The Spider

by Leo Carew

  His observation was met with a corrosive stare. “Ill? Yes, they are certainly ill. And why would that be?”

  Bellamus shrugged. “Illness happens. I do not control it.” If the first one is dead, he thought, and the second unconscious, there are no witnesses to contradict me. He stared blankly into Tekoa’s livid face.

  “You ask me to believe this is coincidence?” asked the legate. “That we visit your nest, where you hold two of my men captive apart from the others, and they turn out to carry disease which has now spread through my men?”

  “What are you suggesting I did?” said Bellamus, trying and almost achieving exasperation. “Those two were separated because we had no space with the others.” That was close to true. Bellamus did not think of the consequences of this disease, or whether he wanted it to spread any further than it already had. At that moment, he merely wanted to survive this encounter. Everything else could be decided in the long hours ahead, tied to the post.

  Tekoa looked to Roper. “I think this was a trap for us. I think he wanted to be found, to introduce this disease to our army.”

  That would’ve been the perfect way to deliver it, thought Bellamus, if I were more self-sacrificial.

  “That seems a stretch to me,” said Roper. “But have you quarantined the men?”

  “I am not an imbecile,” snapped Tekoa. “Of course I have quarantined them. But the two captives came into contact with scores of my men, and this does not look like plague, where physical touch is required for the illness to spread. Quarantine may not even work.”

  “We must just be vigilant,” said Roper calmly. “But as to the idea that Bellamus caused this, how would he?”

  Tekoa had no answer for that. Instead he gazed between Roper and Bellamus, eyes two shining slits. “I see he is manipulating you already, Lord Roper. Watch out for that.” He turned on his heel and swept away, cloak sliding after him like a shadow.

  Bellamus took several deep breaths, trying to calm his fluttering heart. “He seems very upset,” he said.

  “No, that was fairly normal,” said Roper. He moved behind Bellamus, who felt him twisting at a leather thong, tethering him to the post at his back. “We will speak again soon. Good morning, Master Bellamus.”

  He heard Roper turn away, footsteps fading like ripples in a pond.

  At first, Bellamus merely leaned back on the pole, staring straight ahead. Then he slid to the ground, knees held at his chest and took several long moments just to pant. He suspected quarantine would not work at this stage: too many had been exposed to his captives, and Slave-Plague, ill-named and not plague at all, seemed to carry well on the air. So this weapon was out, and Bellamus found himself glad for it. By most measures he could think of, releasing it would have been the right thing to do. There was a murderous, invasive force in his land: what more could he ask for than a sickness that selectively targeted his enemies? But there was no sense dwelling on this now. Even if he admitted his part in it, nothing he knew could stop this thing.

  With nothing more to occupy him, Bellamus stared around the camp, thinking of the devastation that might soon overtake it. He detected an odd note of peace humming through this place of war. It smelt fresh, of grass and wood smoke and the warm air of late spring. Last night, as he had shivered at his post, he had been comforted by the amount of music in the camp. The Anakim were starving, but still sweet hymns thrummed the dark, alongside hollow, mournful piping. They always played with wind, the Anakim. Never strings, or bells. Always the ghostly and half-forgotten music of the pipes. Bellamus had dreamed of music when he was last in the north: silver and otherworldly, and he had listened closely to the tunes last night in case he recognised any of them.

  He was not in the Black Kingdom, that place which so compelled and obsessed him that its name reverberated on the air long after it was spoken. But this felt like a thin layer of it. Here was an attempt to transform the Abus into a line of symmetry, with Suthdal and the Black Kingdom in perfect reflection. As much as the Black Kingdom obsessed him; as much as he longed to see those magisterial trees and the shadows that prowled beneath them, they could not have it here. As he had once said to Aramilla: You must choose a side, and advance it with all your might. He had chosen his side, and Slave-Plague, that rotten, harrowing sickness, was their greatest weapon.

  Roper did not see Tekoa again until a few days after his confrontation with Bellamus, finding him by his fire with Keturah. Their argument was evidently not forgotten, the legate giving Roper a black look. “What’s happening to the spy-monger?” he demanded.

