It would make me a traitor.”

  “That depends. If your orders came from Opulora and not the King, then you’d be a hero for helping expose her.”

  “There are no heroes,” he said wryly. “And I can only trust that King Gerald gave the orders. It’s in my job description not to ask questions.”

  I nodded. I wished he felt differently, but I understood his reasons. “Either way, I’ll order you released in two days. By then we’ll have reached Acheron, or been left as a pile of corpses somewhere between here and there.”

  “Thank you. I’d like to wish you luck, but that seems hypocritical under the circumstances.”

  I offered my hand. We shook, but his fellow soldier did not. I left them to their solitude.

  “You don’t stand a chance,” Martius called after me. “He’s not fucking human.”

  We sworded up, saddled up, and left at first light. In addition to me and Liz, we had Jack, King Ellis, Beatrice (there was no stopping her), Clancy (Phoebe’s tears notwithstanding), Owen Glendower, and Ajax. Harry Lockett was also part of our group, but as a noncombatant. Scribes never took sides. Billy Cudgel was along as well, not exactly in custody but certainly encouraged to think of himself that way. He was too dangerous to either turn loose, or trust to the naive Mummersetters.

  I knew Liz, Ellis, Jack, and Ajax could handle the weapons they carried. I was less certain about Glendower, who brought along a dusty heirloom sword no doubt snatched from a wall somewhere in his house, and Clancy, who carried a staff sharpened to a point. I had the dire premonition that before this little adventure was over, he’d end up impaled on it. Beatrice had two knives on her belt and another two on her saddle, and just the set of her jaw alone convinced me I shouldn’t question her ability with them.

  The nine of us made good time, because as I suspected the trail was really easy to follow, especially once we hit the woods downslope from the town.

  At the forest’s edge, two trees as big around as me were pushed aside, their root balls partially uncovered. Tatterhead was making a beeline for Acheron. His mission was so urgent that he couldn’t even bother to take roads.

  “Good gods,” Glendower said softly. “What manner of being is this creature?”

  “Don’t be scared,” I said so only he could hear. “Your son and daughter are watching.”

  He swallowed hard and nodded.

  Ajax dismounted, walked to one of the partially toppled trees, and pushed against the trunk, lightly at first and then harder. It did not move. He went to the other side and tried to push it back upright. It didn’t move that way, either. A crow sitting atop the tree cackled his amusement before flying off.

  “How big was he?” Ajax asked.

  “Seven feet,” Beatrice said.

  “Tall?”

  “No, across the shoulders,” she said wryly.

  Ajax didn’t look frightened, but a lot of the cockiness drained away as he got back on his horse.

  “If you’ve got second thoughts,” I announced, “this is the place to turn back.”

  “No one’s turning back,” Jack said. “And we’re wasting time talking about it.”

  He nudged his horse forward between the trees and along the newly cleared path that led straight ahead through the woods.

  “Tatterhead’s like a homing pigeon,” I said quietly to Liz. “The straightest line between here and there.”

&nbs
p; “My God,” Liz said as she surveyed the destruction. “How strong is he?”

  “Strong enough that I hope we don’t catch up to him until we reach Gerald’s castle. He’ll massacre this bunch.”

  “Including you?” she teased.

  “Yes,” I said seriously, “because I’d have to fight for all of them. Except maybe Ajax.”

  “Jack looks pretty tough, and I assume he’s well trained in combat arts.”

  “Doesn’t matter. He’s young, and he’s pissed off. Tatterhead stole his girl, and that insults his masculinity. You know what young men are like; he wouldn’t last five minutes.”

  “Are we talking about the same thing?” she said with a wink. Then she asked, “So what do we do?”

  “Follow slowly enough that he gets to the castle first, and then we can deal with Opulora, not Tatterhead.”

  “What if she sics Tatterhead on us?”

  “We’ll deal with that if it happens.”

  The trail left by the monster was easy to follow, although we could only ride single file. Anything in his path had been removed, including trees and boulders as well as smaller things like bushes and logs. Eventually this new path met an existing trail that was broad enough for wagons, and we made better time.

