Read Online Bard I by Keith Taylor - Free Book Online

tracks. Some had been left on the game trail he followed, and they hadn’t been there the previous evening. The unknown must have watched their hut during the night hours.
    ‘Cairbre and Ogma!’ Felimid swore. ‘I should have charmed him asleep with a harp-strain!’
    It was in his mind to fetch the harp and carry her with him. Ah, but no. He’d hunting to do, work for steel, not magic. Nor did he know enough of what he was dealing with yet. He left with his sword and a strong boar-spear only.
    Twice, he lost the stranger’s tracks. Twice he found them again by casting about in circles through the strangling, accursed brush. Then he lost them a third time. An hour passed before he solved the cunning misdirection his quarry had used in taking to the trees.
    Och, what is this? Part human, part rabbit and part squirrel withal?
    Felimid was not often baffled. He disliked it now. The faint toeholds and finger-grips he discerned on the mossy bark of a century-old oak argued that the mysterious climber had virtually run up it to gain the branches.
    Felimid climbed aloft himself, scanning tiny abrasions on the bark. It seemed to him that the other had jumped to the next tree, indifferent to the long drop below, and doubtless to the next beyond. Being lighter than Felimid, and even more agile, seemingly, he could jump and whirl through high branches that would never sup­ port a man. He’d slipped pursuit fairly. He might now be doubling back to where Regan huddled sick.
    Indecision attacked Felimid. Perhaps he ought to turn back himself . . .
    Hunger decided him. in the end. They had to have food. He set off along a trail he hadn’t followed before, dreaming of sounders of half-grown swine led by some massive, matriarchal sow.
    A half-suffocated cry prompted him to hide. He made himself a shadow among shadows, listening with ears honed sharp by his chancy life. Although the cry was not repeated, it had come from no great distance.
    He investigated, sliding among wet undergrowth nigh dense as a wall. He’d learned the trick from the little dark people of the hills. To fight such impediment was to waste strength and stick fast. He eased his way through, not hastening too much.
    Felimid wriggled out of the thicket on his belly. Lying flat and still, he squinted through long wet grass. A spider’s web hung close to his face. Raindrops rolled bead-like along the threads, outlining the delicate shape. Another hung beyond it, immediately above. . . so Felimid thought at first.
    It was a trick of perspective, and of his mind, which insisted on seeing the sanely expected thing. Then the truth struck, kicking him into an empty chasm of nightmare.
    The second web was not close to him at all. Instead, it was rigged between several dark trees, high up, big as a longship’s sail, or a royal tapestry covering one end of a hall. The web’s maker and tenant clung like a shocking eight-pointed star in the centre. Its body was large as a pig’s.
    Felimid lay motionless, cold sweat rolling from him. He felt terrified, and sickened. His heart bounded about in the cage of his ribs like a demented frog, croaking at him to get away from this place at once; far away. and then farther yet.
    The spider did not move. Felimid stared at it with morbid fascination. Its legs were shorter in proportion than those of a common spider; much shorter, and thicker. It struck Felimid that they looked oddly clumsy. Near a lower corner of the web, something dangled. neatly wrapped and hung on grey cords. Felimid’s stomach turned as he saw that it was human. The mysterious watcher, for a bet; the spider’s newest victim.
    So much for him. Felimid didn’t suppose he would ever know now who that one was, or what his motives had been, nor did he greatly care, then; but it had been a more than ordinarily dreadful way to die. Had the poor gomerel blundered into the web, somehow? Unlikely. It didn’t ring true.
    Common spiders, now. They lived on such flies as