  “I am trying to recruit him. I think he admires us a little, you know, and we may yet have his network of spies working for us.”

  Tekoa narrowed his eyes at that. “You are too soft with him already, Lord Roper. I want him gone.”

  “What sort of gone?”

  “The dead sort.”

  “You don’t think he has valuable information?”

  “I do, if you’re prepared to torture him. Are you?”

  Roper eyed the legate. “If it comes to it.”

  “Well, well, I’d have thought it has come to it already. He has certainly earned such treatment.”

  Roper wondered if Tekoa’s warnings contained any truth. But then, what could the spymaster do? He was hardly in a position of power. Everyone else was fretful, Roper decided, because of his reputation.

  Keturah had stripped to a light undertunic, the bulge at her stomach startlingly obvious without the folds of her cloak. She was barefoot, soon to leave with the historians on a run, thought to improve memory. “Where are you off to husband?” she asked, observing Roper similarly stripping his outer layers.

  “Training with Vigtyr. It’s the first time since I disturbed him in his tent a few days ago,” said Roper, “with his woman. What was her name? Adras?”

  “Yes,” said Keturah, looking up with interest. “Oh really? What were they up to?”

  “He was evidently trying to get her out of her clothes,” said Roper.

  “He must really hate her clothes,” said Tekoa, unable to resist a joke even in his dark mood.

  “Father!” Keturah exclaimed, unable to withhold the appreciative cackle that followed.

  “Are you sure you still want to be running, Wife? Most are struggling without food enough as it is.”

  “Frathi would never let me be a historian if I missed a run,” said Keturah. “Train well, my husband. Don’t let Vigtyr take advantage of you.”

  Roper left to climb the hill, a storm massing overhead. The sky rumbled like the wingbeats of a colossal bird, hidden behind clouds, which bulged and strained, leaking a gentle patter of rain. He passed legionaries attending to smoking charcoal mounds, or dragging game into camp. They could not move on to Deorceaster until the Unhieru weapons shipment had been completed, so Roper had recruited the entire army to that task. Those who were not producing charcoal were gathering iron to be transformed into giant arms and armour, or seeking what little food that had been left to them in this country.

  The atmosphere was tense and resentful, and he could sense the desire of every legionary to turn around and go home. They were sick with hunger, and with the weight of kjardautha—the Anakim homesickness. Emotions are contagious, and the mood grew uglier every day.

  Vigtyr was already pacing atop the hill when Roper arrived.

  “I really must apologise for the incident in my tent, lord,” said Vigtyr. “It won’t happen again.”

  “Then it is forgotten, my friend,” said Roper, raising a sword at once. “Think no more of it.”

  “You didn’t…” Vigtyr paused. “You didn’t ask Pryce to keep an eye on me, then? To make sure it didn’t happen again?”

  “Pryce?” said Roper, mystified. “Why would you think that?”

  “It just seems he’s been nearby a lot, recently. He always seems to be watching me. But perhaps not,” he added, in response to Roper’s obvious bewilderment. “Perhaps I was mistaken.” Vigtyr raised hi
s blade in response to Roper, who was heartened to see the lictor now gave him a little space. He had previously been so scornful of Roper’s abilities that he stood close without fear, prodding, probing and stepping, and only seldom forced into a parry. Now there was a touch of respect for Roper’s skill, and they skirmished with a little footwork, each testing the other’s balance.

  “This is good,” said Vigtyr, appraisingly. “Yes.” He made a sudden step forward and Roper kept the distance between them. “And on wet ground. Your form is strong.”

  That equalled the sum of praise that Vigtyr had delivered so far, and Roper tried hard to pay no attention. Silence, he thought. Silence.

  And suddenly, he lunged. Vigtyr had sought to test him with another little step forward, and Roper advanced to meet him at speed, closing the gap between them like a pair of lodestones snapping together. He had not planned it and did not think about it. It simply happened, and Vigtyr retreated so fast that his foot slid over the wet grass for just a moment. That delayed him, and he was forced into a parry. Roper cut at him again, and again extracted a parry. Attack, parry; attack, parry; attack, duck. Vigtyr’s blade, liberated from the task of defence, swung hard into Roper’s neck. Roper staggered back, blinking, but he was pleased. He had never wrested more than two parries in a row from his tutor.

