My arms and legs fall back into the flow of handling the eight limbs and the pivoting carapace. Spider scouts can outpace a running man, and although a galloping horse will pass a spider in a short race, in the end a spider’s uncanny endurance will leave a blown horse in the dust. I quicken my steps to catch up to the end of the line. My legs thud down like deadly hammers. Men calm their horses as I pass.
The spider scouts form up in front of Father and clank out in front of the infantry vanguard like a spear thrown in advance of the line. Ahead, pinpricks of light grow until I see they are lanterns hanging from the heads of pikes. They illuminate the shields forming the vanguard of Nikonos’s group. Each shield is marked with the white sea-phoenix of the king’s royal household but I am sure they are East Saroese troops in disguise.
A horn blasts three times. The men in the front rank slam the lower rims of their shields onto the ground, a wall bristling with pikes that horses won’t charge. It spans the entire road, blocking our path.
We spiders clank to a halt a stone’s toss from the shields. Father and his four adjutants approach. In the line facing us, two shields lift away, and five horsemen ride through the gap to meet him.
The man in front wears a helmet with a gold prince’s circlet worked into the iron to mark his exalted rank. Of course there’s no hint of the king’s diadem. His officers are likewise wearing full armor and helmets. The night makes it hard to distinguish their faces because only their eyes are visible.
Father rides forward with his helmet tucked under his arm, head uncovered as a sign of subservience.
“Well met, General Esladas!” a voice rings out commandingly. I recognize Nikonos’s rich, silky tone, and how false it sounds when he isn’t spewing sarcasm and disdain. “The gods have providentially brought about our meeting at this very convenient time and place.”
“Well met, Prince Nikonos. What reinforcements do you bring?”
My gaze catches on the slightest of movements: two shields part to create a narrow gap. Bodies shift position behind it, and I’m suddenly sure I see the curve of a bow. This is it. This is the ambush.
I lever back my forward limbs. My spider rears up like it is clawing at the starry heavens as I wildly cast one of my javelins toward Nikonos. Of course it goes wide but it’s only a distraction.
“Ambush!” I scream.
Father ducks instinctively. An arrow sings through the air right where his head just was. A second arrow slams into his horse’s withers. His officers push their mounts forward to place themselves in the line of fire between him and the enemy, and he lets them do it. He falls back, is hit in the leg, slides off his wounded horse.
With the same motion, I lower my carapace and charge. I can’t look back or I’ll die. Adjutants screen Nikonos with their own bodies and several go down in a flurry of arrows. I can’t find a way around their thrashing horses as he flees.
Another spider punches through a shield with its lance arm, scattering men. Arrows pepper my brass skin as I slam down a leg atop more shields, its weight crumpling metal. All I can think of is my father sliding off the horse with an arrow in his flesh.
Braced on six legs, I punch with my two forelegs, over and over, breaking down the shield wall until the soldiers give way and fall back.
Behind us, a horn calls twice, pauses, calls four times, pauses, calls twice.
It takes me a moment to realize the other spiders are pulling back from the half-broken line. Why? Why? The enemy is giving way because we are metal and they are flesh.
I want to punch and punch but Nikonos has vanished into the roiling mass of his troops and I remember that Father has a plan.
I swing around, using my left foreleg like a scythe to cut a path out of the fray. Soldiers scatter, scuttling out of reach like crabs. My carapace swings over a corpse all bloody and crushed until, fully turned around, I stump after the other spiders. We flee like dogs retreating with tails between their legs as projectiles slam harmlessly into our brass backs.
Jeers rise from Nikonos’s troops as they mock our flight.
But I know what is coming.
“Brace! Pull!”
A loud ratcheting noise clacks.
“Fly!”
Sealed ceramic pots sail over me and crash to the ground, shattering amid the enemy. There is a momentary silence, then more laughter from Nikonos’s allies.
No scorpions here.
Flights of burning arrows streak out from our ranks. They set alight the naphtha splashed through the East Saroese pretenders.
A second volley launches and splatters, followed by a second flight of burning arrows. The fire spreads in stubborn, fierce flames.
Men scream and scramble. We spiders swivel back to the attack. We become a moving wall of blades and claws, brass flashing, legs thumping down in a shuddering rhythm, the fire no menace to our metal. There isn’t enough naphtha to burn for long but the damage to their cohesion is done.
Arrows and javelins slam my carapace, shaking me in my harness. A soldier backpedals in front of me, trying to get out of my way as I raise my forelegs. My memory flashes to a day long ago in the Ribbon Market when a spider’s leg crushed a tiny child in front of its mother.
I can’t think. I mustn’t think. I must keep pushing forward and not think about what it means, how in war we use weapons to cut the spark of life out of bodies. We steal sparks to win battles. We are all in the business of killing to stay on top.
A horn cries in bursts. A noise rises like the rumble of waves beating on a rocky shoreline. My father’s firebird veterans race across the last dying naphtha flames, past our brass legs.
Their punch shatters the weakening enemy line. Weapons rise and fall, clash and crunch. Lanterns crack and break and fall, transforming into a pulse of shadows as men keep fighting although they can barely see.
I follow the other spiders off the edge of the road and barely keep to my eight feet as I race down the slope. Something warm, wet, and salty slides from my forehead into my eyes, running around the curve of my nose. I don’t hurt anywhere. I don’t feel injured. Yet I swallow blood. I’m so thirsty.
Up on the road soldiers die or surrender. I am numb to the cries and screams of messy, ugly dying. I have to be numb.
Stars blaze in pinprick thickets overhead. The moon advances into the west as our beacon. The Royal Army plunges into the night in pursuit of Nikonos and his fleeing allies.
Instead of giving up the road we have claimed it.
I clank alone against the tide, stumping east as the Royal Army marches west past me. By the time I come up alongside the banners of the command company, I’m shaking with exhaustion and my head throbs.
I jerk my spider to a halt, unlatch the shield, and hang there, half in and half out of the carapace. Soldiers scramble down the bank as I drop to the ground. My legs give out, and I collapse to my hands and knees. Blood drips onto my left hand.