“It’s…a body…a body in a sack.”

“A body?” Aalis whimpered.

“At the bottom there’s a foot sticking out…and I can just see the ridges of a helm at the top…”

“Armour…a soldier?” Judd breathed.

“A knight maybe?” Giordi picked up a piece of broken sword and held it out. Caste hurried over to him and, retrieving a book from his pack he flicked through the pages. “There, that one…no back, back…there. That’s the same crest.”

Caste sighed. “The crest of Sir Bobellion.”

They all looked at the body in the sack.

“Ew.” Giordi shivered. “What a terrible way to die.”

“I don’t think he’s dead.” Judd inched forward, straining his eyes to focus. “His chest…it’s moving! He’s not dead!”

“Judd, wait…”

“We’ve got to get him out of there!” Judd, deaf to anything except his own righteous desire to save anyone he could, lunged forward. Verne slammed his body into him, pressing him against the wall with his whole weight. “What are you doing? We’ve got to help him!”

“I don’t think it’s the knight that’s moving.” Verne said darkly.

Judd paused in his fervour and Verne let go, allowing Judd to peer more closely at the sack. It was trembling, almost bubbling all over…as if something was trying to get out.

“Back…back!” Judd cried as the sack ripped apart, the emaciated and emancipated body of the knight striking the stone floor with a heavy sickening thump and dozens of black objects fell to the ground.

Caste’s scream echoed through the room as a sea of spiders surged towards them, clambering over each other in a bid to reach the five travellers first. Each spider was the size of Judd’s fist and collectively they seemed to hiss and screech. Judd hollered, his spine disintegrating and his knees turning to jelly.

Aalis suddenly bolted past him, running towards the spiders and she hurled the contents of her cooking pot onto the ground, an oily brew descending upon the spiders in a wide wave. The spiders that were struck by the liquid screeched and withered, their legs burning as though they’d touched acid. The spiders that avoided the initial hit with the brew thought nothing of using their dying siblings to scramble madly towards them. Some slipped into the mistletoe oil slick and shrivelled, convulsed and died while a few made it past the sea of death, still determined to pounce on their five person feast.

“What do we do now?”

“What you do to all bugs!” Verne cried, stomping on the spider closest to him. “Squash them!”

Caste used his pack like a club. Giordi jumped and kicked. Aalis hiked her skirts up and killed a couple with her boots. Judd spun around slashing his sword down, missing the spiders with his blade but managing to step on others in his frantic defence. He slipped backwards, his boots crushing on the corpses of deceased spider babies, jamming his sword between two cracks in the stone pavers to keep from sliding in the mistletoe oil. He panted wildly and saw their surprised expressions.

“I HATE spiders.” He shuddered uncontrollably, feeling like they were crawling over his body.

“Now they count as creatures of unnatural size, right?” Giordi demanded, his fright making his tone sharper than he intended.

“While unimpressive as single spider when you can just squash it with your boot,” Caste paused to allow Judd to groan and shiver, “compared to the size a spider is meant to be…yes. Yes, it counts.”

Judd’s skin was hot and he felt sick. The fear had hit him hard. “Well…now we know why the fort and village was abandoned.” He gagged.

“Not really,” Judd closed his eyes and groaned then glared at Caste, “no, don’t look at me like that. I’m simply saying that Sir Bobellion couldn’t have been strung up in that weird…sack by those spiders.”

Their eyes naturally looked to where the half devoured remains of Sir Bobellion lay on the steps of the dais.

“Spiders…lay eggs, don’t they?” Verne looked at Aalis.

She nodded. “In a sac…an egg..sack…”

“So that means…something killed the knight, made the sack…and laid eggs in it…”

Judd’s face began to empty of colour, dread forming in the pit of his stomach. He turned to look at the others. “What are you saying?” He demanded in a hollow voice.

“Uh…Judd…” All four of them began to walk backwards, their eyes lifting from Sir Bobellion’s remains.

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Judd’s knees wobbled with treacherous cowardice as he turned slowly and made himself look up. Lightning flashed outside the stained glass window, rain streaking down its panels and as he watched, the black iron of the window pried itself off the glass, eight long legs, each six feet long and as round as the width of Judd’s arms. The opaque mass in the centre lifted up and then leapt into the air, landing on the throne, a cord of white, sticky thread hanging behind it. Eight eyes blinked, focused on Judd.

“Oh sh…”

It lifted its front legs and hissed louder than all its babies combined.

“I don’t think mamma’s very happy!” Giordi screeched.

“And I’m the one standing in spider baby soup!” Judd squeezed out of his strangled throat.

“Then I suggest you run!”

Judd didn’t know what the others were doing. He couldn’t take his eyes off the spider, feeling it glower at him, a mother’s rage at the death of her flesh devouring children in every quiver of her eight hairy legs. He grasped his sword, the tip wobbling and no amount of self control could stop it.

She hissed…and then jumped into the air, her back legs working frantically, pulling herself up and beyond the veil of drapery which were now no longer the tacky decoration of a knight’s ambition…but layers and layers of webbing.

