Gruff Tolls, Page 3

and brave. Not god, monster, or man may oppose me. I cannot be harmed by age, sickness, or injury, or any weapon made by the hand of man. Now I am an adventuress, going where I will and doing as I please."

  He felt somewhat taken aback by her answer. He had met boastful people at times, but no one like her. "And what is your business this day?"

  She narrowed her cold emerald eyes. "That is my concern; yours is only that I wish to cross your bridge."

  She was definitely a strange one. "Very well. You are free to use my bridge to cross over, but you must pay a toll. And your companions have said you can pay their tolls as well."

  "That is only fair. What do you charge?"

  "Anything I can eat, or barring that, anything I can use to purchase food."

  She nodded. "I have traveling expenses, and treasure looted from hoards, enough to purchase a dozen yaks, but I do not wish to part with any of it."

  "If you refuse to pay, I can claim you and your yak, and after I have subdued you, I can claim your possessions as well. It would be better to simply give me a portion of what you carry than lose it all."

  She displayed a thoughtful look as she planted the spiked end of the spear into the ground. "It would certainly be easier for you. However, if those are my choices, you may take me."

  He didn't have to be told twice. Though unusual, travelers sometimes challenged him, thinking that his size indicated youth and inexperience. Her manner may have been casual, but he took her statement seriously.

  Before her words had died in the air, he leapt at her. She made no effort to evade. Instead, she threw out an arm, the palm facing him as if to push him away, and shouted a single word:

  "Setim!"

  A burst of light slammed into him. A great force stunned him, throwing him backwards and flipping him over onto his back. He recovered rapidly and took action before the woman could press her advantage. If she expected him to flail his legs in a futile manner, she would be disappointed; he had been in that position before. He curled his left legs over his underside and flexed the others backwards, which rolled him upright. He scrambled to stand and spin around, but instead of attacking she had taken the time to undress: she stood naked, except for her shoes, torc, and headband. Even as he faced her, she pulled her spear out of the ground and held it like staff.

  He charged, intending to use his pedipalps and first pair of legs to pummel her into submission. She sprinted forward to meet him head-on, swinging and twirling her spear like a baton. They clashed, but despite having to deal with four simultaneous attacks from different directions, she parried his blows and struck some of her own, stabbing at his eyes with the spike or raking his chitin exoskeleton with the serrated edge. She moved faster than any human he had encountered, not so fast that he couldn't keep up, but fast enough that she nullified his own speed advantage. She kept too close for him to leap on her, but the couple of times he tried she just ran beneath him, and attacked him from the rear, forcing him to turn and confront her. Despite the ferocity of their blows, their fight seemed more like a carefully choreographed dance than a slug-match, as they pivoted around their common center, skipped from side to side, and pushed each other forward and back. She was the most formidable fighter he had ever engaged, and he grew less certain he could beat her as the moments passed. Yet despite her obvious prowess, he realized she did not want to kill him, only defeat him. That reduced their battle to a siege of attrition: barring a lucky blow or one of them dropping their guard, it wouldn't end until one of them became too exhausted to continue.

  Morgiana got busy as soon as she reached the other side of the bridge. She tied the yak to one of the spires, then removed her veil and slipped off her robe and hauberk, revealing a long-sleeved silk shirt.

  "Do you have that concoction ready?" she asked Mephitis as she took off her belt.

  The apothecary had not been idle, either. She paused in mixing some liquids and tossed the thief a cloth pouch. "Blow this into the tracheae openings along one side. Once it reaches the main book lung, it will put the spider to sleep in moments."

  Morgiana nodded and tied the bag's strings around her neck as Mephitis went back to measuring potions.

  "What's that?" she asked as she pulled off her boots.

  "An antivenom, just in case."

  Morgiana paused to give her consternated look, but Mephitis didn't notice. Instead, she pulled her jambiya knife from its sheath. "I pray to Allah this works."

  "Mayv has more faith in our skills than supernatural aid," Mephitis commented.

  Morgiana ignored her. She didn't much care if her atheistic friends disparaged or even mocked her beliefs; she was the one who knew the truth, not them.

  Raising the knife to her face, she gripped the blade in her teeth as she jogged over to the bridge. Glancing across the ravine, she saw that Medb had arrived and heard her speaking to the spider, though they were too far away to make out their words. For the moment, the bulk of its abdomen blocked her from the view of its eyes, but that would change once they started fighting.

  She went up to the edge of the ravine and sat down, dangling her legs over the drop. She gripped the cable that ran along the length of the deck, to which that side of the wood planks had been attached, and hopped off the edge, to hang above the cataract nearly a thousand feet below. She studied the underside of the bridge, and saw that a net of smaller cables, which crisscrossed between the vertical cables that hung from the main suspension lines stretched between the stone spires, supported the deck. Reaching out, she took a hold of the net and made her way to the middle of the deck, before turning to face the near wall of the ravine. She hung for a few moments, breathing deeply to oxygenate her blood and relax her muscles, before raising one leg at the hip straight up against the front of her body while pulling herself up. When her head brushed the bottom of the deck, she gripped the net with the toes, and once she had a secure hold, she reached backward with first one hand, then the other, and pulled, stretching her torso to raise her hips, holding the other leg straight. Once her hips were high enough, she raised the free leg and grabbed the net with the other foot, and used her hands to pull herself level. Finally she began to inch her way towards the far end of the ravine, crawling along the bottom of the deck like an insect crawling along a ceiling.

