by Paul Collins
‘We were captured this morning,’ she answered. ‘And you?’
‘Some years ago. I was a mercenary. I was ambushed along with my entire squad. I am all that is left, and now I am useless because of my leg. My name is Retok.’
Daretor rattled the cage. Two slaves were at once by his side, their swords pricking his skin.
‘Where are they taking us?’ he asked, ignoring twin trickles of blood coursing his arms.
‘Are you skilled fighters?’
‘We give a good account of ourselves.’
‘You are to be tested,’ said Retok. ‘If you pass, you will live in a manner of speaking.’
‘And if we fail?’ Zimak asked.
‘The spiders are ravenous at this time of year, made all the more so by these strange events.’ Retok waited for a response. When he received none, he continued. ‘Yet there are worse things than becoming fodder. Sometimes those who win, lose, and sometimes those who lose, win.’
‘What is that supposed to mean? Does everyone here speak in riddles?’ Daretor demanded.
Retok grinned. ‘I see you have met our high priest. No doubt he made you think you would be kept alive if you acquiesced. Unfortunately, since travelling to this place, the Kindred have need of ground fighters. Much is happening that is beyond their understanding.’
Retok’s shoulders slumped. ‘For a year I have planned an escape, but for naught.’ He indicated the southern approach to the forest. ‘One thing I did learn. The Kindred have covered that approach with sheets of silk. Attached to them are signal threads. Put one step on their trap and they spray digestive juices.’
Zimak’s face paled when he noticed Retok’s scarred and inflamed leg.
‘All other paths are otherwise fortified,’ Retok added. ‘Our overseers have left nothing to chance.’
Jelindel felt the man’s despair. ‘There is something you aren’t telling us.’
Retok thought about his reply. ‘Forewarned is not always forearmed, my lady,’ he said. ‘Sometimes it is better not to know one’s fate.’
‘Well that’s great,’ said Zimak sourly. ‘That’s just great. As if poison in our veins isn’t enough …’ He snapped his fingers and grinned fleetingly. ‘Hie, if the spiders eat us, they might get a good dose of poison.’
‘I have a feeling we’re not heading for the fodder cocoons,’ Jelindel said.
The bamboo cage grounded abruptly and the gate was yanked open. The occupants stepped out on to a wooden platform that was a hundred yards across. On the other side a dozen warriors stood to attention. Their eerily still poise seemed almost inhuman, as if they had dispensed with breathing altogether.
Following their gaze, Retok said, ‘The Undying. Pray you do not join their ranks.’
‘Hie, they don’t look so tough,’ Zimak said. ‘Do we have to fight them one at a time or all at once?’
Retok’s lips curled into a tight smile.
One of the Undying stepped forward. The other man that had been in the cage with them was handed a sword and shoved onto the battle quadrant, a cordoned off forty foot square area in the middle of the platform. The man went immediately into a fighting stance but it did him little good. The Undying moved with reflexes that were unbelievably fast. In seconds, he was so much twitching meat on the platform, gushing blood.
‘They move pretty fast,’ Zimak said clinically.
‘The Kindred have a power that is not unlike that of the dragon’s magic. It binds the Undying together.’ Retok would say no more. He was given a sword and pushed into the square by two slaves. The same Undying soldier met him and the warriors launched into a fierce sword battle. Retok proved to be a master swordsman, but with his withered leg he could barely hold his own against the phenomenal speed of his opponent.
Suddenly, he flung away his sword and stood panting before the Undying. The other paused, as if noting this. He saluted Retok then decapitated him cleanly and swiftly.
Jelindel looked away, disheartened. Then it was Daretor’s turn. He took the sword given him and weighed it in his hand, judging its balance. He flashed Jelindel a quick smile. Few, if any, ordinary mortals could best Daretor at the sword. Or, for that matter, Jelindel and Zimak. Yet Retok’s words of caution and his bloody demise had unnerved them.
