The Spider

by Leo Carew

  An arrow found the back of Roper’s elbow and he gasped at the shooting pain that swept up his arm, making him drop the grapple. A figure had scooped it up for him in an instant. It straightened, and Roper recognised Pryce’s haughty jawline beneath the visor. More men: legionaries, guardsmen and Unhieru, came to join their band, even as those marching with them dropped beneath the burden of multiple arrows. Roper drove them on, unaware of the words he had started bawling. “With me, with me! On your feet! It’s not over yet! Not here! This is not over, and we will not stop until it is!”

  They advanced down a street Roper had already tried, leaving the firelight behind and rounding a corner into another pounding volley. Roper was struck twice, but the blows seemed so distant he could not tell if they had hit armour or flesh. “Kill!” he was bellowing. “Kill! Kill! Kill!”

  They were within six feet of the palisade, the gritted teeth of the bowmen shining white above as they drew and loosed point-blank at this band of attackers. “Throw the grapples! Grapples, up the wall!”

  Grapples were tossed onto the palisade, some of the legionaries hauling on the ropes and trying to climb them hand over hand. “Down, down!” Roper shouted, pointing instead at the Unhieru. “Pull it down!” he ordered. “Pull down the wall!” Many of the grapples were unhooked and hurled back down by the longbowmen, but a few legionaries had pulled hard on their ropes, digging the grapples’ sharp edges into the palisade.

  One Unhieru seized a rope and began to pull. A bowman by the grapple drew his knife and began sawing at the cord, which snapped under pressure. But more grapples were being hurled upwards, the Unhieru ready to pull as soon as they bit into the palisade. Under the power of six, eight, ten ropes, the wall began to sag outwards. The earth at its base started to warp and Roper stepped back to avoid being crushed. The air twanged as the ropes snapped beneath knife and pressure, some of the Unhieru stumbling backwards as the resistance on their ropes vanished. But still half a dozen hauled trembling at their lines, and with a groan and a crack, a great section of the logs making up the wall was pulled forward.

  Those Unhieru without ropes suddenly had an edge they could grip onto. They began to tear at it bare-handed: hauling, wrenching and widening. The movement dislodged several longbowmen from the firestep and they tumbled down into the waiting arms of the Anakim, who were suddenly possessed by a feral energy. They seethed and massed like churning locusts, vicious fury spreading and crackling from them. Roper was screaming over the top of the din as the wall began to shake and buckle: “Yes, onwards! Onwards my brothers, my peers, my animals! They cannot stop us!” Arrows still spattered their band, but the longbowmen seemed to be aiming mostly at the Unhieru, their shafts bouncing ineffectually off the thick chain mail.

  The gap in the wall was wide enough for an Anakim to squeeze through but Pryce, nearest to the hole, turned to Gray. “Lift me!” he commanded. Gray lent Pryce a boost, Roper assisting with his uninjured right arm, and they propelled the lictor upwards, where he seized onto a splintered palisade support. Pryce clamped his sword between his teeth and began to swarm up the exposed edge of the wall. He was spotted by a defender, who turned a longbow on Pryce’s head at a range of less than a yard. Roper shouted a pointless warning; there was nothing Pryce could do. Then Gray’s sword cartwheeled out of nowhere, spinning lethally at the bowman and forcing him to stagger onto the wooden battlement. It was all Pryce needed. He seized the bowman’s boot and dragged him flailing and swearing from the wall.

  Then he was on the firestep, dwarfing the defenders he faced, sheathed in steel and a shocking strip of it clutched in his hand. The longbowmen could only face him one at a time on the narrow firestep, armed only with bows and knives, and armoured in leather.

  They disintegrated before him.

  Pryce’s sword swung in momentous arcs, spitting body-parts down off the wall. Three arrows smashed into his chest, one after another, doing no more than staggering the sprinter before he launched himself back at the bowmen.

  Behind Pryce, the wall buckled further until with a cracking and a groaning, a section some eight yards across was dragged flat. Three Unhieru flooded through at once, unleashed on the city and completely beyond Roper’s control. He seized Gray’s wrist. “Take the Guard through the gap and hold on to it at all costs! This is our only way into the city and we must preserve it! I’m going back to show everyone the way.”

