The Spider

by Leo Carew

  “Well…” said Stepan. “The Black Legions are still at Lincylene. And so far as we know, they’re intending to besiege it a little while, yes?”

  Bellamus nodded.

  “I could stay until they have taken the city. After that… after that, I must return to my home.”

  “I am grateful for that,” said Bellamus. He raised his cup to Stepan and drank.

  Bellamus needed a friend now. For the news from Aramilla was that their secret was out. Her father had discovered them, and he would have her executed unless she did exactly as dictated. Please, the note had said, please, my upstart: pass me all the information you have. He will use it to fight the Anakim, and it will keep me alive.

  Bellamus stood to pour yet another cup of ale. As he busied himself at the fire, blocking it from Stepan’s view, he tossed the scrap of silk on the flames.

  25

  Brimstream

  Morning. None of those about Roper’s hearth had slept.

  The legionaries had been spared the sleepless night, and just before dawn were finally told that they were about to assault. They rustled into life, helping each other into their armour. Keturah strapped Roper into his cuirass, sealing him tight like a clam and then planting a kiss on his breastplate. She dressed his hair, tying it into a high ponytail, which she threaded through a hole in the back of his helmet. Then she pulled it forward and Roper was transformed into a weapon of their kingdom: the man beneath hidden behind the visor. He saw to his gauntlets, she strapped on his sword-belt.

  Her arms were around his waist and he placed a hand on her shoulder, nodding at the dark grey walls of Lincylene over her shoulder. Keturah turned and saw a strange thing: a column of smoke billowing above the palisade. She looked back to Roper. “Fire?”

  “But why?” he wondered. The others about the hearth, all armoured but Keturah and the Chief Historian, had turned towards it as well. Their world was calm, but some turbulence evidently churned within Lincylene.

  “We should wait to see what plays out here,” said Tekoa, observing the smoke. “Who knows what’s going on behind those walls.”

  “Better yet,” said Roper, “take advantage and get inside. If that’s a real blaze they’ll be distracted. We go now.” He gripped Keturah’s elbows for a brief moment and then turned for the city.

  “I’ve never understood building a settlement out of wood,” said Tekoa as the legates fell in behind Roper and trotted towards the city. They strode past the ranks of rising legionaries, ladders and rams floating with them to the edge of the encampment. The legates joined their legions, and Roper lined up with the Sacred Guard before the gate, glinting soldiers hurrying into formation with him. There were enough and Roper gestured vigorously that they should advance. Several hundred of them broke into a jog, running silently towards the walls, Roper ushering the rams and ladders to the fore. Then he held up a hand to still them, the charge faltering before it had truly started.

  Something had appeared above the wall. A thing familiar to Roper, and grotesque.

  “It’s a head,” muttered Gray.

  So it was, raised high over the wooden battlements on a pike and silhouetted against the smoke climbing fiercely behind.

  And then the morning became yet more extraordinary.

  The gates opened.

  Without fanfare, ceremony or synchrony, the two leaves were pulled back and left yawning. Nobody tried to leave them. They just stood open, and a white flag was hoisted beside the head.

  “They’ve surrendered?” said Gray, mystified.

  “A trap,” said Tekoa assertively. “Mayor Almund would never yield to us.”

  “I don’t believe Almund is in charge any more,” said Roper, staring up at the impaled head. There was a muttering running along the lines of legionaries, heads turning towards Roper for guidance. “Our enemy has surrendered,” he said. “Let’s occupy the city.” Concealing his trepidation, he led the legionaries towards the gates.

  First, he expected a volley of arrows. And when that did not come, he anticipated a swarm of defenders as he walked through the gates. Instead, he was met with the smell of burning bread. There was nobody in view and the legions wandered inside, the cobbles deserted. “What is going on?” muttered Gray, sword held forward.