  Heavy dark moss hung from the trees and gave them the look of solemn old men who passed judgment on those who passed by. I got the feeling not many earned their approval.

  Around midmorning, I let my horse drift back until I was beside Harry Lockett. He was writing something as he rode, the reins clamped in his teeth. His horse seemed used to this.

  “Got a minute?” I asked quietly.

  He put away the vellum and stylus. “Sure.”

  “What exactly are we up against?”

  “With Tatterhead?”

  I nodded. “I mean, I’ve seen him up close. He’s not human. And you seem to know a lot about this situation.”

  Lockett grinned. “The last time I saw you, you were chasing dragons. Now you’re after monsters?”

  “I don’t know what I’m after, that’s why I’m asking. What is he?”

  Lockett squinted into the distance as he organized his thoughts. “There are two schools of thought on that. One is that he’s simply a freak, a man who grew up different and, most would say, wrong. Who kept growing when other men stopped.”

  “And the other school?”

  “Agrees with you. That he’s not human at all. There’s all sorts of stories about him, mind you. Most say he was found by Opulora, who trained him to be her monster on call. Some say he’s actually Opulora’s son. And some say Opulora actually made him.”

  “As opposed to giving birth to him?”

  “Exactly. They say she grew the different parts in her chambers in the castle, then stitched him together and brought him to life. He’s made up of parts taken from other creatures, such as bears, wolves, and vipers, all the dangerous and powerful things of the world, and then changed and strengthened by the sorceress’s skills.”

  “That sounds like a children’s story.”

  “So do dragons,” he said with a grin. “Did you find any, by the way?”

  “There’s no such thing,” I said, then urged my horse back to the front of our little band. Lockett laughed knowingly behind me.

  Chapter

  TWENTY-ONE

  The trail of destruction began again as Tatterhead left the road and continued on his straight-ahead path. Once again we rode single file, with Jack in the lead, me right behind him. It made conversation impossible, so I was left alone with my thoughts until Jack’s horse suddenly balked, neighing and refusing to continue.

  “Whoa, girl,” Jack said calmingly, not trying to force her forward. “What is it? What—?”

  He stopped, then quickly dismounted and knelt to look at something on the ground. I turned to the others. “Everyone stay here.” Then I dismounted as well and cautiously walked toward Jack, checking the surrounding woods for any sign of movement.

  “What is it?” I asked when I stood over him.

  He held up a hand, stained bright red. “Blood,” he said, his voice trembling a bit. Before him was a small pool of it, and beyond, a trail of dark droplets spattered on the ground and some low-hanging leaves. It was enough to convince me that whatever bled it out was likely no longer among the living. “Don’t panic,” I said quietly. “It doesn’t make sense that he’d kill her here, on a whim.”

  He wiped his hand on the ground. “Maybe she pissed him off. She could be touchy.”

  “No. It doesn’t feel right. Whoever or whatever died here, it wasn’t Isadora.”

  He didn’t protest, but we continued on foot. The blood trail preceded us along Tatterhead’s path of destruction. This was old forest, untraveled and thick. On either side, beyond Tatterhead’s recent damage, huge fallen trunks covered the ground. Many were already rotted, and those were covered with multicolored fungi, wan gray lichen, and green moss. Seedlings also rose from the remains of their ancestors, reaching for the sunlight that only rarely made it through the tree canopy.

  Suddenly Jack stopped, wiped his cheek, and stared at his hand. “What the hell?” Blood smeared his face from one ear to the corner of his mouth, but there was no sign of a wound. He looked back. A low leaf had brushed his face. Blood still dripped from it.

  No birds sang around us, and even the insect buzzing was suddenly absent. “Quiet!” I whispered, and drew my sword. “Stay here.”

  “Not a chance,” Jack whispered.

  “All right, but just don’t do anything unless I tell you. Understand?”