Daretor stepped into the square. A new Undying broke ranks and marched forward to face him. Daretor tensed as his opponent drew near, for what approached was clearly a corpse; one animated by the uncanny magic of the Kindred. Instead of muscle and sinew, the body before him was knit together by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of spiderlings linked together like a living mailshirt. It emitted a low, insect-like keening.
Daretor stared at the crawling, shifting monstrosity, noting that the eyes were human enough.
‘Are you alive?’ he asked.
‘I am alive in a sense,’ said the Undying in a rasping voice. ‘You are new?’
Daretor nodded. The other almost shrugged its spider-controlled shoulders. The gesture was grotesquely human. ‘If you equal or defeat me, you will be colonised. The Kindred will lay their eggs in you and the newborn Kindred will devour you slowly from within, replacing your muscles and sinews. You will become as me. An elite warrior.’
‘Can you be killed?’ asked Daretor.
‘To die forever? That is what I pray for.’ He raised his sword in a gladiatorial salute. Daretor did likewise, although revulsion shivered through him.
The Undying slashed with lightning speed. Daretor nearly lost all in that first second but he managed to block the deadly cut, and immediately moved in under the other’s guard to thrust him through the chest. The Undying staggered back as a collective gasp went up from the assembled onlookers. It seemed that few ever managed to make contact with an Undying.
The thrust had little lasting effect. The Undying soldier recovered and came back like a charging bull, slashing hard. Daretor blocked, parried, drove forward again. The blades flashed with blurring speed, almost invisible to the human eye.
Jelindel anxiously bit her lower lip. Even Zimak became uneasy as the duel continued. The moves were so fast it was difficult to make out what was happening. Only the rapid clanging sound of steel on steel told the full story.
‘Do something,’ Zimak urged Jelindel.
She shook her head. ‘Not yet. Wait.’
The Undying, barely breathing, stood back. Through slightly parted lips he said, ‘You fight well. Do not fight too well.’
‘Can you be defeated?’ Daretor reiterated, panting heavily.
‘I can, but no more than that can I say.’
Daretor swung suddenly, severing the Undying’s sword arm. The Undying snap-rolled aside and snatched up the sword with his other hand. He was once again on his feet, closing for battle. The technique happened in an eye blink.
Spiderlings scuttled across the platform and returned to their host, seemingly revitalising him.
Daretor feinted, fell back, switched sword arms, and in one clean move sliced off the head of the Undying.
A ripple of disbelief ran through the gathered Undying.
Zimak winced.
The body went into a crouch, swung wildly at Daretor, then against all reason shed its living skin as it collapsed.
Thousands of spiderlings dropped from the corpse like a spilt bag of marbles and scuttled across to the ranks of the other Undying, where they swarmed into other bodies, taking up residence within.
Meanwhile, Daretor’s opponent sagged into a carcass of parchment-dry flesh and bone.
At that moment the throaty notes of a shell horn sounded. All heads snapped up. Spiders scrambled for the trees, crashing upward through foliage and branches, scrabbling for the canopy. A sickening stench floated down, making everyone cough.
Jelindel grabbed a slave by the arm. ‘What’s happening?’
‘We are being attacked. We must go to our battle stations at once,’ the slave screeched, clearly terrified.
Zimak took over from Jelindel and held th
e slave in a wrist lock. ‘By Black Quell’s beard what is that awful stench?’
The slave nearly swooned such was his fear.
‘The smell?’ Zimak asked patiently. ‘The Kindred are secreting their plumes and taking flight. They will not stay among the trees during an attack. To your battle stations!’ the slave screamed.
Zimak pushed the slave from him. In the scant moments it took Zimak to interrogate the slave, the platform had emptied, save an Undying who had silently crept up on them and stood guard.
‘I never did like heights,’ Jelindel said. ‘Daretor?’
The swordsman threw his sword to her. She caught it, and in the same motion, sliced upwards. The Undying guard brought his own sword around and met her attack with a resounding clash. The moment that Jelindel staggered back, Zimak swept up Retok’s fallen sword and swung with all his might.