  Gray nodded, casting a final glance at Pryce, whose work on the palisade was done. The blood-spattered, arrow-stuck guardsman now walked lazily across the deserted firestep, kicking prone bowmen out of his way.

  Roper turned back, pushing against the press of invaders trying to go through the hole they had made, and forcing his way back towards the breach. It glowed from behind the houses like the landing site of a star. He stepped out from the shelter of the street, into the light of the killing ground once more, where a sea of men still cowered from the arrows and siege bolts spinning overhead. “Here!” Roper roared, shifting slightly so that an arrow met his armour at an angle rather than head-on. It streaked off into the ground. “This way if you want to live! This way to finish what we’ve started! Advance! Advance! Advance!”

  Anakim and Unhieru began to pick themselves up, emerging from behind boulders, houses and corpses, and staggering towards Roper. Without warning, he was knocked off his feet by the force of an arrow, slamming him into the cobbles. His armour preserved him once again, but surely his luck could not hold for much longer. He spat dust from his mouth and pushed himself upright, something soft beneath his fingers. He looked down and realised he had his hand on the face of a dead legionary.

  He staggered away, and was instantly distracted by a mass of splintered wood being ejected from a window above him. It crashed to the floor, and it took several moments for Roper to realise that it was the remnants of a siege bow. There came a panicked scream from the window, and then the siege bow’s three crew members were hurled after it, one after another. The first crashed into a burning hay-bundle in a gust of sparks, where he flailed, trying to drag himself out of the flames. Another landed on his head, and did not move again. The third landed legs first and emitted an agonised scream as they buckled beneath him. Still he rolled onto his belly, and tried to crawl away from whatever was in that house.

  It was Gogmagoc. His mailed bulk squeezed through the window, tearing the frame wider and crashing to the ground after his victims. Axe in hand, indifferent to the arrows that whistled about him, he prowled to the next house. The crew within spotted the threat and turned a siege bow on him at point-blank range, the great engine jumping violently as the trigger was released. Roper did not see the bolt: it was too fast and the breach too dark, but he saw where the chain mail on Gogmagoc’s back twitched as the bolt punched straight through his body and out the other side. He saw the dark cloud of blood that spurted after it, and the puff of shattered stone as it streaked on and hit a cobble behind the giant king. Roper noticed, but Gogmagoc did not. He reached the house and in two swings of his axe, chopped through a corner beam. The house began to lean to one side, the siege bow crew reeling back from the windows as the whole structure teetered. Gogmagoc heaved at the building, and it buckled and collapsed in a cloud of dust and a great heap of splinters. Muffled voices cried from the wreckage and the giant king stood above; a shining outline with the two mad, perfectly circular eyes of his helmet staring across the breach.

  A hand gripped Roper’s shoulder and he turned to see a filthy legionary. “My lord, Suthern soldiers in the streets! Hundreds of knights trying to seal off our path into the city.”

  Roper did not reply, turning away to cast an eye over the men flooding towards them. He spotted half a dozen Unhieru and shouted that they should join him. They obeyed, wading through the legionaries.

  “My lord?” repeated the messenger. “The knights.”

  “I heard you,” said Roper. “They’re dead.” He looked up at the Unhieru who crowded about him, staring back through those aw
ful round-eyed helmets. “Follow me,” he said, turning his back to the breach.

  They passed from the flickering light of the hay-bundles and into the street once more. Roper could see nothing but bodies and dark passageways; up ahead were screams, crashes and clangs, and growing over all that, a battle-hymn was chanted by that knot of feral men who had broken through the wall with him. Somewhere out of sight, the Sacred Guard had found some energy and were fighting like starving dogs.

  Roper struggled towards the gap they had made in the palisade wall, joining a press of men trying to force their way through. The press dispersed rapidly when they saw the trail of Unhieru who followed Roper, each man standing back to allow the Black Lord and his giant allies passage. Roper passed through the wall, and was immediately called left: “My lord!” In the dark, he could detect knights swarming through an alleyway that led onto their street, attempting to flank his forces. He commanded that the Unhieru should take the knights, who faltered as their passage was suddenly filled with immense chain-mail figures and staring helmets.

