Spider Wars: Book Three of the Black Bead Chronicles (25 page)

Ramhorn, to a man, turned
and looked down at him, odd looks on their faces.

“
I told you not to mess
around,” Breyden said, a threat in his voice.

“
The storms have brought
them out of the Waste,” Cheobawn said, pulling free of Erin’s
embrace to step between Connor and the two tall boys. “They are
part of the reason it has been so cold this winter.”

“
So what are we supposed
to do if we find an egg?” Erin asked.

Connor looked at Cheobawn.

“
Don’t look at me,”
she said. “I have no idea. Technically, I think they are already
dead, but I think there is a worry that when the eggs thaw out there
might be something left inside that could cause harm.”

“
So we collect them to
burn?” Breyden asked.

Cheobawn looked at Erin.

“
I have no sense of the
outcome of that idea, do you?” Cheobawn asked.

Erin closed her eyes and
then shook her head.

“
To be honest,” she
said, “the whole idea of giant spider eggs makes my spine quiver.
Burning the eggs we find just adds to that fear. I cannot tell if it
is a true threat or just my own revulsion that is causing it.”

“
What’s the worst that
could happen?” Connor asked.

“
Oh, I don’t know,”
Meshel said sourly. “My imagination works just fine. What if the
heat thaws them out and a whole mess of really irritated baby spiders
crawl out of the flames.”

“
Oh, yeah,” Connor said
with relish. “Let’s do it! We could keep warm and kill spiders at
the same time.”

“
You are such a dolt,”
Meshel said, trying hard to keep his face from smiling. “I have a
better idea. You two come to sparring practice with us tomorrow to
work off some of that energy.”

“
I bet I could take you,”
Connor said, a calculating grin on his face.

“
It’s a bet. You clean
my weapons for a week if you lose,” Meshel nodded.

“
Done,” agreed Connor.

“
The cattle will not find
themselves, young Fathers,” Gann said as Cloud Eye tried to eat his
fur cap.

“
Gann is right,” Breyden
said. “The animals grow cold just standing. Let’s mount and
discuss the nature of spiders when and if we meet them.”

The
small red cows were not hard to find. The long hair of their shaggy
coats waved like bright pennants in the swirls and gusts of the wind
that had started to whip around the base of the mountains by mid
morning. It had just been a matter of following Orchard Trail to the
mowed hay fields just north of the fields of yesterday’s foray and
then following the fence line until they found the rough line of
tracks in the snow. They did not have to open the gates into the
field. Packsnow covered everything in the low places, as if the
winter wind wished to create a smooth canvas out of a rolling
landscape. Cheobawn knew they were close to the place where the small
herd had come over the fences when they found the bloody spot where
Star had died.

“
Goddess,” breathed
Breyden, studying the sign, “look at the size of those paws.”

“
It seemed so much bigger
when it was deciding whether to eat Cheobawn or not,” Erin said,
her voice quivering with the unwelcome memory

“
What were you thinking,
Little Mother,” Breyden asked.

“
She was not thinking,”
Connor snorted in disgust. “She never does. I will have hair as
silver as Zeff’s by the time I reach my majority.”

“
I was thinking how
beautiful it was,” Cheobawn said, smiling. “Mottled fur and green
eyes.”

“
You are a strange child,
you know that don’t you?” Erin said with a rueful shake of her
head.

Cheobawn laughed as she
kicked Cloud Eye into motion, setting her nose north to the place in
the ambient where a double handful of cattle burned bright in her
mind’s eye.

They found them over the
next rise. The wind grew stronger with every passing minute, burying
needles of cold into the side of anything that was facing that way.
The cows did not want to leave their shelter. They had found a low
spot in the lee of a great drift that still had the stubble of mown
hay poking through the packed snow beneath their hooves on which to
nibble. Cheobawn wanted to tell them they had found the worst place
to hide in a blizzard, as this drift would continue to grow, burying
them as the wind dropped its burden here, but she thought it best to
keep out of their ambient to keep them calm. With much shouting and
waving of arms, the cows were finally convinced that leaving was
better than staying. Out in the open, they remembered the way back to
the long houses, trotting back the way they had come without much
need to herd them in the right direction.

Problems arose as they
approached the destroyed drift the cattle had used to cross the fence
line from the lower pasture. Breyden and Connor stood their bennelk
in the path of the cows to prevent them from foundering in the broken
packsnow over the hedge, but the cows refused to turn towards Orchard
Trail because it put their faces into the sharp wind. They
determinedly resisted all efforts to convince them to do otherwise.
After a few attempts in which the cattle scattered in every
direction, Breyden had the team back the cattle off and reform the
herd. Then with Erin and her mount pushing them from the back, the
rest of the foray arranged their mounts in a loose half circle whose
open side pointed west into the wind. After that it became a
complicated game of dodge and evade between the bennelk and the
stubborn cattle. Cheobawn found she did not have to do more than stay
in the saddle, as Cloud Eye knew this game well and was far more
agile than the short-legged cows. By the time all the cows gave up
and had resigned themselves to discomfort, the bennelk were blowing
hard. Worse yet, the wind was full of the fine crystals of ogre snow,
a harbinger of worse things to come.

Cheobawn turned in the
saddle to look up at the Dragon Spine. A dense and roiling bank of
clouds had consumed the tallest peaks. The high elevation winds
dragging at tops of those clouds, pulling wisps and feathers out over
the lower hills, dropping its burden where they now rode. As she
watched, a streak of lightning lit up the dark clouds over the Spine
from the inside.