The Undying’s head hung in the air for a split second as though in shock, then fell. Its body followed seconds later. Within seconds the spiderlings abandoned their host and, with no ready host available, milled around in confusion.
The trio made for the edge of the platform and peered over. The ground, though clad in murky shifting shadows, was only a hundred feet below. They quickly located three draglines hanging from the platform. Tying them together gave them a reach short of the forest floor.
Jelindel pulled the knots taut, testing their strength. ‘It will have to do.’
Already they could hear the battle sounds approaching. Daretor tied off the makeshift rope and dropped the end over the side. One by one they climbed down, hand over hand, and looping the hardened silk between their ankles and feet. It was tiring and dangerous work; their sweaty palms made their grip slippery. Had it not been for the stickiness of the draglines they would have lost their hold and plummeted to their deaths. Once, Jelindel started to fall but Daretor snagged her wrist and held on till she regained her grip on the rope.
Shortly they were on the ground, breathing heavily, and listening to the battle noise. The air was alive with the sound of frenzied chittering. Without a word, they moved in the opposite direction, ploughing through deep leaf mould that slowed their passage on the one hand, and dampened the noise of their passing on the other.
Before long they entered a section of the forest where the trees were knitted together by impenetrable spiny gorse. They stood more than twenty feet high and seemed to form walls through which rough paths ran.
The three made use of the paths and picked up the pace, but it wasn’t long before the reality dawned on them.
‘It’s a maze,’ said Jelindel, plucking a brownish swatch from one of the thorns. The kid leather clearly came from her own tunic.
‘We’re going in circles,’ Daretor confirmed. ‘Retok warned us of ground defences.’
Zimak glanced apprehensively at the dark thorn maze. ‘What do we do now?’ A sudden noise made them stop and listen. It was the sound of a creature breathing, along with something else … like a large body being dragged through the mulch.
‘If we’re going to be lost,’ Zimak answered himself, ‘I think I’d rather be in another part of the maze.’
‘For once we agree on something,’ said Daretor, keeping his voice down.
‘You don’t suppose the Kindred have some ground-dwelling cousins, do you?’ asked Jelindel.
Zimak scowled. ‘You can keep your imagination to yourself.’
‘Let’s move, then,’ she said. ‘Whatever happens, Osric will be looking for us. S’cressling might also sense the dragonsight if she’s close.’
‘Let’s hope she senses it in time,’ said Daretor.
‘Can’t you use that thing? Maybe it could show us the way out,’ Zimak said.
‘Zimak is right,’ said Daretor.
‘I can try,’ Jelindel said, ‘but right now I think we should stay on the move, and try to keep a straight line. We need to find a hill or a clearing.’
With Daretor leading, they pushed on cautiously. Zimak picked up the rear, while Jelindel carefully examined the dragonsight, running her fingers across its multifaceted surface and murmuring soft spells that sounded like prayers.
The trio had been moving for almost an hour when they heard the noise again, startlingly close. They were moving through rank brambles and weeds when the noise burst on them. Something charged from the other side of a thorn wall. It nearly broke through, and they glimpsed a vicious set of mandibles and the front part of a spider that was the size of a cow. It tore frenziedly at the wall, trying to gore them.
Daretor struck down with his sword, cleaving the creature’s skull. They didn’t wait to see if there were any more. Heedless of the thorns snatching them, they hurried on, putting as much distance behind them as possible.
Breathless, they eventually stumbled to a halt, hands on knees, trying to get their breath.
Jelindel gasped a few words. ‘I felt it!’ she said. When she had her breathing under control, she explained that moments before the attack she had felt a kind of tug inside the dragonsight, as if it were indicating the direction from which the attack was about to come. And before that, she had noticed that every time they reached a crossing or a fork in the way she had felt a similar, but fainter, tug that she had dismissed as some quirk of the gemstone.
‘What are you saying?’ asked Daretor.
‘I think it’s trying to tell us how to get out of here.’
‘Why would it do that?’ asked Zimak. ‘It’s done nothing for us so far.’
Jelindel had thought about that. ‘Maybe it wants to go home as much as we do. I say we try it. We have nothing to lose.’
