Kern could only bite down hard on the leather roll, forcing his breathing back to normal, and look his question at the nearest of his captors. The same one who had wakened him with a few flicks of water. The red and blue dye painting a thunderbird across his face. Tribal sworls marching in a line down either side of his neck. The man’s forearms were thick with muscle, a good strength for handling the ropes, though his skin showed several of what looked like puckered burn scars.
He glanced between Kern and Daol, as if marking the difference in the two men. His feral grin showed large, wide teeth. “Nay edible.”
It was the first thing one of them had spoken to their prisoners.
And mayhap the spider wasn’t good for food. But the Galla warriors had found a use for the giant vermin regardless. Now Kern recognized how they had made rope so thin, so strong. Spider silk! And milking its poison to coat arrowheads, or the tips of spears, he guessed. He saw nothing good in the vile stench the spiders gave off when threatened, but he was willing to bet the Galla had found a use for that as well. A matter of survival, when the clan lived in the high mountains, always on winter’s doorstep, scavenging and raiding, and finding a way to use every last resource Crom had left for them.
Despite the pain and the rough treatment, Kern could not help but be impressed. Though let him find that one of his pack had been hurt at the deadfall, one he could have helped rescue, and he swore to see each one of these warriors dead, their heads up on pikes.
Until that time, he had to get these clansmen to talk to him. So he nodded down the dry wash, where the spider had crawled into its lair.
The same warrior shook his head, guessing the question. “Ne’er head down a hole a’ter one a’tem.” His clipped speech was hard to follow. Harsh and unyielding. “Tear y’up good.”
He didn’t doubt it. Not after seeing those sharp mandibles tear through Daol’s arrow case, smashing the set of shafts like they were twigs.
As if remembering that incident, Daol groaned. Enough pain was laced through it that Kern looked over, worried anew. Even after the hard run they had been forced to make, his friend should not have looked so winded. So pale. Kern felt the burn in his legs, certainly, and each deep breath helped ease the hot coals burning down in his lungs, but there was no reason Daol should not be ready for another half day’s go.
Then Daol’s eyes rolled back and he pitched forward, sprawling full length across the frozen ground.
Suspecting a decoy, the Galla warriors immediately drew their ropes taut to either side, hauling Daol to a half-sitting position and nearly choking Kern back into unconsciousness. But Daol didn’t respond at all, and their captors loosened their grip, concerned. Kern stumbled forward, all but dragging one of the brawny nomads with him, and fell to his knees beside his friend.
The younger man’s breath came in hitches and gasps. Too shallow. His skin had a waxy paleness to it that Kern had known most of his life, but was not a healthy sheen on most Cimmerians.
Kern tried to talk through the leather bit, and his concern came out in a muffled, frustrated shout. He felt a flush building on the back of his neck as his anger worked its way close to the surface.
Two of the Galla warriors dropped down next to him, and began to check Daol over, their rough hands moving remarkably fast as they searched his neck, arms, and legs. Inspecting his skin for any cuts, it seemed. Of course he had the arrow wound from Gaud, still dressed beneath a poultice.
They hiked up his kilt for a glance.
Rolled him over.
The wound slashed across his back, raw, and tinged with a dark purple bruise. It looked like nothing worse than a wide scratch, or a gouge, if an infected one.
Daol wore his buckskin cloak dropped back from his shoulders. One of the Galla smoothed the velvety buckskin out flat and pointed to the jagged tear. And that was when Kern remembered the spider, bowling Daol over, crouching over him as its poisoned mandibles slashed at his quiver, ripping it from his back and, as he saw now, slashing one tip through his cloak and skin.
Kern began shouting through his gag, leaning into the faces of the other men and snarling for their attention. Shaking his head violently when one of them pulled the knife from his belt.
He shouldered the man back, and would have struck out with his hands or feet had he not been kneeling, and bound.
Then another man elbowed Kern hard in the chest, knocking him back and away from the fallen Gaudic warrior. Kern fell hard, head slamming back into hard, unyielding earth. Sparks of pain lit off inside his head. He rocked back to one shoulder, and his gaze of cold, golden fury actually set the Galla warrior back a pace.
It took a third man planting his boot in the middle of Kern’s chest, pinning him to the ground, before the others would turn their backs on him again. Kern struggled, but was in no position to work any kind of leverage. The wind whipped up fresh, howling, and a desperate peal of thunder rolled across the mountains.