  Vigtyr’s face had gone very cold. “You hid your intention well there,” he allowed. That was what the lictor had tried to teach: that Roper’s countenance should be a stone mask. The Sutherners, he explained, betrayed each movement before it even began with their expressive faces. Roper’s face should be blank at all times, and he must be certain that his eyes did not betray his intended target. But Roper, who had struggled with this, was coming to wonder whether there was a better way. If he had no intentions, there was nothing to hide. If he could enter that state of silence that Sigrid had spoken of: to cut out all external noise and live in the instant, there were no thoughts that could animate his face. Thoughts were slow, Roper considered. He must allow his nerves to take control, and simply act.

  Vigtyr probed with one of his deceptive attacks. He did not look particularly fast, but because the movement was so economical, and because no warning preceded them, they had usually nearly reached Roper before he registered any danger at all. But this time his wrist moved of its own accord, engaging Vigtyr’s weapon and deflecting it with a lunge of Roper’s own. Vigtyr had barely committed and leaned away from Roper’s sword, parrying the follow-up blow that he offered. Roper went forward again, attacking knee then neck. A feeling broke into his silent head, a wordless cry of triumph and incredulity as Vigtyr retreated. It plunged into Roper’s focus like a thoughtless child, he struggled to reject it, and suddenly Vigtyr’s sword was at his throat.

  “You lost confidence,” the lictor told him.

  Not quite, thought Roper. What he had lost was silence.

  It did not reappear for the rest of their session. He tried too hard to find it again and it proved elusive. But as the rain began to come down more heavily, and they cleaned the water from their blades with an oiled cloth apiece, Roper was heartened. Next time, when he was fresh and the day’s lessons had set, he thought he might be able to find it again. Perhaps for a little longer.

  “You started very well, lord,” said Vigtyr. “You had me pressed a few times there. Have you been practising alone?”

  “A little,” said Roper, thinking that would be easier to understand than the truth, that his improvement had been due to a conversation about silence. They descended the hill together, Vigtyr graciously granting Roper the use of his tent again so he could speak once more with Bellamus. “In the rain? Are you quite sure, Lictor? Please don’t feel obliged to say yes, I shouldn’t really have asked, only I have a piece of theatre planned to try and turn the spymaster.”

  “No, no, lord, take it, please,” said Vigtyr, a touch of melancholy in his voice. “I should supervise a charcoal mound in any case. What theatre have you planned?”

  “Legate Randolph is going to put Almighty fear into the spymaster,” Roper said. “And we’ll see if it has any result.” They bade each other farewell, and Roper collected Bellamus, who was shivering violently in the rain.

  “Chess?”

  “Yes please,” he replied numbly.

  Within the tent, the rain rolled comfortably off the walls, and a loud rumble of thunder passed overhead. Bellamus flared his fingers repeatedly in an attempt to restore circulation and shivered, causing Roper to glance up from assembling the board. “I don’t want to beat you because you’re too cold to think.” He took one of the cloaks from Vigtyr’s bed and draped it over the spymaster, who nodded gratefully.

  Bellamus hugged the cloak about him, and watched as Roper took his first move. “I hope you realise,” said the Sutherner, “that I am tied to a post with nothing but this board to occupy my head. You will have to be on form, Lord Roper.”

  “I shall expect great things,” Roper assured him. They played in silence for a while, and Bellamus did indeed have the edge over Roper, forcing his pieces into a defensive knot about the king. But Roper was distracted, his attention focused outside the tent walls. Randolph should interrupt them at any moment. “Why is it that you alone of the Sutherners do not hate us?” he asked, thinking to make Bellamus vulnerable.

  “I think you like what you like,” replied Bellamus. “There need be no reason… Though my first encounter with the Anakim was certainly a compelling one.”

  “Well?”