  “Hold on to that gate,” Roper commanded the guardsmen, who took up positions either side at once. The burning smell grew stronger, the smoke thicker. They drifted through the heart of the city, following the smoke and coming unresisted to its centre. There, they found a burning mountain of food. There was little flame, but smoke poured from each gap and crack in the bags of beans, corn, oats and dried meats. It was a pile that could have sustained the legions for weeks, turning to ash before their eyes and as abandoned as everything else. “No,” Roper breathed. “No.”

  It took hours to find out what had happened, but by locating the huge central temple and posing some questions to the clergy sheltering within, they at last understood. To prevent the Anakim obtaining their food supplies, Mayor Almund had forcibly confiscated every bean he could find and piled them under guard in the city centre. If the Anakim made it past the walls, it could all be burnt together, and so prevented from falling into enemy hands. Until then, it was rationed to the occupants, but so tight-fistedly that they began to riot. It was a combination of this and the Anakim war-hymn that had persuaded the citizens of Lincylene to revolt. That night, as the legates had made their sleepless preparations for the assault, a crowd had stormed the mayor’s house, overwhelming his guards and decapitating Almund himself, before advancing to the food supplies. It seemed that half the city had taken to the streets and the guards were hugely outnumbered. Their last act before being overpowered had been to ignite the food supplies. Without food or leadership, the residents surrendered to Anakim mercy.

  “You wanted repayment, Tekoa,” said Roper, staring at the burning pile of food. “We’ll search the city for anything of value. Then commit it to the flames.”

  The most valuable plunder within the walls was blazing before their eyes. Possessing this pile intact would have been worth the casualties of an assault, but fate had dealt them a cruel hand. “And how do you intend to continue, lord?” asked Tekoa. “We’re already on half-rations. Without those supplies, we get weaker and weaker.”

  “So be it.”

  Tekoa and Gray glanced at one another. “My lord, we will starve,” said Tekoa. “If we cannot eat, we cannot fight. Our Unhieru weapons shipment has been lost and Bellamus is five paces ahead of us. But if we turn back now, we can take the plunder, we will have lost no men—”

  “We’re not turning back,” interrupted Roper. “Not until Lundenceaster lies at our feet. That is your hunger talking, Tekoa, your hunger and kjardautha. We strip the houses of metal in repayment for the Vidarr and take the garrison weapons. Then we move on. Nothing else is worth the weight.”

  Tekoa gritted his teeth to stop himself contradicting Roper.

  “And what are we to do with the survivors, lord?” asked Gray.

  “That is up to them. They can leave or burn.”

  Lincylene burned.

  The fire and smog vomiting from the city footprint made it look like nothing so much as a furious vent in the earth, the night sky above obscured by a column of rusted orange. Keturah sat with the Chief Historian, Sigrid, Hafdis and several other Academy members overlooking the city. A hearth crackled between them, cheerfully competing with the sickly light coming from Lincylene. They had been composing the record of the day’s events, each of their slightly different narratives combined under Frathi’s guidance to reach the version they thought was most accurate.

  “Peers, has anyone more to add?” asked the Chief Historian, glaring at each in turn. “Very well. It is time we descended for tea.”

  Keturah stood stiffly, linking arms with Sigrid as they dropped off the dark hillside. Next to them walked the Battle Historian. Hers was the only honourable position in the Black Kingdom signified by a shaven hea
d, as a mark of the particular significance of her role and her commitment it. Keturah knew she had been widowed very young and chosen to become an Inquisitor rather than remarry, later shifting her allegiance to the Academy. Keturah took her shoulder as she strode past. “My lady,” she said, “I am curious to know what might be happening at Lake Avon, with the Maven Inquisitor trying to find the assassin responsible for my brother-in-law’s death.”

  “Yet another avenue you are considering, Miss Keturah?” asked the Historian, smiling shyly. Keturah had found her a likeable figure: mild and reserved but exceedingly pleasant and keen to please any time she was engaged.

  “It would be difficult to admit a preference for a role that requires the death of my husband,” Keturah observed. “But it does intrigue me.”

