Curse of the Spider King (28 page)

Women?
The timid Elves from up ahead shrieked and charged into battle—the children, the old-timers, too.
This is impossible!
Cathar's mind raced through the succession of events, the carefully crafted ambush, and well-executed attack. He looked more closely at the Elves. Dresses, smocks, robes, plain clothing, and yet . . . their athletic build and agile movements? The Elf children looked strange, their faces expressionless, their limbs swinging limply at their sides. One of the Elf soldiers leaned down and incredulously grabbed the head of an Elf child and . . . pulled it off, revealing a large, round quiver full of arrows. “Not a child at all!” Cathar snarled. “What is—?” A grappling hook fell upon his spider's longest midleg on his right.

Another wrapped around its left foreleg.

“No! No!” Cathar growled.

His battle axe was out in a flash, and he whaled on the Elven rope. It took seven, eight, nine powerful cuts before the cable broke. The same with the other. And more hooks came flying from the trees. These were no peaceful townsfolk!

Even as he severed another cord from his spider's leg, Cathar felt pieces of a puzzle fitting together in his mind.
Why would these flet soldiers be
defending the north gate dressed as common-folk, mimicking women and children?

Thoughts flew through his head with every swing of his axe, as he tried to piece everything together.
They drew us away, that's what they did
. . . to keep us from wiping them out. But drew us away from where? Where is the
remnant of Berinfell? Not the South Gate. We only just left Sentinel Garden. Not
east . . . not with our forces continuing to pour in through the Cliff Gate. West? The
Forest Gate?

Cathar knew the Drefids had taken out the Seven Lords and left the Great Hall in smoking ruins. But then . . . they pulled out. They left the Great Hall. The full picture became clear, at last.

Cathar raked his clawed hand across his chest. “Trickery!” he yelled to his soldiers. “Out of this deathtrap, Gwar! Retreat to the road!”

There were far fewer soldiers left to hear the command, but Kreegan and Skolch, both now on foot, followed their overlord out of the tree gate. Only two Warspiders emerged unscathed. What was left of their force bounded down the steps to the road. As he spurred his spider toward the Drefid high commander, Cathar loosed three blasts on his war horn.

A Warspider barreled over the top of Travin as he lay near the bottom of the stairs. He'd barely managed to turn his body enough to avoid being crushed by a spider foot. Then he lay still again.
That was close!
Travin thought.

He had watched three groups of the enemy enter the tree gate. Several tense moments later, a throng of Gwar and two Warspiders raced back out and down the stairs. A war horn sounded three times.

“They know,” Travin said, first to himself. Since he no longer needed to play dead, he yanked the half arrow shaft from his armor and yelled so all could hear, “They know! They know! Now, flet soldiers, NOW!!”

25

Fire of the Dead

C
athar halted his Warspider along the road. He and Tyrith, the Drefid high commander, sat upon their spider-mounts with just a few yards between them. Neither spoke, as they tried to understand what was happening.

Dead Elves in the road, on the stairs, and in the gutter . . . they began to stir. Bodies strewn in piles began to untangle. Figures—battered and bloody, sprawled awkwardly—rose up.

“We have been deceived!” Cathar practically spat at the high commander.

“The Great Hall,” said Tyrith, his voice high and agitated.

Cathar growled. “YES, the Great Hall! Just as I told you. We left it unwatched for too long. And now, we have missed them!”

“Mind your words, Gwar!” Tyrith seethed. “We may catch them up yet.”

Cathar growled and, as he drove his Warspider at the Elves, he thought of the warriors of Berinfell with a kind of grudging respect. It had been a brilliant ploy—diverting the Spider King's forces while the citizens of Berinfell escaped.
Still, it was likely all for naught,
thought Cathar,
for no matter
where the Elves might hide, I will hunt them down.

Travin removed his spear from the thorax of a now lifeless Warspider. He felt a type of grim satisfaction, knowing that his efforts and the efforts of his flet soldiers had gouged out a fifth of the Spider King's invading force, and more importantly their diversion had bought his nation precious time to escape.

But they could do no more.

The bulk of the invading force had almost immediately withdrawn back south, and from there would no doubt march west to the Great Hall. They had left behind some four hundred Gwar. There were no more tricks, no more cards to play, and slowly, the outnumbered Elves were losing by attrition. It chafed Travin to the core to think of fleeing from battle. But Grimwarden himself had urged Travin to escape any way possible once the enemy had discovered the ruse.

