The Incorporated Knight (11 page)

             
Eudoric spent the day in prowling Dimshaw without success. At nightfall, he and Jillo returned to the village of Hessel West.

             
With the dawn, they were back in Dimshaw Wood. Eudoric had been plodding among massive oaken trunks for an hour when something caught his foot. He almost fell but saved himself by a thrust of the butt of the spear. He looked down but could see nothing. Nevertheless, his left boot was firmly fixed in place.

             
He struck with his falchion. The blade encountered some yielding, springy substance, to which it stuck fast. Pulling and twisting failed to tear it loose.

             
Eudoric thrust the point of his spear into the earth and set down the lantern. The falchion, which he had released, remained in mid-air, swaying gently. A rising breeze, which rustled the thick carpet of dead leaves, made the sword wobble more widely.

             
When he looked closely, Eudoric made out faint silvery gleams in the air. If he moved his head, these gleams, he discovered, formed a continuous streak. This streak began at the roots of an ancient oak beside him and rose slantwise into the branches above. The streak was tangent to the skin of his left boot and to the blade of the falchion.

             
Now Eudoric realized something that he had not known: Fraka's web was almost invisible. In full sunlight, one could see faint reflections from its surfaces; in dim light, one could probably not see it at all.

             
This explained how Fraka could make a living from the beasts and birds of Dimshaw. Be they never so clever, they could not avoid the strands of a web that they could not see. Hence the forest was large enough to furnish game for a single predator of Fraka's kind.

             
Looking up along the strand of web on which he was caught and moving his head, Eudoric made out more shimmering gleams among the branches and saw that he was at the edge of a monstrous web, covering several acres. Then he saw something else.

             
A large, black, hairy object, moving briskly among the strands of the web, was fast approaching.

             
Eudoric had a moment of panic. Fraka, he saw, had a body as big as a cask and eight hairy legs, each longer than a man is tall. As she came closer, it transpired that the strand of web on which he was caught was not the only one in that neighborhood. Several others slanted down to the ground nearby. If he had avoided the one he had struck, he would have blundered into another strand.

             
In his panic, he sought to free himself from the web at all costs. Snatching up the lantern, he lifted the lid to apply its little flame to the strand that prisoned him. At that moment, however, the breeze —as he had feared it might—freshened and blew out the flame.

             
Lowering herself on the nearby strands that slanted down to the ground, Fraka came close enough for Eudoric to see the fangs that tipped her foremost pair of mandibles. A foot long each, they resembled the ends of a pair of bull's horns: dark, shiny, curved, and needle-pointed. Her four forward eyes gleamed like great, round, dark jewels.

             
Eudoric thought of trying to struggle out of his boot. Without help, however, this would take more minutes than Fraka would need to reach him. He wondered if he could unstrap his crossbow, charge it, and get off one quarrel before Fraka reached him. If he failed to kill with the first shot, he would be doomed, tethered as he was. And where in that bulbous body lay the vital organs? Perhaps a lusty thrust of the boar spear between the mandibles
...

             
While these thoughts flashed through his mind, Eudoric fumbled for his igniter. The urge to get free of the web overrode all else.

             
He brought out the little copper device, consisting of a tinder box with an open compartment on top and a little hammer bearing a piece of flint in its jaws. His hands shaking, Eudoric pulled out the little drawer containing the tinder. With forced deliberation, he put several pinches of tinder into the tray. Shielding the igniter with his free hand, he snapped the hammer.

             
The igniter missed fire. Fraka was now almost within reach of his spear, and another stride would bring her foremost legs upon him. Her eight eyes— four in front, two on top, and one on either side— gleamed like onyx, and her mouth parts worked hungrily.

             
Then Eudoric remembered the signal code. Frantically, he seized the hilt of his falchion and gave a series of tugs—long-short-short, long-short-short.

             
Fraka hesitated, her forelimbs poised above Eudoric. The knight repeated the jerks, again and again.

             
Instead of pouncing on Eudoric, Fraka reared back on her after legs and spread the four forelimbs, as if offering him her nether side. He noticed that the spider's underside was buff-colored, and the hairs on the belly were short and silvery instead of long and black like those on the rest of her body.

             
As Eudoric repeated the signal, Fraka remained immobile in her spread-eagled pose. On her underside, just below the narrow waist, Eudoric saw what he supposed to be her genital opening, moving and working as if in lustful anticipation.

             
Eudoric's mind raced, wondering how long he could make Fraka remain in her attitude of "Take me, I am yours!" Any time, the spider might get it into her cephalothorax that he was not, after all, her true love. Then she would eat him, as spiders of more usual size devoured flies.

             
He might pick up the spear, which stood upright in the turf, and plunge it into her; but that would probably break the spell that held her. If he failed to kill with the first thrust, she would finish him in her death throes.

             
Fraka's forelimbs twitched, as if she were coming out of her nuptial trance. Eudoric jerked the falchion, and the spider once more froze in position.