  Roper left them behind, rounding another corner to find that Gray had assembled the Sacred Guard into a battle-line that was rebuffing a company of knights. These had evidently come to try and stopper the gap that was the only escape from the trap enclosing the breach.

  The Guard were growling the “Hymn Abroad” as Roper broke into a sprint, bellowing his presence to the guardsmen, Cold-Edge flashing at his side. Some of the rearmost guardsmen turned and cheered as they saw him pelting for the line. “Move!” he roared. “Move! Move!” With yards to spare, four guardsmen scrambled aside and the enemy line was exposed to Roper. He dropped his shoulder and crashed into the them, transferring the full energy of his charge to the stationary knights. Three were knocked to the ground and Roper staggered, stumbling over them, pushing another away with his elbow and lurching right through the line. He turned, sword raised, to see guardsmen scrapping their way into the gap he had left behind. Another four knights were knocked down in quick succession, rattling off the cobbles. What happened to those four was so fierce that their comrades faltered. They seemed to decide in that instant that here was not where they would stop the Anakim after all. That point would come further into the city, and weakened by that thought, the line disintegrated. The knights backed off faster and faster until they turned away completely, running back the way they had come. One tried a sly lunge at Roper’s neck as he passed. After his lessons with Vigtyr, it was pure reaction, Roper turning the attack aside and skewering his opponent’s armpit in the same motion. The man howled and dropped onto the street, where Roper finished him with a downward hack.

  The guardsmen were pursuing the knights down the street into the dark city, but Roper summoned them to him. “Here! Here, here, here! I need you here!” Gray responded first, a few dozen guardsmen behind him. “Help me,” Roper said to Gray, holding out his arrow-shot arm, as their little band clustered together. Gray gripped the base of the arrow shaft protruding from Roper’s elbow and began cutting the bulk of it off so that it would not snag as Roper fought. The head would need to be extracted later.

  “Gather close and listen,” said Roper, teeth gritted as Gray finished his work. Roper began to perform the same crude operation on Gray’s forearm, still talking. “We need to get onto the outer walls and clear off the longbowmen.” The panting guardsmen were following his example, hastily tying scraps of linen around crimson wounds, or stabilising loose joints with strips of leather. Each face was covered with dust from the breach, and streaked with sweat. “We must do this as swiftly as possible. Every second they are allowed to remain, more legionaries die coming over the breach, and getting stuck in that killing pen. Before anything else, and before this assault can progress, we here must reach the outer wall. With me, now!” He turned down another dark street lined with timber houses, guessing the direction of the walls, and beckoning his men to follow.

  The night was filled with Anakim incantations, the barking of dogs and human roars of every kind. The residents, doubtless having heard what the Anakim planned for cities that resisted, leaned from upstairs windows and hurled down tables, crockery and shutters; some unleashing hunting arrows that pelted Roper and his band. Roper was struck by the corner of a table and then a pot crashed over his helmet, making his head ring. He lost control, turning and kicking in the door behind him. The interior flitted with shadows and he stilled them abruptly with Cold-Edge. Back on the street, their band staggered on, emerging into the relative light of a market square. The buildings did not crowd so close here, and over the houses Roper could see their objective: the walls.

  “This way!” He led them towards another street branching off the square. But as they drew near, the passage began to fill with a roaring and flickering light. A band of men burst into view, rounding the far corner into the street, torches bouncing as they ran. They were city watchmen, dressed in chain mail, carrying large square shields and spears, and charging against Roper’s small advance. Roper roared, his guardsmen howled, and the two formations crashed together. The guardsmen were outnumbered, but there was a reason Anakim did not carry shields. The mindset of a warrior with a shield is conservative, and better than their opponents, the Anakim understood the power of shock.

  Roper ran over his first enemy, battering into the shield raised against him, knocking him down and stumbling over his body into the next man. He parried the spear-thrust aimed for his groin, and with his free left hand seized his enemy’s throat. He dragged him close, flinching at the jolt of pain from his injured elbow, so that his spear was useless, and tried to choke him as he used Cold-Edge to fend off another watchman. But his left hand was weak, and the watchman ripped himself free. He drew back his spear, but then the tip of a blade burst out of the chain mail on his chest and he dropped like a stone, Gray removing his sword calmly from the body and then swinging it into a raised shield.

