Dave Duncan - West of January

“That’s close enough, wetlander.”

“What? Who? Wh—”

He raised his eyebrows in mockery. “I said spinster, not spinner.”

“I don’t understand!”

The hum had become melody again, faint and far off. He pointed. “Between those trees, see? No, closer.”

A man’s length before me, outlined only by faint silver spangles of dew…a giant web.

“Harp spider, wetlander. There she is, up there. See her?”

Bewildered, I looked where he pointed. I could see nothing but trailing moss and dark clutters of twigs. Then I made out a tangle of furry legs as long as my shins… I shuddered and recoiled backward. Shisisannis caught me and steadied me again.

“I’d let you go to her lover’s kiss, wetlander, if that was what you really wanted, but Ayasseshas told me to bring you whole and healthy, and her I will obey.”

“I’d have been trapped in that web?”

The aria was soaring louder and nearer again, heart-rending in its wistful glory.

“Oh, you’d have broken free. Only small animals get really caught. But her ladyship would have had her fangs in you before you did. You would not have gone far, and you would not have shaken her off.”

“But the song!” I protested, grateful that my hood hid the tears that were soaking into my beard.

“Cover your ears!”

I did that and then listened again…a faint humming, far off.

“Do that when it gets too strong,” Shisisannis said. “Now, come back and enjoy it at a safe distance. She might jump.”

With a shudder of revulsion and fear, I wrenched my feet around and rolled away from the harp spider’s web. There could be worse things than spinsters, I thought.

THE EXHAUSTED ROWERS were given little more time to rest. Shisisannis kicked a few awake. They scrambled up without a whisper of complaint and began kicking others, while Shisisannis himself draped me over his shoulder and trotted effortlessly back to the canoes. The others came running after, hastily wolfing down food on the way, laughing and joking in their eagerness to be off. I knew enough about physical overload to know how their bodies must ache. I marveled at their zeal and puzzled over its source. It certainly did not stem from fear, for the ants had never inspired such dedication and no one could have used more fear than they.

The second leg of the journey was shorter and also much hotter. Of course, climate is normally invariant, its changes too slow for men to notice, and this unnatural unpredictability troubled me. Much later I was to hear the saints talk of weather and the torus of instability, but I never truly understood how those worked. Whatever they were, we were within them, beset by unpredictable alternations of sun and storm that did nothing to calm my jangled nerves.

Sweltering within my gown, peering out from the hood, I could see no difference between one bend of the river and the next, but apparently my captors did. A shout of challenge rang out, and all at once they all rose upright on one knee in racing stance. The paddles flashed even more furiously, and the canoes themselves seemed to rise from the water and fly. The pace was brutal, inhuman torment. They could not sustain it, I thought, but they kept it up far longer than I would have believed possible, six men with two passengers in our craft, against five men in each of the others. Ours came in second, driving onto a muddy beach that apparently marked the finish line. The paddlers flopped over, lungs rasping, as the third canoe slid in at our side.

The winners attempted a cheer of derision and triumph, but they were too winded to sound convincing, and still I could see no landmark to determine why this spot on the bank was different from any other. The spinster’s lair was well concealed.

Laughing but still gasping, my captors scrambled out and pulled the canoes higher. Shisisannis untied me and bellowed: “Ing-aa?”

One of the black, woolly-haired swampmen stepped over from the winning canoe. He was decorated with beads instead of tattoos, but he looked every bit as intimidating as the snakemen, and I had met trees that would have been proud to have had sons so tall.

“You won. You can deliver the goods,” Shisisannis said offhandedly as he lifted the bag that contained Silent Lover.

The giant flashed teeth in a beam of pleasure. His great hands scooped me from the canoe as if I were a sachet of petals. He laid me over his shoulder, went up the bank in two huge bounds, and hurtled off through the woods at a long-legged sprint. With supermen like these to serve her, what possible need could the spinster have for a cripple like me?

Head down, I was jiggled and bounced. My knees enjoyed being bent forward no better than being bent backward, and I was only vaguely aware of a narrow muddy track winding through dense and fetid jungle, dark and damp. Then we emerged into sunlight. More mud squelched beneath those enormous feet, and the pace quickened. The giant came to a sudden stop and just stood. I remained dangling over his shoulder, rising and falling with every rasping breath.

“You going to put me down?” I inquired of his kidneys.

“No,” said a voice, rumbling so deep that I felt it as much as heard it.

I gripped his sweaty loins and levered myself up as well as I could, partly to ease the strain on my legs and belly, partly to look around. As far as I could determine through the slit in my hood, we were in the center of a large and very muddy compound. I saw leaf-covered huts shaped like pots, with glimpses of an encircling stockade beyond. The canoes were arriving, being carried in on the paddlers’ heads—on the double, of course. There would be no trace of our arrival left outside the settlement, therefore, except footprints in the mud, and the next shower would erase those. Shisisannis was bringing up the rear, running also, and clutching the bag that contained Silent Lover.

There were other men around. I could hear the rhythmic chant of a gang working in unison, an irregular thudding of axes, a distant bleating of livestock. I could even see a dozen or two of the inhabitants. Half of them were dark-skinned men very like my captors, striding around in spotted fur pagnes and decorated with either tattoos or strings of beads, some carrying spears. But the other half were draped from crown to toe in all-enveloping burnooses, as I was. Mostly those muffled figures were just standing, staring in my direction. Some, at least, were too tall to be women, and with a sudden flash of hope, I decided that they must all be wetlanders like me, being kept out of the sun.

Wetlanders came from the far west, so we must be a rare breed so close to Dusk. To collect a dozen or more of us would take considerable time and expense, so whatever the spinster did with wetlanders, she would not put them to a quick death. I felt a little better, then.

Apart from those mysterious shrouded figures, though, I could see no one but men, no women or children or old folk. The spinster maintained a private army of young males, a very impressive and virile collection, judging by those I had met so far. I wondered why she needed them, who her foes were. And again I wondered at the source of her power over them.

In the center of the compound, not far from me, stood a massive carving in the likeness of a rearing snake, its cobra hood spread wide and the rest of its body looped around the base, all painted green and yellow, and strangely repellent even to me, who believed in no god. Then I could not keep my head up any longer. I sagged down, feeling sick and giddy.

Our canoes had been stowed alongside a group of others. The men came running across toward my bearer, Shisisannis going to one side of him and the rest lining up on the other. Then they all just stood, in a silence broken only by heavy breathing, waiting for someone, or something, but with none of the comments or muttered complaints I would have expected. I had my wrong end pointing forward and could not see what they were watching. All I could see was feet, but I did notice that they were placed at the edge of a patch of white gravel, markedly different from the juicy mud that covered the rest of the compound, steaming gently in the sunlight.