             
Stooping, Eudoric again shielded the igniter with his hand. Watching Fraka, he cautiously held the device below the strand of web that touched his boot. Then he waited for a lull in the breeze.

             
The wind took a long time to die. Eudoric had to jerk the web again to immobilize the arachnid. As he did so, a sudden puff of wind blew all the tinder out of the tray of the igniter.

             
Cursing under his breath, Eudoric reloaded the tray. At last came another lull. Quickly, Eudoric snapped the hammer. The sparks spat into the tinder, which briefly blazed up.

             
For a few precious seconds, the flame engulfed the web, which hissed and began to burn. Yellow flames ran up and down the strand, which parted like a snapping fiddle string. The falchion fell to the ground, and Eudoric found his leg free.

             
The knight snatched his spear and lurched back beyond Fraka's reach as the spider came abruptly out of her trance. When a flame ran up the burning strand to one of her legs, she whipped around with surprising agility and rapidly climbed the strands by which she had descended.

             
Dropping his spear, Eudoric unslung his crossbow, cocked and loaded the weapon, and aimed. The after end of Fraka's bulbous abdomen would have been an easy shot. But Eudoric did not shoot.

             
Fraka continued her scramble, growing smaller. The flame ran on up the burning strand to its junction with another. It became two flames, eating away the web in divergent directions; then three and four and six.

             
Fraka continued her flight until she was a mere dot in a distant tree. Some of the flames in the nearer parts of the web fizzled out. Others spread; then they, too, died. A goodly part of the web had been destroyed.

             
Eudoric unloaded, unbent, and shouldered his crossbow. Guided by his tree-trunk blazes, he made his way back to the edge of the wood.

-

             
Baron Rainmar's mouth fell open. "Thou—allowed-est—this—monster—to escape unscathed? No jest?" he gasped. "In the name of the God and Goddess, why? What demon of stupidity possessed thee?"

             
Eudoric smiled. "Well, sir, ere I set out, you lectured me on knightly conduct. You commanded me to adhere most punctiliously to the rules thereof. One such rule is to protect the female kind; another is not to betray one who has given the knight her love.

             
"I'm no spider of the family Gigantaraneae, as Your Lordship knows. Yet it was patent that, as a consequence of my tugging on her web, Dame Fraka saw in me her destined lover. She's not the sort of mate with whom I'd willingly consort; yet the fact that she was a female, who in her peculiar way did care for me, kept me from slaying her.

             
"Forsooth, 'tis not a matter of much pith and moment. Fraka confines herself to Dimshaw Wood. If you'd guard your folk from her, forbid them to enter the wood. She does none harm where she abides."

             
Rain mar struggled with his emotions. He tugged at two fistfuls of red beard. "Thou—thou—idiot! Ass! Fool! Witling! Incondite knave! I'll teach thee to play japes with me! Guards! Seize me this runagate! We shall see what ransom-—-"

             
"Better not, my lord," said Eudoric, pointing at Rainmar's middle the crossbow, which, to furnish color to his tale, he had cocked and loaded while narrating his adventure. "Hands off your weapons, sirrah! Order your men out of sight. Now shall you accompany me until I'm safely on my way. Remember, at this range the square-headed bolt can punch through armor plate as through that new writing stuff called paper."

             
With Eudoric s weapon trained on his kidneys, Rainmar preceded Eudoric out the front door, under the portcullis, and across the drawbridge to the greensward where Jillo held the horses. An instant later,
Eudoric and Jillo were galloping away, while a fuming Rainmar screamed orders for pursuit.

-

             
The next time a band of masked robbers stopped the Zurgau-Kromnitch coach, a score of stout men-at-arms, lent by Sir Dambert and Baron Em
m
erhard for the occasion, rushed upon the attackers. The brigands lost five of their number, one to Eudoric's sword. Another lived long enough to confess, under torture, to having been sent by Baron Rainmar.

             
Eudoric filed a civil suit in the imperial courts against the robber baron. The law's delays being what they were, the suit was still winding its way through the maze of courts long after Eudoric, Rainmar, and all the others mentioned in this tale were in their graves.

             
At Castle Hessel, Maragda wept.

-

             
When Eudoric's stagecoach line was running smoothly, its proprietor thought of expansion. He would extend the line from Kromnitch to Sogambrium, the capital of the New Napolitanian Empire. He would order a second coach. He would hire a scrivener to relieve him of bookkeeping
...

             
The initial step would be to inspect the Sogambrian end of the route. So in Zurgau and Kromnitch he posted notices that, on a certain day, he would, instead of turning around at Kromnitch to return to Zurgau, continue on to Sogambrium, carrying those who wished to pay the extra fare.

             
Eudoric got a letter of introduction from his silent partner, Baron Emmerhard of Zurgau. The letter presented Eudoric to the Emperor's brother, the Archduke Rolgang.

             
"For a gift," said Emmerhard, fingering his graying beard, "I'll send one of my best hounds. Nought is done at court without presents."

             
"Very kind of you, sir," said Eudoric.