  The Battle Historian explained to Keturah how the Inquisitor might proceed. At first Keturah listened closely, but she soon found herself distracted by some dynamic shifting around them: a persistent northward stream of men. “What is going on?” she murmured, casting about in the dark. “You!” she demanded imperiously of a passing Sacred Guardsman. The man stopped abruptly, evidently caught between surprise and outrage that he had been so discourteously addressed. “Where are you going?”

  “To see your husband,” he said.

  “And why?”

  “He has summoned us at once. I don’t know why. Forgive me, lady,” and he turned away, scurrying into the black.

  “After him,” Keturah declared, quickening her pace and making her apologies to the Battle Historian. “Aren’t you curious, my dear?” she added to Sigrid delightedly.

  “I suppose so,” the darkness replied tolerantly.

  Roper, when they reached him, was nearly gone. He was astride a courser, Cold-Edge strapped over his back and two large saddlebags at his side. Evidently, he was awaiting only the final dregs of the Sacred Guard before riding.

  “Husband? What is this?” she demanded.

  “Bellamus,” said Roper, glancing down at her. “Jokul has found out where he is. We must fly, my love, otherwise word will reach him that we’re coming. There are informants everywhere here, and we must stay ahead of them.”

  “So you’re riding now? At night?”

  “There is some moon,” said Roper, glancing up at the withered crescent above. “And we have no choice. This is the most important thing we have done so far. Much more important than taking Lincylene.”

  “Are you going to kill him?” she asked.

  But Roper was distracted. A voice crashed through the dark, declaring the Sacred Guard ready. Pryce’s voice. Tekoa’s bellow responded, saying five hundred eager Skiritai had been ready for a while now, and what had taken the Sacred Guard so long? The horses sensed what was coming and began to toss and whinny. “Well then!” Roper’s voice joined the fray. “Ride now! To our enemy! After me!” And he wheeled and plunged into the night, Skiritai and Sacred Guard sweeping after him.

  “Not so much as a farewell,” sighed Keturah. “So who’s in charge now?”

  Sigrid gave her an odd look. “You, of course,” she said.

  Bellamus did not dare ask Stepan whether he had heard word of Lincylene. He suspected that the knight knew the city had fallen, and would break the news of his departure soon. For now, they worked together in silence, Bellamus with a specific feeling in his chest. There was an Anakim word for it, but no Saxon, Iberian, Safinim or Alpine tongue seemed to possess it. The Anakim called it drondila: the feeling that something good is drawing to a close.

  The upstart tried to drown it with another skin of wine, occasionally scratching his ruined eye and encrypting a note for Aramilla. It carried news of the city’s surrender, of their intercepting the Unhieru weapons shipment, and of what he had discovered in the barn. He felt extreme nausea (confided to no one) at his use of the plague. The first infected legionary had weakened, and to prevent the plague dying with him, Bellamus had been forced to infect a second prisoner. The two condemned Anakim now shared the barn. The first would not last long, the second probably had a few days.

  As a boy, Bellamus had happily used hunting techniques outlawed by the nobility because there was no sport in them. They were too good, his overlords said, to be used. Bellamus scoffed at that. Efficacy should be the sole measure of whether a technique was used or not. And yet now he found himself, with surely the most effective weapon ever created against the Anakim, wavering whether to use it. But what of the two Anakim now dying in the barn? Were their lives to be wasted? What of the lives of his countrymen?

  Stepan’s thoughts on the matter had coloured his own and he almost left the news out of his message to Aramilla. She, he thought, would likely have no scruples on the weaponisation of plague. Neither would her father. The thought of Earl Seaton brought an involuntary curl to his lips. A vicious and supremely uncompromising man who had let his contempt for Bellamus be known on many occasions. Bellamus almost hoped the Anakim would have the better of him.

  Stepan was busy by the fire, drilling a hole into the base of a wooden queen. It was a chess piece, within which Bellamus would conceal the scrap of silk bearing Aramilla’s message. “Here,” said Stepan, blowing shavings off his handiwork and tossing the piece across the room. Bellamus caught it.

