His father’s words. True to the end.
He did not fear death.
Ehmish did not even bother to consider the danger as he leaped forward, vaulting the web strands lifting up off the ground, clinging to Daol, and kicked out as hard as he could into the spider’s swollen abdomen. Throwing it off his friend. But he landed hard, on his side. His breath rushed out between clenched teeth, and he felt a sharp snag yank at the back of his head. His hair, long and straight as it fell back behind his shoulders, now tangled in a spider’s webbing.
Yelling against the pain, Ehmish tore himself off the ground, leaving long strands of dark hair and a small patch of scalp behind. Twisting about to get at his broadsword, ignoring the strands of web wrapping about his legs, he managed to get onto his side and up onto one arm in time to jab his blade right into the creature’s face. Feeling with some satisfaction the crack of carapace and cartilage. The spider’s pain-filled shriek grating through his ears and piercing his brain.
And the stench. It nearly knocked him flat again. More than spoiled eggs. There was a pungent, diseased touch to it that reminded him of a horribly decayed corpse, the kind of carrion that not even the most desperate of scavengers would approach.
By swallowing back the oily, rancid taste building at the back of his throat, Ehmish kept to his senses and kept the heavy blade between himself and the nightmarish creature. Finally, ending up in the tug-of-war contest, as Daol scrambled back and away, then Kern was apparently brushed aside to stagger back toward the bend in the trail.
It was several shallow breaths before he realized that he was alone.
The spider flailed and thrashed about, releasing his sword as it went into a series of violent convulsions. Screeching. Giving off the Crom-cursed odor that made him nearly vomit. His vision had narrowed with battle fever, focusing down on the threat to his life, but Ehmish was sound enough to hear the calls of support, of encouragement, that chased up at him from the trail behind.
A glance in their direction. He saw Reave and Desa chasing another of the gray-mottled nightmares back into the trees. Nahud’r sliced and danced around another one, much closer, his scimitar slicing shallow grooves into its flailing legs, driving it back up the side of the deadfall.
And Gard leading a charge, with Ossian and Brig Tall-Wood right behind him, running up with weapons bared and ferocious snarls twisting their faces as they rushed to save him. Save the boy.
Too late. The giant mountain spider, wounded and maddened beyond any instinct to escape, rose up on its four hind legs, screeching, waving the other four hook-shaped limbs in the air in some kind of challenge. Then it fell forward, rushing Ehmish, its long limbs scrabbling about the bloated, mottled body.
He hadn’t much strength left to fight it off. And its mandibles dripped with fresh, yellow poison.
Ehmish never flinched. In one long slash, he circled his broadsword back, up, and around. Near the top of the blade’s arc, he arched his body up as high as he could, bringing his other hand off the ground. Gripping the hilt with both hands as he put every last ounce of strength into bringing the broadsword over the top. And crashing down.
Splitting the creature’s head open.
Driving it into the rocky trail in a final, abrupt stop.
Ehmish panted shallow and uneven. Eyes open but unseeing for a moment. The world came back slowly, centered first on a burning pain. A spray of poisoned spittle had splashed along the blade, and a few drops stung against the backs of his hands.
But pain was fine. Welcome, even. It meant he was still alive.
The shouts and pounding of feet against rocky earth helped rouse him. The sharp, acid bite of the stench rolling off the dead spider nearly put him back out.
Lying full along the ground, Ehmish stared up past his outstretched arms, past the blade. He ignored the spasmic twitching of eight great legs and stared into the ruined, gaping horror of the spider’s face. Black ichor mixed with venom. A reddish pus oozed out of the top of a great, terrible gash he had cleft into the creature. The rancid taste in his mouth was strong, and overpowering. And he did the only thing he felt a man could do under the circumstances.
He vomited.
Then he passed out.
GARD FOEHAMMER’S WORLD still had a fine gray veil drawn across it. Just enough to dull the edges and deepen the shadows. He lived in perpetual twilight, and at times he was almost used to it.
Almost.
Sliding down off the slope which he and Desa and Ossian had climbed, hunting the spiders, he kicked through some dead skyberry brush and jumped the last drop-off. Pike held across his body for balance, he landed in a crouch beside a thin patch of crusted snow. Just behind the deadfall where the spiders had set their traps, he could see around the trail’s bend, but not the way they had originally come.