" We must abandon the city," she gasped out. " They have control of Bron now. It' s madness to stay and fight them."
" This is my city. I refuse to leave."
" Then you' ll be buried here with every other obstinate fool fighting a lost cause."
" It' s not lost," Noratumi muttered, firing the crossbow at another rider below. " It' s only a setback."
" Look out there, dammit," raged Inyx, the anger giving her strength. " Half your citizens are already dead. Maybe more. They use sticks and rocks against armored soldiers. And if they happen to prevail, can they withstand another of those magical black clouds? Or even a renewed siege?"
Noratumi said nothing. He stood, fired, cursed, reloaded, and fired again. Inyx surveyed the carnage and wanted to be sick to her stomach. Ankle- deep blood flowed in places throughout the courtyard, eventually finding storm drains to gurgle down. The dead were heaped like refuse. And everywhere the fighting continued, grey- clad against Bron citizen. And everywhere the same distressing story was apparent: Claybore' s troops triumphed, slowly, bloodily, but they triumphed.
" I won' t be slaughtered, Jacy," she said. " That was Kiska k' Adesina I fought. She wants me with a fervor that goes beyond simple hatred. Her real score to settle is with Lan, but she' s not above getting to him through me."
" I stopped her," he said in a tired voice.
" No, you didn' t stop her. Slowed her, perhaps, but never stopped. Look. She and Silvain down there are again on the attack. They lost track of me momentarily, but they' ll find me again. You can' t hold them off. Silvain possibly, Kiska k' Adesina never. An hour dead she' ll still be fighting."
The words penetrated Noratumi' s resolve. " She does not fight rationally. She is:"
" Possessed," Inyx finished for him. " If we are to defeat herand Claybore- we' ve got to get out of here, regroup, and rethink our attack. Bron is lost, Jacy," she said in a softer voice. " Lost."
He sent a bolt directly for Silvain, but the man' s dark eyes spotted the incoming death- messenger, and he batted it aside with a careless swipe of his sword. But the attack had drawn Silvain' s unwanted attention. Inyx cringed when he raised his sights to the battlements, smiled, and then called out to Kiska.
" Away, now, Jacy," urged Inyx. " They know where I am."
" This way," said Noratumi, dropping the crossbow and drawing his sword. Inyx followed the best she could, her every muscle aching and her soul weary of the killing. She knocked off one grey- clad soldier and skewered another before joining Noratumi inside a small room hidden inside the thick wall.
" What is this?" she demanded. " I won' t be trapped like a sewer rat. Not in here. There' s not enough room to even swing a sword."
He said nothing, leaning heavily against a wall. Stone grated against stone and a thick door slowly swung wide. Steps descended into darkness below.
" An escape path," he said. " With luck, others wait for us at the bottom. If not:." His eyes glazed over at the thought of being virtually the sole survivor of Bron.
Inyx didn' t need encouragement to start down the stairs. Noratumi closed the door behind, barring it with special wooden wedges. In a larger room below huddled a dozen warriors, caked in blood and scarcely better off than the grey- clads they had killed.
" Where now?"
" That' s the difficult part, Inyx," he said, barely looking at the others. " We must make our way outside, across the courtyard, and to the keep."
" No way exists for such an escape," said one of the others. " We' re trapped here. Can' t get a dozen paces, much less that far."
Inyx peered out a spyhole in the stone wall and saw that the man spoke the truth. But a plan formed in her mind, one as desperate as it was daring.
" We leave. Now. Follow me."
" Wait, Inyx," cried Noratumi, but the man saw his protest came too late. She had opened the hidden door and exposed them all to danger. Either they followed her or they all died within the walls of Bron. Jacy Noratumi was the last out, and the first to protest Inyx' s mad scheme.
" That' s death to go in there!"
A quick thrust and Inyx ran through the first soldier she came to. The next guard in the magically bored tunnel was at the other end. Feet padding softly on the stone, she ran hard to reach the other end. The wall seemed to stretch for an eternity, but Inyx found sunlight and blue sky waiting for her at the other end. A quick backhand cut eliminated the guard she found indolently waiting, not expecting any armed retreat back through the tunnel.
" The countryside is ours. Which way, Jacy?"
" Horses. We need horses or they' ll ride us down."
Inyx lifted the tip of her sword and pointed toward a crude stall nearby. Silvain and k' Adesina hadn' t wanted to enter the city without keeping sufficient horsepower in reserve to carry them to safety if the attack failed.
The small band painfully made its way down the hill to the corral. The more severely wounded were helped by the others. Inyx did a quick count. Only six of the dozen who had joined them would live. The others were doomed, even if the grey- clads didn' t overtake them.
" Let' s split up," she suggested. " Half go that way and the rest of us down the valley, toward the gap and the crossing canyon."
Noratumi started to protest the folly of dividing their forces, then saw that this was Inyx' s way of insuring that the strongest survive by sacrificing the weakest. It tore him apart inside to give the order, but the six worst wounded rode off as decoys while the remaining eight, hardly stronger, rode hell- bent for the dubious safety offered by still another range of mountains.
Even as they rode, the drumming of hooves came from Bron. The pursuit had been joined. The only question was whether or not the other party of wounded gave them enough of a lead to escape.
Inyx doubted it, even as she spurred her horse to more speed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The mountain arachnids came up the ridge, fanned out in a semicircle and blocked any possible escape. Lan Martak stood with his back against a cliff of cold, cold stone. He looked down into a raging river easily five hundred feet below. It was suicide to jump into that churning, boiling waterway without knowing how deep it was. Even if it were deep enough, the force with which he' d hit the water might be too great. The shock could kill as surely as a knife to the gut.
If he stayed, the spiders got him. Lan made an instant decision, tensed, and took two running steps forward. The third one found only five hundred feet of space beneath him.
He screamed.
He screamed and heard the whispering sounds that were all too familiar to him from long association with Krek. Hardly had the man fallen ten feet when the first of the hunting strands glued itself to his left arm. He turned and jerked, trying to escape it. A second, a third, a tenth all burned against his flesh. He fell another fifteen feet and then snapped to a halt, dangling beneath the spiders.
Helplessly, Lan felt himself being drawn back up.
The thick silvered strands of webstuff were virtually unbreakable. He sawed through one with his dagger, but the others bound him too securely. By the time a second web had parted under his furious assault, the arachnids had him on the ridge once more.
Surrounded by the dozens of spiders towering over him, he simply lay as limp as his shaking body allowed. Amber droplets sluggishly traced their way down the strands and touched his skin. He yelped in pain, then quickly bit back any further sound. The solvent released the hunting strands from his flesh.