  “Many years ago—I was just a teenager—I ended up in a village beneath the mountains some way to the north of Safinim. The people there lived in terror of the Anakim who dwelt higher up. I was offered good money… suspiciously good, I should have realised, to keep a watch on them and raise the alarm if they came near the village. Frankly, I knew nothing about the Anakim.” He paused to make an articulate move, increasing the pressure on Roper’s beleaguered huddle of defenders.

  Roper looked up. “Go on,” he prompted.

  “What was I saying? Ah, I knew nothing about them, or nothing about you. We had heard of the Anakim, of course, in Safinim, but in the same way that I’d heard of elephants and woolly rhinoceroses. I hadn’t the first idea what an Anakim might look like, and I was eager to find out. So I accepted the coin I was given, used it to purchase a sheepskin coat, and went into the mountains. Into their environment. You saw our army in your lands last year: you can imagine how I must have blundered and crashed about, and inevitably it was not I who kept watch on them, but they who kept watch on me.” Bellamus raised his hand, indicating the two missing fingers there.

  Roper, absorbed by the story, found himself genuinely shocked when the tent flap swept open and a rain-soaked Randolph entered, his face livid and a drawn sword flashing at his side.

  “Here he is!” declared the legate, advancing on Bellamus who flinched backwards. Roper stood up between them at once.

  “Calm yourself, Legate!” he demanded.

  “Calm myself?” Randolph’s face was a deep plum, and so livid that Roper was not sure he was acting. “While our downfall sits there, yet drawing breath? Stand aside, Lord Roper. We’ve never taken prisoners before, this is the last one with whom we should start!” He tried to thrust his way past Roper, who body-checked him.

  “He is under my protection, Legate! Leave this tent at once before I have you disciplined!”

  The two men stared at each other a while. Then Randolph began backing away. “You won’t protect him forever, Lord Roper,” he hissed. “Not with the number of enemies that man has.” He sheathed his sword and turned abruptly, vanishing into the rain.

  The entire performance had been at Roper’s instruction, but still he found himself slightly shaken. Randolph took great pleasure in jokes and stories and, as Roper had hoped, had brought an equal zeal to this charade. Roper returned to his seat, Bellamus eyeing him across the board. “As you heard,” said Roper wearily, “it is getting difficult to justify keeping you alive. I
f you cannot help us, I’ll struggle to keep you safe and this army together.”

  Bellamus shrugged. “It is as I’ve already said, Lord Roper. I’m of no use to anyone now. I’m broken, my network is scattered and I neither know any more than you, nor have the capacity to find out.” So confidently was this proclamation delivered that Roper believed him.

  They played on, Bellamus increasing the pressure on Roper’s pieces. Roper rather thought his opponent was overreaching himself, and so it proved. He made a mistake, lost his queen, and his strategy unravelled from there. Bellamus made a dismissive sweep. “Damn. Damn and damn, I thought I had you.”

  “Very nearly,” said Roper, rearranging the pieces. The rain was still pattering at the walls, and it was growing gloomy inside the tent. Roper appraised Bellamus, and then stepped outside the tent to request candles and a light. He thrust his head back inside swiftly, but Bellamus sat placidly. A branch of sputtering pine and two tallow candles were delivered soon afterwards, and Roper set one on either side of the board. He did not need to ask if Bellamus wanted to play again: the alternative was to return to his soaking post.

  “This is like the tent I used for interviews last year,” commented Bellamus. “It was always lit by oil-lamps. People talk more easily that way.”

  “So you lost it?”

  “The retreat from Githru did not afford us many luxuries,” said Bellamus dryly. After a couple of moves apiece, he said quietly: “That really was awful.”

  “The retreat?” asked Roper, scanning the board.

  “Yes. Men froze to death, or lost fingers and toes. We were hounded. The wolves, the bears. I do not know how you live with them.”

  “They don’t trouble us,” said Roper. “Not unless you’re exceedingly thoughtless.”

  Bellamus looked interested. “Why don’t they trouble you?”

  “I don’t know. They just don’t, unless you’re careless with your food or move as though you’re weak. But if you’re asking why they trouble you, I’d say it’s the way you walk. I saw your army in the forests last year. You move like you’re constantly lost. Aimless, uncertain meanderings. If you are not assured in our land, the predators will see that.”