  “Thank you.” He inspected the hole and set the piece down next to its dark-stained counterpart. He picked up a pebble from his desk, inserted it into the hole, and hefted the two pieces. Now they were roughly the same weight. He prepared a thin patch of leather that would cover the bottom of the piece, lining it with sticky glue. “Nearly ready to go,” he said, balling up the silk message.

  Stepan was silent at that. Bellamus looked up and could see the knight’s mind working. He could see his lips begin to move, and knew what words his friend would speak. So am I, my captain, he would say.

  But he never did.

  The door of the inn was bowled open and a thin woman, Aelfwynn, hurtled in. “Master, the Anakim! They’re coming!”

  Bellamus was on his feet, his chair tipping over behind him. “What? How far away?”

  “They’re here! On the hills, hundreds of horsemen, they will arrive in…” Her hands flailed in a gesture of extreme urgency. “In minutes!”

  His eyes found Stepan and the two shared an aghast look. “Flee!” shouted Bellamus. “Take all the Thingalith you can, and go!”

  “I’m not leaving you here to fall into their hands,” said Stepan.

  Bellamus made a violent slicing gesture. “I’m the one they want! They won’t care about the rest as long as they get me, but if I’m with you, they’ll pursue us forever and we’ll all be taken. Please, I beg you, go! Go back to your wife, and that estate and your apple trees. Look after them all. The Anakim were always going to find us and they will get me with you here or without. Here, take this,” added Bellamus, thrusting the silk message at him. Secrecy did not matter any more. “Find a way to get that to the queen. Now go.”

  Stepan held the scrap of silk loosely, meeting Bellamus’s gaze for one last moment. There was an understanding between the two men: a farewell; an acknowledgement that Stepan would have protested longer, had time allowed; a loving and heartfelt good luck, my brother. Then the knight turned and strode for the door, ducking beneath the lintel. Bellamus took two deep breaths. “You too, Aelfwynn,” he said. “Please leave now.” She scurried into the early light outside.

  He was left alone with a sudden quiet. He looked around him at all he had prepared for an Anakim raid: his poison quill, his lead-weighted staff, the glove with blinding powder concealed inside. It all suddenly seemed so feeble against his enemy. The Anakim did not take prisoners.

  “So this is how it ends,” he said to the silence. He had never thought to come so far. It had been a surprise to escape the Black Kingdom after their first invasion. An even greater one to survive Harstathur, and the king’s wrath when he returned to Suthdal in disgrace. “Chance,” he had once boasted to Stepan, the two of them drunk together after Harstathu
r, “is a friend of mine.” It had certainly shown him outrageous favour so far. This reckoning did not seem unfair to him.

  He could hear the panicked cries outside as his followers began to abandon Brimstream. Horses were galloping up the road and he prayed, in one of his unusual moments of faith, that they made it clear. That he was right, and he was all the Anakim would want. He was not sure about that at all, but it was the only hope he could offer his people.

  All of which, he supposed, left one question.

  How do I want to die? It would not affect how he was remembered, but as ever, he felt that stubborn will to resist. He had not got to where he was by giving up. Chance was no friend to those who lay down and accepted its capricious whims. He wanted to die as he had lived: on his feet, like a man. Like a Sutherner.

  He donned his leather jerkin, pinned the spider brooch from the queen to his chest, put on his boots and his fine red cloak. He finished assembling the wooden queen, gluing the leather patch to her base and returning her to the empty space on the chessboard. He took a final swig from the wineskin, put a last log on the fire, and added the wooden frame with which he encrypted his notes to Aramilla. Then he stepped outside the inn. The last of the Thingalith were riding out of the village. They had left their arms and armour behind: all but one of them, who carried an upright spear as he galloped out of the village. It was Garrett. Doubtless he would take command of those men who escaped Brimstream. Poor souls, they would not find him an easy captain.