“
What kind of storm is
this?” Breyden yelled over the sound of the wind, following her
eyes, worry deep in his voice. “I have never seen lightning in
winter.”

“
Do not stop. There is
something unnatural in those clouds,” Erin called to them. “We
need to get under cover before this thing descends upon our heads.”

Cheobawn said nothing. What
could she say that would not cause harm? That the sky was full of
ships piloted by humans who were raining man-made lightning down upon
the high places. Who among them would sleep soundly after that,
knowing there was such a thing and not knowing whether the space
faring men thought of the lowly ground dwelling humans as friends or
as just disposable vermin.

“
The storm is not close.
We have time,” Cheobawn yelled to Breyden. “Let’s get them onto
Orchard Trail and heading south. If we can get to the deep trail in
the orchards we will have a bit of shelter from the worst of the
winds.”

The short red cows did not
mind plodding down the trail through the orchards but the humans
mounted atop the tall bennelk sat higher than the mounds of snow on
either side of the road, exposed to wind and blowing snow. By the
time they reached the end of the fruit trees and the beginning of the
flat, snow covered fields around the dome, the wind battered at their
bodies, forcing the riders to cling low to their saddles to keep from
being swept off. Worst of all, it had begun to snow in earnest. Erin
held up her mittened fist, bringing them to a halt. The red cows did
not need much convincing to stop. The wind was full of white stuff,
all of it falling sideways. It was like staring at a wall. Cheobawn
peered up towards the place where the line of the dome should have
been. It was only half a click away and should have filled half the
sky but she could see nothing. Cheobawn reined Cloud Eye around and
joined the others at Erin’s side.

“
We cannot linger here,”
Breyden bellowed over the sound of the wind. “The storm will only
grow worse.”

“
None of us can see where
we are going,” Connor shouted back.

“
The bennelk know the
way,” Erin yelled.

“
The cattle don’t,”
Breyden returned. “We could be chasing them in circles for hours.”

Cheobawn understood their
concern. It seemed a simple thing. Ride straight until you hit the
dome and then turn left, but they had all heard the stories. Zeff
liked to tell the story about the wrangler who had gone out in a
storm to check the cattle in the long houses, a distance of less than
a hundred paces. They had found him dead, curled in ball in the
middle of a field in the opposite direction from the long houses. He
had walked the path to the long houses a thousand times but, blinded
by snow, he had grown confused and walked in circles until the storm
sucked his life away.

Cheobawn sighed in
resignation and closed her eyes so she could better listen to the
ambient. The cattle, the bennelk, and the humans burned brightly
around her. She eased Cloud Eye to the front of the herd and looked
through the storm. Inside the dome the minds of the humans were
shielded and the wards, set in their greater circle, created their
own void. It was hard to pin down a place that one could call home.
She shook her head, trying not to let her mind be confused by all the
psi chatter and stilled her breath that she might listen harder. It
was the green things, living and growing inside the dome, the trees
and the hanging gardens atop every roof that finally marked the place
they needed to go. The warmth and the light of their life-force
created a glowing spot in the ambient.

“
Listen,” Cheobawn
yelled, turning in the saddle to look at Erin. “There is the
promise of life hidden in the cold. Choose to see that. It will draw
you onward.”

Erin’s eyes looked
doubtful inside her mask but she closed them all the same to listen.

“
I think I can feel it,”
she called back, “like a warm fire.”

“
Yes, that’s it,”
Cheobawn nodded, pleased that the older girl could hear it too.

“
Cheobawn, you lead,”
Breyden ordered decisively. “Erin, you take up the rear as driver.
The boys will string out downwind and keep the herd on Cheobawn’s
tail. Move. I don’t want to be out in this any longer than we have
to.”

Cheobawn closed her eyes and
urged Cloud Eye into motion.

We should find a place
under the trees,
Cloud Eye grumbled.
Someplace dry to rest my
cold belly while the winds fill the sky.

Go where I point you,
Cheobawn encouraged her.
There will be a warm stall and hot mash
when we are done.

The white engulfed them. She
could have been back in Oud’s misty room, with no walls or ceiling
to give her eyes a sense of depth. It became apparent right from the
start that it would be impossible to judge distance. Cheobawn started
counting. It helped to distract her from the numbing cold. At a
hundred, she sat up, shook the snow out off her parka and looked
back. The herd was still there, Connor behind her and then Meshel.
Breyden was a smudge of darkness and Erin was no more than a ghost in
the ambient. She turned, trusting that Breyden was keeping track of
his Ear.

Where were they? She started
doing the math in her head. Half a click, a little over 2300 paces.
She could walk that distance in half an hour, even with her short
legs. Surely the cattle were not going any slower than that. She
picked up her count where she left off; stopping at every hundred
count to check that the dome was still in front of her. She lost
track of how many hundreds had passed a few times, wishing that she
had thought to put a counting string on her saddle horn. The drovers
used them for counting heads but it surely would have worked for
counting time. She counted to 1500 and began to worry that they had
not found the dome yet. Surely they were nearly there. She could
almost touch the dome in the ambient, but maybe distances worked
differently in the realm of her psi. She decided to count to 2000
just to be on the safe side. When Cloud Eye stopped she kicked her in
the ribs.

Keep going,
Cheobawn
said.
We need to find the dome.

It is here,
Cloud Eye
said patently.