  “Shit, behind! ’ware behind!” shouted a guardsman. Roper kicked an enemy back to buy a heartbeat, and stole a glance over his shoulder.

  Knights.

  Forty of them, shining and rattling, burst into the square behind Roper’s band and charged them. “Back!” Roper shouted. “Back, here!” They had already been outnumbered, and now found themselves assaulted on two sides. Roper broke free of the fighting and ran to the corner of the square, so that at least there was only one direction from which the enemy could come at them.

  As soon as the first of the guardsmen ran to join him, he realised his mistake. Better by far that they had run for one of the empty streets leading off the square, but that had been too much like retreat to occur to Roper. This corner might be a little easier to defend, but there was no hope of escaping it. He had trapped them.

  Even as he turned to watch, two guardsmen running towards him were hacked down and butchered. The rest barely had time to form a rough line before the knights and watchmen smashed into them. Roper parried a sword, then a spear. He wanted to strike back, but so many were the blows coming at him, so thick the flush wall of shields, that all he could do was defend. He felt a shockwave reverberate through his chest as a sword-thrust broke through his plate armour, stopped by the bone underneath. In anger, he tried to strike back but only succeeded in opening himself to two further blows: one a spear-thrust that grated into his belly, another a mace that grazed his chin and nearly broke his jaw. He wafted Cold-Edge in reply and stumbled backwards, just as the guardsmen around him were doing.

  Roper had doomed them.

  In a thoughtless instant, he had trapped them in this corner as they were assaulted by fully three times their number. Watchmen and knights were sharing shields, and so many men reached forward to chop at the guardsmen that it was impossible to strike back without opening oneself up to another attack. Roper just had to defend as a guardsman to his left: a peer called Yaddur, with whom Roper had laughed and eaten, took a spear to his neck. He raised his free left hand, as though to keep the furious blood within his body, and held hi
s feet for just another heartbeat before crumbling. This exposed the guardsman on Yaddur’s shoulder, who took a slash across his face, knocking his head back and opening the underside of his chin to a spear that went through his jaw. Three teeth were knocked free from his lips and the guardsman was dead at once.

  Back, back; the guardsmen crowded into the corner. Now the man on Roper’s right was Gray, and he was terrified that he was about to see the captain fall. He and Roper worked shoulder to shoulder, Roper’s eyes trying to shut themselves at the sharp points bristling and jabbing before him. He took some on his sword, some on his armour and some were saved by Gray, who seemed to have stopped defending himself and was edging in front of Roper. He pushed the captain back to his side with a heave of one weighty arm, movements growing slow, so slow as he tired and his chest heaved. “I’m sorry!” he gasped at Gray, but the guardsman had no breath for reply. Roper could see only his gritted teeth and the sweat dripping off his chin as he batted away another attack.

  A wave of profound dread hit Roper so hard that he nearly vomited. He staggered, panting, and did not realise at first that he suddenly had a little space. The Sutherners were backing off. Their aggression had lifted, the rain of blows thinning abruptly. They felt the same fear as Roper. In the pause, he had time to look up, over the heads of the Sutherners, and see what they had all felt.

  There was a monster in the square with them.

  One of the Unhieru, punctured and dented, covered in a paste of dust and blood, lurched across the cobbles, advancing towards the rear of the Suthern band. It was not Gogmagoc: there was no hole in his back or chest, but this fiend was nearly as vast. The enormous battle axe by his side clinked as it dragged over the cobbles, and it was this sound that caused the rearmost Sutherners to turn around. They had time to look up into the insane helmeted face: wide circular eye holes gaping blankly back at them, before the giant axe swept into the formation. Three men were knocked halfway across the square, shields and spears scattering over the cobbles, and one watchman landing in two halves, joined only by a thin scrap of flesh. Only then did most of the Sutherners realise what was happening behind them, turning just as the Unhieru began to advance, trampling into the Sutherners.