Sentinelspire - Mark Sehestedt [33]
The first drops of rain, fat and falling hard, began striking the forest canopy. The leaves provided a barrier-so far-but they struck with enough force to be heard over the wind.
Any time, now.
Hama rose to a crouch and drew his knife.
The patter of the rain came stronger, and drops began to reach the ground. Something about the drops sounded… wrong. Just off slightly. The wind had been skittering through the leaves all evening, but Hama swore the sound had changed, just slightly.
As Hama stepped round the bole of the tree, something struck his hand. He ignored it, thinking it was only a raindrop, but when another struck his forehead, he brushed it aside.
Something bit his finger, and he hissed. Reflex took over. He flapped his hand and in half a heartbeat, felt tiny legs lose contact with his skin.
Lightning flashed over the mountain. In the flicker, Hama could see the wind-tossed boughs, stirred by the storm. But he'd been wrong about the raindrops. The rain had not yet come. Other things were dropping from the trees. Some were no larger than his thumbnail, but some were larger than his hand. A hundred or more shadows moved along the forest floor-moved against the wind. The nearest were only a few feet away.
Hama looked up. The last of the lightning died, and in the instant before complete darkness surrounded him, Hama saw dozens of spiders crawling around the tree. Crawling right for him.
Thunder shook the ground as the first of the spiders crawled over his boots.
Hama turned to run, but on the dark hillside his haste betrayed him. Three steps and his feet went out from under him. He fell into a bush thick with new spring leaves. His heart hammered in his chest, and his breath was coming in quick gasps. In the brush he could not tell the difference between the leaves, branches, and hundreds of tiny legs crawling over him.
Hama screamed.
+++++
Sauk heard the first wave of rain washing over the valley. Fitful at first, it gained strength with each gust of wind.
Most of his attention was fixed on the tiny glow of campfire twinkling in the valley below him, but a small sliver of his mind was with the tiger-every beat of her heart, every breath and careful, considered movement. He could not see what she saw or hear what she heard, but his mind registered her reactions to sight, sound, even smell.
Lightning lit the mountain along the western sky. Thunder followed, and with it came the torrent, like a wave washing over a shore.
He told the tiger, Soon…
Lizard!'It came through not in a word, but in the awareness that one of the little creatures had found her. Kill it! he told the tiger.
He felt her lunge. Then a scream-a man's scream, but not on the opposite hillside where Taaki waited. This came from off to Sauk's right. A shriek of utter terror.
"Damn!"
Sauk would kill whoever it was. Break his neck with his bare hands. Hama, by the sound of it. The fool had just ruined their element of surprise. The yaqubi were a skittish lot, and they might well be gone before the assassins even hit the valley.
The rain came harder, rattling the leaves overhead, but Sauk's sharp ears caught something else. Even over the sound of the wind-tossed trees and falling rain, Sauk heard a skittering like… tiny feet. Or claws. Hundreds of them.
Sauk turned his back on the valley and looked up the hillside. His half-orc eyes could see far better in the dark than any human's. He could see the forest floor moving.
Lightning cracked the sky over the valley, and in the sudden harsh light Sauk saw that he was about to be overtaken by a tide of hundreds-hundreds of thousands-of spiders.
"Damn you, Berun," he said. "Damn you, you clever-"
And then the spiders were on him.
+++++
The storm washed over the foothills of the Khopet-Dag. Wind and rain pummeled the forest while lightning lashed from cloud to cloud overhead, and thunder followed all. The thick canopy of the forest caught the rain and funneled it downward in thousands of tiny waterfalls so that by the time the fury of the storm