The Court of the Spider Queen Read online

CHAPTER TWO: WHAT BIG EYES

  The same dense, unyielding layer of webbing that bound his body to the earthen wall was the same sort of dense, unyielding webbing that held his gun-toting arm splayed out and pinned to one side. This meant the electric torch was all but muffled, and the spouts of flame he was still able to produce from the Dragon Breather™ attachment mounted on Marybelle only managed to roll across the empty face of the wall and did little more than illuminate the room in strobe-like bursts.

  It might seem an insignificant action until one considered, much like the Captain did, that otherwise Ghost-Tongue would be fighting the giant spider blind. So the Captain continued to squeeze the trigger in short bursts so as to not melt the already glowing nozzle but continuously enough that Ghost-Tongue and his flimsy spear could keep tabs on the monstrous arachnid.

  It became sort of a dance. The Anasazi would poke, probe, and jab then shift a few steps in one direction. The spider, easily the size of a pony, would round the opposite way, also lashing out with its two front legs. Back and forth, side to side, this went on in the near darkness of what was proving to be a much larger chamber than the one from which they had just come. There were no hieroglyphs here but that vein of crystal still ran the length of the ceiling. This Tripp was able to notice in the spare moments he dared look away from the perilous duel in which his best friend was presently participating.

  “Stay close to me,” Tripp demanded. “Stay near the light.”

  “I’m trying,” Ghost-Tongue replied, arcing the bony spearhead up over his head and then down toward the spider’s many eyes. These, he thought, might prove its weakness.

  “Watch out for those legs,” the Captain noted.

  “Which ones?” Ghost-Tongue moaned.

  “I think the ones in the front might be your biggest concern,” said the Captain, “but then again, he might not do very well without the ones near his hind end. That’s how he got me.”

  “He got you with his backside?”

  “Yes, that’s where the silk glands… Listen, there’s no time for a lesson in arachnid anatomy, old boy! Stay in the light and see if you can’t take a swipe or two at this webbing while you’re good and close to me.”

  Ghost-Tongue took a stab and grimaced as the bone point of his spear glanced off the hard carapace of the spider’s head. The Captain might be on to something. Combined they would have eight limbs as well and at the present pace the spider would eventually strike the same sort of blow but would not find a dense exoskeleton to deflect its attack.

  So when Ghost-Tongue took his three brisk steps to the right, expecting the spider to follow left, he also angled his steps slightly backward, nearer to the wall and the Captain behind him. He did so again, when he took two or three brisk steps to his left, moving the spider to the right and farther from the Captain. He choked down on the shaft of his spear in his right hand which he held forward, extending its length as it were and thus allowed even more distance between himself and the spider. Then with his left hand, he retrieved the small flint knife from his hair-woven belt. If he could time this right, they might have a chance.

  To the right he danced again, each step angled slightly back until he was less than a yard from the wall. With a jab and a deflection swipe, Ghost-Tongue danced left again but without stepping backward this time. He couldn’t put his back to the wall or it wouldn’t work. So he stepped quickly and directly left, forcing the spider to skitter quickly to his right. With its legs pulled under itself in mid-sidestep, Ghost-Tongue took a chance, spun and slashed at the webbing holding the captain to the wall.

  “Attaboy!” hollered the Captain.

  A solid slash appeared across the face of the webbing but the brave Indian did not have time to examine his work before he turned to face the recovered monster. All eight eyes were on him, so he pounced forward, feigning attack and driving the spider back defensively, then quickly hopped back to stand just before the Captain Tripp.

  He spun. Another slash ripped away at the thick cords of spider silk. He spun again and jabbed with the spear. But the spider was sick of it. It scrambled forward with its hind six legs. Its forward limbs were held up aggressively, prepared to come down on him so that its mighty mandibles could scissor his head from his neck.

  Flinging his right arm back and loosening his grip but for half a second, Ghost-Tongue choked up on the shaft and then shoved the spear back up at the raised and exposed spider. The bone spearhead slid neatly between two plates in its undercarriage, just below its pincers. The slight inkling of wetness glistened as the weight of the thing came down on him. The shaft of the spear was bent and bowing, soon to snap even as Ghost-Tongue fell to his back, the giant spider heaving down on him.

  Then the prone Indian thought, how can I see this so clearly? I can see every feature of the spider and the walls behind it. I can even see that vein of crystal streaking out of sight. The electric torch!

  With the Captain’s arms and a large swath of his torso free from the webs, Marybelle shined down on the monstrous arachnid like some heavenly beacon and then, not a second later, she unleashed pure Hell.

  A barrage of Gatling fire ripped through the air and then the spider. Chunks of the beast vanished in rapid succession, as globs of transparent blood splattered in every direction. Perforated and shredded into a sudden demise, the Captain continued to fire long after it fell away to one side. It was Ghost-Tongue’s passive voice saying, “He’s done for, Cap’n,” that finally silenced Marybelle.

  Somewhere behind the yellow light of the electric torch, his smile gleamed like a crescent moon. “Good work, Jobi. Hope you didn’t break your pig-sticker.”

  “All in one piece, Cap’n,” Ghost-Tongue answered, rising to his feet. Amidst the rustling of an escape from webbing, the Indian could hear the slight whir of the Captain’s goggles. He was certain this meant the unrelenting white man had already started assessing the situation and making plans to move onward.

  “You know,” said Ghost-Tongue, “this may be a nest. There could be many more.”

  “Your point?” Captain Tripp responded. Turning to face his friend and cohort, Ghost-Tongue could see that the Captain was not actually looking for the next door. He was instead very focused on the webbing he still held in his hand. “This is what we came here for.”

  “Think it will work?”

  “I do,” said the Captain. Then his head snapped toward the spider. “Quick!” he declared. “We need to get that gland out and into one of my pockets before it becomes necrotic.”

  The pockets to which the Captain was referring were Vague Enterprise’s very own Portable Transmundane Pockets of Quasi-Reality ™, which by all accounts were anything but pockets. They were more like small portals into their own miniature realm that Ghost-Tongue would call a Spirit World but which Captain Tripp was fond of calling an extra dimension or Transmundane Realm or Confined Astral Zone or really one of a hundred other bastardizations of the English language. Just so long as it sounded well-scientific and managed to confuse the average layperson, the Captain was satisfied.

  “Awful convenient of the bugger to flip himself over when he died,” the Captain remarked, stepping over and stabbing into the creature’s abdomen. “Good thing Marybelle saw fit to aim true. Doesn’t look like I damaged the aft section at all.”

  Ghost-Tongue looked around in the darkness left as the Captain focused on his prize. He chewed his lip a moment and then admitted to the Captain, “This doesn’t feel right.”

  “What do you mean, old boy? More pessimism?”

  “This is too easy,” the spindly Indian replied. “When have we ever gotten what we wanted with such little struggle?”

  “Easy?” Tripp scoffed. “Look at the size of this damned bug!”

  It was Ghost-Tongue’s turn to scoff. “It was just one of them. There would need to be hundreds of them for it to be one of your grand escapades.”

  “Would you rather we were hovering near death?” asked the Captain.

/>   He had just shoved the hideous mound of spider silk glands and spinnerets into one of the transmundane pockets when he got his reply. It did not come from Ghost-Tongue.

  “Yes,” said the eight-eyed woman standing in the doorway. “Yes, we would.”

  She was not alone.