From that point on whenever they came to an intersection of gorse corridors or a fork, Jelindel gestured either left or right, or straight ahead. Daretor forged down the path indicated.
Shortly they had left the maze and re-entered the forest proper. The dark walls loomed behind. Exiting the maze, however, must have triggered an alarm.
Suddenly the ground quivered on all sides, then bulged upward; arms appeared, then bodies. With a rasping sound half a dozen figures rose out of the ground like salmon bursting from water.
The creatures seemed to be made of the earth itself except that they were accoutred with scimitars and sharp curving daggers. The Q’zarans dropped into fighting stances, back to back, as the golems closed in with unsheathed swords.
Jelindel muttered a binding spell and sent it arcing toward the vanguard. Nothing happened.
‘They’re using the spider magic. I can’t stop them,’ she said helplessly.
The two sides clashed, broadsword upon scimitar. The sound echoed hollowly beneath the boughs of the forest. Daretor quickly sliced one of the creatures in half. Just as quickly it reformed, the dirt from which it was made flowing back in to fill the cut and rejoin the severed halves.
Battling for their lives, Jelindel and Zimak were discovering the same thing. The three Q’zarans were far better fighters than their adversaries. Only humans bleed when cut, and eventually tire. There could be only one outcome to a fight such as this. It would just take time.
As they hacked and hewed and slashed and parried, Jelindel tried every kind of spell she could call to mind, but nothing came to their rescue. Zimak chopped the legs out from under one of the golems. Though it grunted as if in pain, and toppled to the ground, it was back on its feet within seconds, sword swinging viciously.
‘We can’t keep this up,’ wheezed Daretor.
‘The dragonsight, Jelindel,’ Zimak cried. ‘It’s built on dragon magic. Try something!’
Jelindel pulled out the talisman. At the very sight of it, the earthen creatures fell back, recognising its innate power. At the same time they seemed to know, intuitively perhaps, that it could not be used against them … at least not by the mortals. They renewed their attack.
‘It won’t work,’ Jelindel said. ‘I don’t know how to use it.’ She stumbled, rolling to one side as a sword pierced the ground beside her head.
�
��Then in White Quell’s name, let’s get out of here,’ said Zimak. Like the others, he had just heard distant sounds high in the trees; that of large bodies moving at speed through the upper canopy.
An idea occurred to Jelindel. ‘Zimak is right. Follow me.’
They broke out of the encirclement and fought a rear-guard action beneath the trees, always maintaining as steady a pace as the relentless onslaught from behind allowed. In this fashion they progressed several hundred yards.
Suddenly Zimak tripped and went down. Instantly, his two attackers leapt towards him. He scrambled away furiously, tossing up so much mulch in his fright that it nearly obscured all sight. Then he hit a fallen log and came to a groaning stop.
His two pursuers raised their swords high for the kill, barrelling towards him. Jelindel cried out and even Daretor winced at the imminent and unpreventable kill. Just as the two earth creatures reached Zimak they started to come apart, ploughing back into the earth. Seconds later, they were all gone.
Daretor and Zimak stared in amazement.
‘What just happened?’ asked Daretor. He noted that Jelindel did not seem surprised. ‘You expected this?’
She nodded, trying to get back her breath.
‘Zimak gave me the idea,’ she said. ‘When the dragonsight failed, I realised that this kind of protective magic operates within boundaries. Once you cross the boundary line it no longer works. I just didn’t know how far we’d have to go.’
Daretor picked up a stick and drew a line in the ground a few inches from his feet. Hacking a piece of vine from a tree he collected another stick and made a cross.
Zimak frowned. ‘What are you doing?’
Daretor rammed the inverted cross into the ground. ‘Leaving a signpost. This is one line unsuspecting wayfarers shouldn’t cross and one that escaping slaves should.’
At that point the circlets around their necks lost their shimmer and unthreaded.
Daretor ripped the circlet from around his neck and threw it across the clearing. ‘That’s one piece of jewellery that I’ll never miss.’
