Whether that cunning would aid him now, so far away from a forest, was a question begging for a quick answer.

" Stay well clear, Krek. I' ll try to divert them away from you. If I succeed, we' ll both be on our way soon." He hoped he sounded confident. The way his stomach churned and knotted as hard as a hangman' s noose put the lie to any real feeling of impending success.

" As you say, Lan Martak. It is all hopeless. If only I could move my limbs. The weakness assaults me in waves. I drown in it." A shudder shook his body and made the hair on his long legs bristle. " Such a worthless death mine will be."

" All deaths, when they come too soon, are worthless," Lan told Krek. Then he slithered, snakelike, atop a massive boulder overlooking the path they' d just traversed. Glinting in the distance were soldiers swinging swords. They had shed their heavy armor, but this was only a slight additional factor in Lan' s favor. Their swords had the reach his dagger lacked.

Lan' s nervousness evaporated when the soldiers neared. The hunt always affected him this way. Adrenaline pumped fiercely into his arteries. He came alive, flowing with the invisible force that guided him in the kill.

He was not invincible; he still bled if cut. But he became something more than before. Now he called on all his wit and ability and abandoned himself to the inevitable.

As the first soldier drew abreast of his perch, Lan leaped. His hurtling weight smashed the man to the ground. A quick slash sent a fountain of crimson life spurting from the neck. Lan stood, the fallen soldier' s sword pressing heavily into his hand.

" There! Attack! Fifty crowns to the man slaying him!" echoed the voice of a hidden commander.

Lan savagely slashed the legs out from under the next man presenting himself at the notch in the rock. But swarming over the still- struggling body came another and another and still another.

Lan faced three experienced swordsmen. No novice with the sword, he knew he could never match these grisled veterans if the fight wore on too long.

" Die, lover of animals," snarled the one closest to him.

Lan was almost duped into turning to face the man mouthing the curse. The soldier at the opposite end of the line lunged, barely missing his target in Lan' s gut. Lan' s dagger drew a red line of agony along the man' s ribs, not fatal but enough to remove him temporarily from the fracas. Lan barely leaped back in time as the two remaining swordsmen weaved a net of steel death around him. His mind settled to the deadly fighting. He couldn' t penetrate their singing blades, but he could still run and dodge.

Rolling to his right, Lan put one of the men between himself and the other. He lunged. His blade was deflected by a sharp parry but still found a meaty shoulder.

As he cursed in pain, the soldier continued fighting. Lan felt the sharp sting of his own skin being scored by a razor- sharp edge. Ducking, he barely kept a second thrust from lopping off an ear.

" Krek!" he called. " Help me. I need you!"

The expression on the soldier' s face told Lan that Krek had come. The spider need do nothing save loom large and menacing. The flush of abject fear turned to agony as Lan buried his sword into the man' s sternum.

Unable to pull the blade free as the corpse sank to the ground, Lan attacked the other man with his dagger. One swift toss and the steel spike found an exposed throat. The bubbling noise and the sight of pink froth gushing from the pierced windpipe were not pleasant. Still, better the soldier dying than Lan.

" You will die, scum! More men come. You will bow to the power of our Saviour, Waldron of Ravensroost!"

Lan saw the guard commander standing, legs widespread, atop a boulder, cape fluttering in the blood- warm wind. The black rage masking the man' s face would vanish only when he witnessed death- the death of Lan and Krek.

" We made it past the first wave," Lan panted. " But I can' t keep fighting them off forever. They' ll wear me down soon." He hoped Krek didn' t notice how his hands shook. His mouth had turned dry, and his breath came in ragged gusts. Fighting for the sake of fighting as sport invigorated him; killing sapped him of strength.

" I will never see my mating web or the lovely Klawn again. Never! And all because of those humans. A chance encounter and they hunt me like a rabbit! Me! Webmaster of the Egrii!"

Lan stood back, amazed, by the spider' s sudden vicious frontal attack on the soldiers. The charging arachnid killed a full score before the battered survivors fled in confusion. Dripping gore from his hairy legs, Krek ambled back to the stunned Lan.

" That taught them respect. Imagine their impudence!" The spider seemed unaware of the monumental transformation in his attitude. One moment, he cowered docile and willing to die. The next, he was a fighting terror even highly trained men with steel weapons couldn' t contain.

" What brought all that on?" Lan inclined his head toward the bloody carnage.

" I have no idea. It simply seemed the thing to do." Krek considered the problem for a moment, then said, " You humans come apart easily."

" I agree, I agree!" Lan babbled. " But we' ve still got to get out of this trap. He' s got more men than the two of us will ever be able to kill."

" Speak for yourself," declared Krek. " I, mere human, am a Webmaster!"

" Krek," pleaded Lan, worrying about the sudden surge of overconfidence. " Listen to me. They' ll bring in crossbows and shoot us at their leisure. They can call up hundreds of men. They: they might even set fire to us." He watched as the horror of flames assailed the spider. As much as he hated doing it, he had to play on each and every weakness to prevent the spider from pursuing a course that was as suicidal as simple surrender.

" We can' t attack. We' ve got to escape. Do you understand? Our lives will be forfeit if we continue fighting them on their terms."

The spider strutted about, flexing mighty sinews in his legs. He leaped from one side of their sandy arena to the other, almost faster than Lan could follow.

" I must bow to your superior knowledge of humans. After all, you are one."

" It' s going to be difficult, but we must creep by their sentries and get out of this valley."

" They will catch us. I am too large to creep."

" Until we can climb those canyon walls, that' s our only hope."

Krek looked up as if for the first time. " That is all we have to do, climb these puny stone walls? Every day in the depths of the Egrii Mountains, I swing from pinnacles higher than this."

Lan watched in amazement as a sticky strand of web material jetted from a nozzle just under Krek' s beak. In the span of a frenzied heartbeat, the spider had a long cable stretching into the hazy distance, fastened firmly for climbing.

" Why didn' t you tell me, Krek? We could have avoided the soldiers altogether!"

The spider gave his equivalent of a shrug. His entire body quaked as he said, " I never thought of it. I assumed you knew of this insignificant talent of mine. After all, spiders do possess the ability to spin webs." It was a matter closed.

" Hurry, then. I hear the commander goading his troops into action again." Lan watched the spider deftly scale the wall of stone, legs seldom touching the smooth rock for more than an instant. The man envied his friend' s agility, but as Krek had commented, he was a spider and to the web born.

" Kill! Kill them! They escape! A hundred crowns to the man who slays them."

Lan turned, his back pressed against the cold stone, and saw a full dozen armored men advancing. Bravely, he confronted them with his sword held en garde and his dagger ready for a quick, eviscerating stroke.

He knew, however, it would be he who died.

Closing with the foremost, he executed a deft stop thrust. The recoil of his sword off the man' s armor wrenched the blade from his grasp. He managed to drive the point of his dagger into the soldier' s armpit as the man foolishly watched Lan' s sword go spinning through the air. With blood seeping over his hand, Lan gathered his strength and heaved the dead soldier back at his comrades. Lan had to laugh at the incongruous sight. Men fell like skittle pins. In the confusion, he grabbed a fallen sword.