Travin could not hesitate. The Gwar were advancing, threatening to flank them and, Travin guessed, tighten around them like a noose.
. . . Seek
the trees and by the hidden ways, at last enter Nightwish Cavern. Whatever you
accomplish, do not pursue the enemy back here.

Travin knew the hidden ways, but few of his soldiers did. They'd need a rally point, somewhere in the deep forest. Travin could think of just one place the enemy would not know. “Hearken to me!” Travin yelled. “Make for the Moonlit Crown! All of Berinfell's faithful, pass the word: ‘Make for Moonlit Crown!'”

He roared until he was hoarse, hoping his soldiers would hear him over the chaotic battle. Dodging Gwar hammers and axes at every turn, he reached every Elf he could find and sounded the retreat. As Travin fled the battle, exhaustion and emotion overtook him. His beloved nation of Elves was on the brink of extinction.

Guardmaster Grimwarden stood with his back to the broken-out stained glass windows and watched the train of Elves moving across the floor of the Great Hall. Clearly Travin and Vendar had done their job. Five thousand Elves had escaped to the underground, but . . . he shook his head.
We need more time
.

A breeze from the quiet forest exaggerated the chill Grimwarden felt sliding along his spine as he watched a young scout named Fydelf entering the chamber. Fydelf looked from face to face before spotting Grimwarden. The scout ran to his commander.

“They are coming,” Fydelf said.

“How far out?”

“Five miles, no more,” Fydelf replied. “They move as if the Spider King himself drives them here.”

Their feet are swift to shed blood
, thought Grimwarden, words from the holy scroll kindling with new meaning. “We must hold them off still,” he said.

“But how, sir?” Fydelf asked. “They bring many Warspiders. They will come through the windows once more. We have no barrier to hold them out, no weapon to deter them, no army to withstand them.”

No barrier . . . no weapon . . . no army . . .

Key variables ricocheted aimlessly in Grimwarden's mind before at last coming together. He knew he had to act immediately.

“Stay here,” he ordered Fydelf. “Do what you can to hurry our people into the tunnel.”

“Wait, where are you going, Guardmaster?”

“To pick a fight with an irritating pack of arachnids.”

Grimwarden ran for the main entrance to the Great Hall. He called on any flet soldier or able-bodied Elf he found along the way. He assembled the group at the mouth of a side passage near the main entrance.

“You,” he spoke to three Elves, “bring torches. We're going to need them on the roof directly above us. And I want the five of you—no, make that the seven of you to the refractory. I want every jar of oil you can find. Every scrap of lard. Meet us above in twenty minutes. No more, or all is lost. Do you understand?”

Tentative nods from the soldiers. Fearful stares from the townsfolk.

“Now GO!!”

The ten Elves scattered to their tasks, and Grimwarden turned to the others. “Follow me,” he said, and he continued to speak as he led them back into the Great Hall. “The rest of you I chose because you look more or less strong. I just hope you don't mind getting your hands dirty.”

“Master Grimwarden?” one of the Elves inquired with a raised eyebrow.

The Guardmaster smiled mirthlessly. “The only thing spiders hate worse than fire is water. Unfortunately, I can't make it rain. But I have plenty to burn.”

The Spider King's army swarmed the streets, the walls, and the fortresses of western Berinfell like
cinder ants
on the carcass of a dead beast. Tyrith, the Drefid high commander, made certain that the Elves' so-called
Great Hall
was surrounded. And Tyrith himself led the bulk of his Gwar battalions onto the building's vast roof. There they came to an abrupt halt.

“I don't like this,” Tyrith said, his voice the hiss of escaping steam. The large sockets of his eyes became mere slits as he tried to identify the strange mounds piled up along the far edge of the roof. It was impossible to tell. A half-dozen torches forty yards away ruined his night vision for anything on the other half of the roof. Unwilling to investigate himself, Tyrith called on three of his Gwar soldiers. “Mundruk, Jeer, Raspik, find out what that is.”

“Yes, sir!” The three Gwar loosed their axes, spikes, and hammers, then lumbered forward.

Forty paces later, they stopped abruptly. “There is a smell,” Raspik called back over his shoulder.

“What sort of smell?” demanded Tyrith.

“A horrid smell,” said Raspik.

“Worse than the sewage river in Vesper Crag!” cried Mundruk.

“Aye,” said Jeer. “But there's somethin' else . . . it burns my eyes.”

There was a momentary pause. Then the three Gwar moved past the torch stands.

“By the Spider King's beard!” Mundruk exclaimed.

“There are bodies, sir,” Raspik said over his shoulder. “Hundreds of our countrymen.”