  He nodded. He meant it, too, I could tell. But if we found something horrible, he might not be able to control himself. We crept forward. The ground rose before us, and we ended up crawling up to the top of the hill. We peered down into a wide gully with a trickling stream in the center. It was beautiful and bucolic, except for the blood splattered on a wide swath of ground. Across the stream, Tatterhead’s trail continued.

  “Izzy,” Jack said, and swallowed hard. He pointed. A strip of cloth from the banquet gown she’d been wearing was tangled in a briar patch across the stream.

  He started to rush forward, but I grabbed his arm. “Wait,” I said. “Look around. The blood’s all on this side of the stream. If he’d murdered her this brutally, that cloth would be dripping red, but it’s not.”

  “Then where did all the blood come from?” he demanded, his eyes wet despite his attempts at control.

  “I don’t know. But get a hold of yourself. You go off half- cocked, you’re not doing Izzy or yourself any good.” I walked down into the gully, watching in all directions. The eerie silence worried me more than anything, because animals always know when something unnatural is around, and few things were more unnatural than Tatterhead. Jack followed, mimicking my slight crouch. It was funny, sort of, but it also showed that he had sense enough to recognize when someone else was better informed. Many a prince would ignore my advice just because it came from a commoner.

  I stopped just this side of the stream, at the biggest splotch of blood. Part of it drained into the water, making a red ribbon that faded as it drifted downstream. If all this liquid came from one person, there’s no way they were still alive. When he reached me, Jack whispered, “Why is it so quiet?” This kid was smart. But before I could answer, something snapped overhead. We looked up as a huge, dark form dived down through the branches straight at us.

  I shoved him hard one direction and leaped the opposite way. The form hit the spot we’d been standing with a wet splat, jiggled a bit, then didn’t move.

  Jack’s eyes were as wide as one of Crazy Jerry’s dinner plates. “What the hell is that?” he almost shrieked. It took a moment for the shape to resolve itself. “A bear. A dead bear.”

  I held my breath as I poked the bear with my sword. It was a big, full-grown monster, much like the one I’d killed sixteen years ago in these very woods. But there was one crucial difference. I hadn’t beaten it
to death with my bare hands and thrown it twenty feet up into a tree. Tatterhead did. “Holy shit,” Jack said as he realized what had happened. “Not exactly princely language,” I said wryly.

  “Not exactly a princely situation. Do you still think Izzy is all right?”

  “I’d bet on it. His whole job is to get her back to Acheron safely.”

  “Good god, what is that?” Glendower called from the rise behind us.

  “A dead bear,” I said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Come on down, we can water our horses.”

  “We need to keep going,” Jack said.

  “Hard to ride a dead horse,” I said. “While they rest, let’s go check out that ribbon.”

  We crossed the stream and reached the bush where the strip of cloth hung. Jack reached for it, but I stopped him. “Don’t touch it yet. We need to see what it can tell us.”

  “It tells us Izzy came this way,” he said impatiently. “What else do you need to know?”

  I understood his impatience, but it was starting to bug me. “You really need to calm the fuck down,” I said firmly. “We don’t even know for certain who the bad guy is in this situation.”

  “I’d say the woman who sends a monster after my girlfriend would fill the bill,” he fired back.

  “Really? What if King Gerald sent him?”

  “Well, then—”

  “What if Opulora sent him, but wanted everyone to think King Gerald did it? Or what if—?”

  “You’re making this too complicated!” he said, sounding for a moment like a spoiled little boy.

  “It is complicated. And the only way to un-complicate it is to look at the clues. Now . . . this does tell us that Isadora came this way. What else does it tell us?”

  He bent close and looked at the cloth. It was torn from the hem of her gown, as if it had snagged as they passed and ripped free. There was no blood on it, which told me that Tatterhead probably put her safely aside while he dispatched the bear. On the ground, I saw deep impressions from his feet, including one clear mark in the mud. There were no matching prints for Isadora, so he was likely still carrying her. Was she still unconscious, then, from the effects of that last glass ball? “I don’t see any blood,” Jack said. “So it must mean she’s okay.”