  She had told Medb it would be slow going, but the massive woman had been unconcerned. She just hoped she could keep the spider from killing her before she got there.

  Medb had never fought a Leng spider before, though she had battled similar creatures, and its experience surprised her. She had expected that it would be, having decided it must be an old spider, but not to the degree it demonstrated. Its prowess was very nearly equal to her own, as was its strength and agility, but she felt glad of that under the circumstances, since it meant that she would not have to endanger herself fighting below her ability to keep from killing it. Had she wanted it dead, she could have simply blasted it to ash when it leapt at her, but she needed to keep it alive to keep the pass open and safe, and that meant leaving it relatively unhurt as well. The problem was that it could kill her with a lucky blow. She could subdue it with her magic, but there was no honor in that, and she had challenged it to single combat; she wouldn't cheat. She just had to keep it busy until Morgiana could get into place.

  Her right foot caught on something, but the ground consisted of smooth, weathered rock, with no exposed roots or stones or crevasses. She tried to pull it loose, but it wouldn't budge. It almost felt like it had become ensnared. She spared a quick glance down, and saw several strands of webbing wrapped around her ankle, all of which had been anchored to the ground. She realized the spider must have been laying trap lines as it fought her.

  Looking back up, she spotted one of the pedipalps swinging towards her. She raised the spear to parry the blow when the other swung in under her guard and struck her in the stomach. It lifted her off her feet and threw her backwards a few yards. She landed in a mass of webbing that cushioned her impact, but she stuc
k to the sticky strands, and loose threads flopped up and over her body from the force of the fall, holding her more firmly in place. Only her arms remained free.

  The spider leapt and landed over the top of her. It used its rear pair of legs to wrap silk around her ankles and calves, pinning them together, as it struck at her with its chelicerae, holding its fangs wide to impale her chest on either side. She raised the spear and jammed the shaft between the chelicerae, holding the fangs open as she pushed its body back. It used its pedipalps to beat at her, trying to knock her senseless, but she couldn't fend them off being as she used all her strength to keep from being bitten, and her evasions were limited due to the webbing entangling her hair. It was only a matter of time before it overpowered her.

  Where is Morgiana?!

  The master thief appeared on the spider's left side. She pulled a cloth bag from around her neck, opened it, and poured some its contents into her other hand, then took the jambiya out of her mouth and stepped up the spider's abdomen, blowing a powder at its exoskeleton. The spider saw her, but Medb knew it couldn't break off its attack or it would leave itself vulnerable to a spear thrust. It struck out at Morgiana with a leg, and she deftly hopped over it as she jogged forward and blew more dust at its body. She repeated that maneuver twice more, moving closer to the front, once ducking under another leg swipe. When she had emptied the pouch, she threw it aside and backed off, moving around behind Medb as she held her knife ready.

  Trusting Mephitis's concoction had been something of a gamble, but Medb had used it before. Against mammals it put them to sleep almost instantly when they inhaled it. She hoped it would work the same on spiders; the problem was getting it into the book lung, but as long as enough of it infiltrated the tracheae, it should make its way into the lung as the spider breathed. The question was, how long would that take?

  She felt the spider weaken, and it backed away from her. She turned the spear around to point the blade at it in case it tried to jump on her again, but it continued to back off, and it began to stagger. It weaved back and forth for some seconds as the pedipalps waved in confusion, but finally it collapsed onto its cephalothorax. The legs quivered and spasmed for some time after that, but eventually it lay still.

  Morgiana ran up to her and knelt down, careful to avoid the mass of threads. "Are you all right?"

  Medb grinned and chuckled. "As fine as any fly caught in a web."

  The thief smiled in a sarcastic manner. "I was wondering about your strategy. I find it strange that you needed to blunder into an enemy's trap in order to defeat him."

  Medb grunted in an irritated tone. "Hrmm. Just cut me loose."

  "Actually, I think Mephitis has a solvent that should do the trick." And Medb saw the apothecary hurrying over the bridge. "Besides, it's not every day we have you all tied up like this. That presents an opportunity we shouldn't pass up." And she winked at her.

  Medb frowned and narrowed her eyes. "I thought you were not interested in women."

  Morgiana grinned. "I'm not, and that's not what I meant. Mephitis may want to renegotiate your fee, and there's an artifact you found; the medallion?"

  "Damnaigh." She grimaced, closed her eyes, and snapped her head back against the webbing.

  The spider awoke slowly, confused as to where he lay, but when he tried to move his legs he found them immobilized. Awareness snapped back to him. He tried to rise, but felt himself held down. He scanned his surroundings with his eyes and saw his legs stretched out by ropes pulled taut and secured to stakes driven into the ground, while three more were looped over