“Where is it?” Judd panted, spinning around. “Where is it?”

Lightning flashed again and the enormous shadow of the spider was cast upon the floor. Six of its legs were outstretched while the two at the front rubbed together as though imagining how good Judd would taste. Judd was bathed in its shadow and leapt to the side as the spider pounced, tearing through the drapes with its fangs. It landed on the stone pavers, not caring at all about the mistletoe sludge. Its fangs gnashed together and up close, its eyes blinked in unison, seeing Judd in fragmented vision. It hissed and advanced on him as he slammed into a tapestry, madly scrabbling for the secreted door but unable to find it. He turned and as the spider’s forelegs tore through the tapestry, its back legs holding it up and it leered at Judd, drool dripping from its fangs in anticipation.

Verne unleashed an arrow at it but the spider had a sixth, seventh and possibly eighth sense and simply batted the sharpened projectile away.

“Do something!” Aalis screamed as Judd stared at his imminent doom.

Giordi, grabbing his lute, ran forward and cracked the spider as hard as he could, the neck of the lute snapping from the body, hanging uselessly by its strings. The spider turned on him and quivered, ready to strike. Giordi stumbled and fell onto his backside, yelling.

Judd grabbed his sword and, like he was forcing a door to swing a way it was not designed to do, brought his sword up and down, severing two of the spider’s legs from its right side. It howled and screeched like no spider should ever be able to muster and turned on Judd but he had already bolted towards the end of the hall, running for the stairs, taking them two by two as fast as he could.

He reached a corridor and ran its length, finding more stairs and climbing further and further up, logic and reason gone as he put as much distance as he could between himself and the spider. He threw open the hatch at the top of the steps and clambered onto the roof. The rain was sleeting down, turning the world grey and blurry. He peered over the edge and realised just how close he was to the cliff face.

He backed away and turned and to his horror, he was standing in front of the stained glass window. So close he could see that the glass had been shattered and the spider had turned the space into a perfect location to spin its web, looking like the window itself. All too late he realised that, if the spider got into the fort that way…then it stood to reason…

Hissing fangs and snapping jaws made him throw caution to the wind, scrambling frantically up the slope of the roof of the main hall, tiles breaking and falling away, trying to drag him with them. The spider, with its sticky feet and extra limbs, though it was missing a couple now, followed him, its weight bending the beams, the tiles sliding from beneath it as well. With a giant leap it flew over his head and perched on the ridgepole and chittered, wordless noise but the intent was known.

It was measuring Judd for his web sack coffin and imagining how many eggs were going to fit inside his body. It danced on the tips of her legs, awkwardly perched on the ridgepole and Judd braced himself, his sword held out in front. It couldn’t attack him directly, despite darting back and forth, testing his defences because he kept the tip of his sword up even though he was shaking so hard it waggled back and forth like a happy dog’s tail.

“Come on,” he trembled, “what are you waiting for?!”

It spluttered and hissed back at him. Judd’s fear finally reached a breaking point and he roared and charged the spider. It was taken aback and reared to get out of the way but it was missing two of its legs and was badly balanced and slid to one side. In the blink of an eye that it took to try to right itself Judd rammed his sword into its bulbous black body and then, because he was full of fear fuelled rage, he kept going, bellowing against the thunder, pushing it further and further back. Green blood and slimy entrails slipped out between the grievous wound, the spider trying in vain to remove the painful obstruction from its body. But its sticky feet couldn’t grab it without cutting itself and it its pain filled distraction, Judd pushed it all the way to the end of the ridgepole, its body falling to the grounds of the courtyard. Judd nearly lost his own footing in his adrenalin filled rush and had to put his arms out, his sword still embedded in the spider’s body that lay lifeless and limp far below.

He closed his eyes and breathed out, turned and began to make his way off the roof…but he was shaking, the rain was hammering him and it only took one tile to slip for him to take a fatal tumble. He hit the tiles and slid, scrambling for only a second, which felt like a year, before he managed to grip a tile that had a tenuous grasp upon the roof. Judd held tight and tried to reach the ridgepole but it was too far and the tile gave a terrifying tremble. Judd groaned and looked around, seeing a black shape in the roof.

The hole!

He licked his lips, stretching his arm out then leaning as far as he could, fingers just scraping the edge of the hole when the tile finally gave up its tether and fell away. Judd lunged and grasped the hole, pulling himself up in such haste that he fell through it.

He had barely conceived of possibly climbing down to one of the exposed beams below by the time he’d thrown himself through the hole and now, didn’t know where a single beam was. He fell into the hall, giving a cry of fright before his body was caught by something soft that gave him a little bounce before he began to roll, webbing wrapping around and around him as he tumbled, the strands holding it up giving way under his weight and dropping him to the pavers in his own cocoon of safety.

He lay on the ground, panting, unable to move, his arms pinned awkwardly to his sides. He looked up, four faces staring down at him.

“Did you kill it?” Verne demanded.

“Or should Aalis give you something for intestinal distress?” Giordi added smartly.

Judd moaned and lay back. “Just…get me out of this…please.”