Book: 4

  Chapter 12

  Hangin’ Round

  Fear, horror and trouser soiling panic passed over the man’s face, as he slowly rotated in my grasp. Soon, strands of silvery silk enshrouded his terrified, paralyzed face, as he joined so many of his companions in my larder.

  My latest catch swayed slightly in his silk cocoon, as the last few muscle twitches he was capable of ended. Venom is just the best thing ever… speaking from the perspective of a highly venomous predator. Differences in perspective often spark lively debates, but in this case, my companions were unable to formulate any counter arguments, since they were paralyzed and dangling from the rafters of the cold, dark, dismal castle against the mountainside.

  A wide, deep fissure lay deep in the mountain, a huge chamber that had never seen the light of day and ran down deep into the earth far below. Bridges and causeways of dusty, ancient stonework spanned the abyss here and there, untrodden by men in centuries.

  Lord Liam’s ancestors had burrowed deeply into the stone and carved out vast halls and chambers… or perhaps some more ancient folk had created the network of caverns and tunnels that laced the granite mountain. Regardless of the origins of the complex network of chambers and passages, it was ideal for me and far less so for my panicked and scurrying human prey.

  The fine tufts of hair all over my body had mapped out the air flow patterns of the cave system within a few minutes, without me having to worry much about it… it was pretty unfair. My less natural senses, including my native sensitivity to etheric energies told me where the cult wizards had opened a portal in the deep caves, to let their raiders in. The gateway felt pretty stable and the dolts had even mentioned that it would stay open til mid-day; that gave me plenty of time to work.

  I may have giggled with delight at the opportunity to engage in one of my favorite hobbies; laying traps for terrified slavers in the dark.

  The sound of armored boots carried well down the stone halls and the scent of fear lured me in, exciting my natural prey drives in ways that felt just a little too good. I left no trace when I snatched them, one after another in the dark; the men just vanished, from the raider’s perspective...

  Unseen, I scuttled across and among rafters and support beams, lurked in dark corners and generally haunted the poor idiots up and down the dark, chilly cave system.

  /

  It had taken the slavers a while to realize that their comrades weren’t out looting, lost or distracted by a captured maid; they were being hunted in the dark, seemingly abandoned halls. The hunters were being hunted by something as yet unseen and unheard, by even the keenest ears and eyes in the party.

  It had taken almost everything he had to get the remaining fighters into a cavern, where they could watch each other’s backs.

  “Stay together, you fools! Whatever it is, it only takes strays!” Jake barked at his team of idiots and brigands. The slave trade didn’t have rigorous standards and none of these clowns were particularly sharp, disciplined or brave. Worse yet, the ad hoc ‘team’ assembled for this job had no cohesion, beyond the three individual raid parties hired for the contract.

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  Jake watched helplessly as the Hubert brothers slipped away from the ten remaining slavers, vanishing down a side passage in silence. Less silent was the short, sharp scream that started and ended a few seconds after they vanished. Wallace Hubert came scrambling back down the passage alone, silent terror in his eyes as he sought to rejoin the dubious safety of the dwindling group reaching out his hands imploring the aid of his comrades.

  Without sign or sound, Wallace halted a few yards from the team, as if brought up short by a chain around his neck. Grotesquely, he lifted off the ground, struggling and clawing at some unseen thing around his throat, as he was lifted into the shadowy, vaulted tangle of ancient support timbers and vanished from sight.

  “Too easy…” A soft, alien voice whispered from the darkness, carrying in echoes and reverberations that made it impossible to locate. It sounded slightly musical and artificial, as if produced by an instrument, rather than a human throat, or anything like one. “How ever will I manage to eat you all?”

  As one being, the scant fistful of slavers turned and scattered into the complex, darkened halls under the mountain, irretrievably lost and stricken with fear.

  /

  Jake was one of the last to beat feet, scrambling for the nearest side passage and praying to the light that his number wouldn’t come up in those dank, dark halls, lit by only the glowstone set in his helmet and those of his comrades. Standard issue glowstones only cast about twelve feet of decent light, so Jake had no chance to stop, when the faint glimmer of silvery web shone before him.

  Steel strong spider webs enfolded him entirely, as he dashed into a tangled cloud of messy webbing, strung through with strands of braided cable under awful tension.

  In the brief instant in which he realized he’d been played and entrapped, the slaver leader found himself snatched from the ground and dragged into a high, underground crevasse. Revealed by the swaying lights of their glowstones, many of his comrades dangled there, weakly struggling or unmoving among the beams and rafters.

  Unfortunate Jake watched helplessly, through a tanged veil of silk as a gigantic spider crawled down the cavern wall and approached him, its fangs dripping with some unholy toxin.

  Pain exploded across his body, at the creature’s bite, followed by paralysis, but not numbness. The pain continued, ravaging his body from within, while he remained immobile; imprisoned in his own flesh, awake and alert. The spider crawled off, leaving him there among his comrades, a constellation of dimly glowing stars in a vast, lightless fissure in the mountain

  /

  Count Liam strolled through the town, nodding at his citizens and whistling one of his brother’s mad songs from another world. The sweet, catchy refrain from ‘If I Was A Rich Man’ set his feet to dancing along on a fine, summer morning. The harvest looked bountiful, several dozen of the former slaves were joining his flock, filling quite a few of the empty houses in the ancient town.

  He nodded to a small patrol of the countess’ ducklings, marching through the town to the beat of a drum and fife. The young warriors in training saluted crisply and kept marching on their route through the market… which just happened to be thronged with the young ladies of the town. Some things never change.

  At the gate in the curtain wall, trooper Kevin hailed the young lord. “Count Liam… is there some work going on in the castle? I keep hearing sounds.”

  “No, all work is suspended; the place should be empty. What kind of sounds?” Liam asked warmly, hoping to soothe the shaken man a little.

  “Screams, my lord.” The young guard mumbled, seeming embarrassed. “Kinda sounded like men screaming in the distance.”

  “Oh, damn those bat-spiders!” Liam grumbled sourly. “When their webs vibrate in the wind, it sounds eerie; the sound spooked me at first too. I’ll set Audrey loose to eat them this afternoon.”

  “Are you sure… It really sounded like men’s voices.” The shaken man mumbled.

  “Don’t worry about it; there’s no one in the castle at all. When my wife and her little friends return, please inform them that we will be dining at the townhouse tonight.” The count sighed happily.

  “No one is to be allowed entry to the castle until further notice. I have to admit it… the place is a death trap.”

  /