All of them.
“Captain!” Samar snapped. But Nadine was already muttering the incantation, her eyes squeezed shut. Magnus watched in terror, and only remembered to look away at the last moment as a pulse of power struck out in a wisp of vapory tendrils. The whispering echoes in the crevice went silent like the hush preceding a springtime storm.
Magnus’s grip around the rope was tight, and it barely eased when he was certain the Eye had done its job. There was an audible sigh among the group as, one by one, they continued their descent. That had been too close.
Magnus was relieved when the Nozverak began to slow. His shaking muscles were on fire, particularly those in his arms and chest and back. But this was it - they’d arrived.
Only, something was wrong.
Magnus shimmied down the rope until he was level with Azolirum. He was conversing with Hezek and Crann, who were lower than he. They peered into an opening that Magnus had assumed they would get off into. Magnus squinted at it. The floor was completely packed with sleeping arachnai. They were spread across the ground from wall to wall in curled up balls of hairy limbs. He cringed.
Nadine slid between Magnus and Azolirum. Samar scooted furthest from the group. They each pushed away from the wall in a half-circle formation so they could see each other’s faces.
Nadine glanced down at the plateau before whispering. “That’s a problem.”
“Did your little toy reach them?” Azolirum asked her.
Nadine shook her head. “We were too high. If they were enthralled, they remain that way.”
“Hmm.” Azolirum seemed to think on that. “Then we fight through them.”
“What?” Samar asked.
Azolirum whipped toward him with a growl. “What’s your plan? There’s nowhere for my men to touch down. They’re packed like a brood mother’s womb. We’ll kill them as fast as we can. Hope no others wake.”
“There aren’t many. They’re just tight,” Crann added.
“Friend.” Magnus gave an apologetic frown. “That’s a terrible plan.”
“Your female silenced the rest of them,” Azolirum said. “They won’t come to help.”
Magnus shook his head. “And if any of them escape? If they tell their masters we’re here?”
Azolirum sneered. “What do you want us to do? Dangle here until our arms give out?”
Nadine broke in. “Why don’t you let us do what we came here for?” She turned toward Magnus and fixed those beautiful eyes on him. “What he brought us here to do.”
What did she mean by that? He might have asked, but the look on her face, the sheer confident brilliance of it, kept him from shattering the moment. Instead, he watched as she nodded at Samar and the pair of them signaled to their men. They made no apologies as they climbed down, slipped bodily around the Nozverak’s horns, and crawled along their backs. One at a time, they offloaded onto the plateau beneath.
It took everything in Magnus to hold his breath and simply be still as he watched his bride tiptoe like a crane around the slumbering bodies of the arachnai piled on the rocky ground. It wasn’t just her. The Ebronians slipped like shadows around their prey. All twelve were smooth and quiet as specters as they stepped in and around the knobby bodies and spindly, tangled limbs. They communicated with slashing hand gestures and jerking motions of their chins and even blinks of their eyes. It was a bizarre form of communication that was as efficient as words to them and kept them moving with the unison of a flock of birds.
Magnus suddenly realized what they were doing. They were coordinating a simultaneous slaughter. The cave was large, but not massive. There were more than twice as many arachnai as there were Ebronians. They couldn’t possibly slaughter them all at once. Or could they? Magnus narrowed his eyes as the Ebronians squatted down and pulled out their lancets. But they didn’t do with them what he would’ve expected. They didn’t align the points with the brains or the centers of the chests. Instead, they kept the steel tubes closed and took their time lining each collapsed weapon between individual pairs of slumped bodies in such a way that . . .
Magnus’s mouth dropped.
He understood. Nadine held her fist high, drawing the attention of every man in the cave. Magnus felt Azolirum’s silvery gaze upon him, but he didn’t take his own eyes from his hamma to explain what was happening. He couldn’t. He was left there dangling, practically writhing with his own uselessness. He was as effective as the Nozverak with his big, lumbering body. There was simply nowhere for him to touch down without waking the arachnai. For the first time in his life, Magnus envied the lean, flexible build of men like Samar. A man who was at his bride’s side. Ready to protect and defend.
Nadine opened her hand.
The sound of sliding metal was followed by shrill arachnai screams. Most of those screams came to a halt as fast as they’d begun, while a few carried on in a gurgling mess that sputtered out after a few chaotic seconds. Magnus blinked, stunned by the frenzy, when Azolirum laughed and bumped into his shoulder, making him swing on his rope.
“That’s why you get hard for her, little man.” Azolirum snickered.
The Ebronians had opened their lancets on the arachnai in such a way as to pierce their hearts or their brains with either end at once. Two beasts had died by one warrior in a single fell swoop before the battle had even begun. And now the cave was in utter chaos.
The Nozverak were already scrambling down the ropes to jump into the fray. Magnus hurried behind them. He glanced into the alcove, waiting for the Nozverak to get out of the way so he could make it to Nadine. Where was she?
He spotted her at the far end of the cave. She was using her whole body to yank her lancet out of an arachnai torso. It came out as she twirled on a bent knee. A gray spurt of blood came with it to cover the rocky wall behind her. Regna, she was murder made flesh. Before she’d even stopped moving, she was twisting the other direction and ducking low to catch the feet of an arachnai charging toward one of her men. It went crashing to its belly with an angry scream. Nadine collapsed the back half of her lancet, only to flip the thing around and take off the spider creature’s head with the other side.
Azolirum and Crann were off the ropes now, but Hezek was crowding the only clear spot to get down. Magnus resisted the urge to kick him out of the way. He’d probably just impale his foot on one of those horns.
“Come on,” he hissed, careful not to shout. He was still in the crevice and he didn’t want his voice to carry beyond where the Eye had worked its magic.
“Chakva!” Nadine hissed.
Magnus’s gaze snapped up. Whether she was mounting the thing, or she was caught upon it, Magnus couldn’t tell. Either way, his hamma was upon the back of the arachnai. And it was racing for the lip of the crevice. All eight legs trampled the stone, tearing through corpses like the blind demon it was, while Nadine hacked her lancet deeper into its back.
Before Magnus could think, the creature blew past him, straight off the edge, taking Nadine with it. His wild bride vanished quietly into the abyss.
All thought and feeling left him. There was nothing inside or outside Magnus. The sound of a metal clip unlatching tinked in his ears.
His hands released the rope.
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