As easy as that. Ready to be run back to the Galla camp.
Kern had dropped the provisions sack he’d carried, but not his bedroll. One of the Galla clansmen had recovered it. And Daol’s. Then they set off, the Gaudic clansmen being dragged between two of the burly men at first, until understanding that resistance would not to do much more than get them throttled, mayhap killed.
Their keepers set a hard pace, often steering around softer, easier ground and drifts of old snow for rocky paths and hardscrabble. The reason was clear at once to Kern. Making it hard to track them, even should the others discover signs atop the cliff. He tried to steer his way through a snowdrift, once, and was yanked off his feet for the attempt. After that, he let himself be guided, conserving what strength he could. Making plans, and usually discarding them just as quickly. Keeping an eye on Daol, who had a pale, sickly look to him. Worried about putting one foot in front of the other without falling as they ran.
Two leagues? Nay more than three, certainly, before the hunters slowed to a simple trot. Eyes searching the nearby peaks, and tree line. Listening to the far-off screeching of the wind tearing through the mountains.
The screeching . . . ?
Spiders! Somewhere close.
He and Daol eyed each other warily, in no hurry to be staked out as bait for the loathsome creatures, or whatever the Galla had in mind. Something, obviously, as the small band turned away from their original run to chase after the sounds. Kern began to work the rope around his wrists again. Pulling them taut and working some slack into the simple binding. The rusty screeches grew louder, fast, until the horrible sound felt as if it were driving a hot blade through Kern’s ears and into his brain. Terrible, desperate calls that sounded as if a spider was dying just the other side of a short ridge.
And the smell! Kern began to breathe shallow and short. Vomiting while chomping on a leather bit would not be pleasant. He could easily drown in his own bile if the Galla did not remove the gag.
But then they were on top of the ridge, looking down, and Kern forgot the smell or his worries for being sacrificed in some primitive fashion to the mountain beasts.
Daol sank to his knees, seemingly grateful for the rest. Kern could only stand and watch.
Below, another half dozen men and women with top-knots pulling their hair up had one of the mottled gray creatures on its back. Four of them had mancatcher weapons, only now Kern saw their real use with each loop having snagged one of the spider’s limbs, used to haul back on the leg to prevent much if any movement. The creature’s four other legs had already been restrained, tied with the thin white cord and staked back with sharp poles.
The Galla had not been raiding along the pass. Not originally. They had been hunting the spiders! Had likely been in position, moving up on the creature that had nested on the rock face, as Daol, then Ehmish charged right into the trapping web.
The why of it, Kern observed below. One man with a large, swollen, leather flask crouched near the spider’s head. An arm’s length away from its clacking, ebony mandibles. It wasn’t clear, exactly, but he seemed to be leaning in to let the spider strike at the flask, chewing on it the way the one spider had savaged Daol’s quiver. Pumping the harmless skin full of poison.
One of the women had an equally unpleasant duty, standing at the other end and using a short pole or club to tickle at the creature’s underside. She placed a booted foot up on the bloated abdomen, leaned in, and scratched the end of the wood among the coarse hairs and flaking, mottled skin.
Suddenly, with a shout, she straightened up, drawing a line of viscous webbing from the spider’s spinnerets. Pulling a small flask from her belt, she dribbled something over the long strand, let it sit a moment, then rolled the webbing around the end of the pole like woolen yarn.
When the pole had been tightened down near the underbelly again, she pulled a new, long thread of webbing out as the spider’s abdomen pulsed. More dribbles. Another moment winding the webbing around the end of her catch.
He was finished well before she, and moved around to trade off and help wind greater and greater lengths of webbing from the producing spinnerets. As they did, the strands thickened, looked to be less viscous, and the spider actually quieted as it was robbed of its precious cargo.
When they were done, Kern expected a finishing blow directly through the underside of its head. But the Galla clansmen simple unhooked the tie-down ropes, relying on their catching poles for the moment, and, with a coordinated move, they all released the far end of the catch ropes so that the thin, strong cord pulled through the hollow pole and slipped from the spider’s legs.
They backed away quickly, carefully, but the giant nightmare had had enough for one day. Curling and rolling back to its feet, it stood up on its hind legs and waved four limbs in the air in a kind of empty challenge. Then, with a final, ear-curling shriek, it scrambled down a dry wash, toward a darkened hole, where it tucked itself in and disappeared.