“Tell them you’ve found him. Then say we have to move on.”
He could feel the command taking effect, the panic subsiding.
Doggins turned back to the others. “All right, we’ve found him.” His voice was brisk and calm. “Now let’s go.”
Niall said: “Form ranks and follow me.”
To his relief, they obeyed without question. If the moon had been visible, the deception would have been impossible; but it was hidden behind tall buildings to the south-east, and the darkness was almost total. A few moments later, they were marching eastward along the centre of the narrow street.
Niall was shaken. He had no doubt of what had happened. Marcus had been seized in the dark, probably by a spider that dropped from overhead. Any attempt to scream or struggle had been paralysed in advance by the brute force of the spider’s will. At this moment, he was probably being eaten. And even now, the danger was not over. If any of the others became aware that Marcus was no longer with them, there could still be an explosion of panic that would betray them to the spiders.
It was only when they marched across the next moonlit intersection, and no one glanced to right or left, that Niall knew he could relax. Doggins had said Marcus had been found, and no one thought of doubting his word.
Niall knew precisely where they were; he could see the map of the slave quarter as clearly as if it had been suspended in front of his eyes. Because it had been absorbed in a state of intensified concentration, every detail was sharp and clear. It showed him that the barracks lay two blocks to the north. The simplest approach would have been via that broad avenue that ran from the town hall to the river, but he rejected this as too conspicuous. Instead, he decided to continue along the narrow street and turn left at the next intersection.
On the other side of the broad avenue they entered an area that had at some time been devastated by fire. Most of the houses were empty shells, and there was a smell of burnt wood in the air. To the south, the moonlight shone on piles of rubble, and beyond that he could catch a glimpse of the river. At the next street, Niall ordered a left turn. Here the houses had also been damaged by the fire, but most were still standing. He experienced relief to see that there were no cobwebs overhead. It seemed unlikely that these crumbling buildings would conceal spiders.
Halfway along the street, a twisted tree was growing out of a ruined building, its branches overhanging the road. The house immediately opposite had collapsed, blocking the street with an irregular pile of rubble which at its lowest point was about six feet high. Niall chose this point to scramble across the barrier, leaning forward to test each step with his hands before entrusting it with his full weight. In this way, he reached the far side with nothing worse than a scraped wrist and bruised ankle, and turned to wait for the others. The moon was directly behind them, silvering the branches of the tree, and he observed that its leaves were rustling gently as if in a breeze.
He had time to register this as odd — since the night was windless — when the spider dropped from the darkness. It happened so swiftly that it seemed a flicker of shadow. There was no sound of impact, only the muffled cry of the man on whom it landed, so faint that none of the others seemed to notice it. While Niall stared for a moment, paralysed by unbelief, he saw the movement of the head that meant the fangs had plunged home. Then he shouted, and the others looked round in alarm. The man attacked had been the hindmost. If Niall had not seen the drop no one would even have noticed that he had disappeared. Now he knew what had happened to the missing slave when they were marching to the city of the beetles.
Without thinking about it, Niall began to scramble back up the rubble, knocking someone off balance as he did so. He reached the top in time to see the spider disappearing towards an open doorway, carrying the man’s inert body like a large doll.
His reaction was instinctive; he picked up the nearest large brick and hurled it. It made a soft thud as it struck the hairy body. Instantly, the spider stopped — Niall could sense its astonishment — dropped the body, and turned. Even as the stone had left his hand, Niall had realised it was a rash thing to do; now he tried to turn and run. It was impossible; his body had been immobilised, as if the muscles were encased in a block of solid ice. While the others watched in horror, the spider advanced towards him, its fangs extended; in its blank eyes, Niall could sense the intention to kill. He had committed the unthinkable act of attacking a spider.
Then someone screamed, and Niall realised that his body was not entirely paralysed. The thought mirror was burning his chest as if it had been heated in a fire. As he watched the casually slow movement — the spider seemed to be deliberately taking its time — he experienced a surge of bitter rage at this brutal assumption of total superiority and made a convulsive attempt to tear himself free. The mirror seemed to become painfully hot, so that he was afraid it would blister his chest, and it caused him to intensify the effort. Then, with the suddenness of a snapping cable, the spider’s will seemed to rebound on itself, and it flinched. As this happened, it was struck squarely by the concentrated force of Niall’s loathing. It cowered like a dog cringing away from a physical blow. Then its anger overruled its surprise, and Niall again became aware of the full force of its will as it struck back at the control centre of his nervous system.
This time he was expecting it, and fought back. Encouraged by his knowledge that the creature was not invincible, he directed his will as if it was a shout of rage. Again he saw it flinch; yet its will continued to hold him at bay, so his efforts were ineffective, like a man trying to hit something beyond reach. He tried to bear down on the spider, leaning forward as if walking into a gale, and felt that its will was crumbling. Then, with a suddenness that made him stagger, it abandoned the fight. For a moment, its legs seemed to buckle; then it turned and fled, seizing the inert body as it went. Niall experienced a surge of wild exultation, perhaps the greatest sense of triumph he had ever experienced in his life. Then, just as suddenly, he was overwhelmed by an immense weariness that passed downward from his shoulders to his feet. For a moment, his knees buckled, but hands prevented him from falling. By the time he was back on the level ground, the weariness had been replaced by a throbbing headache.
Doggins said: “How did you make it go away?”
“I’ll explain later.” His tongue faltered, as if he were drunk. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
As they hurried on, he could sense their fear and knew that the danger was greater than at any time since they had entered the slave quarter. If there were more spiders in these buildings, they would be attacked before they reached the end of the street. His own exhaustion made him feel helpless, and he was distracted by the burning pain on his chest. It was this actute physical discomfort that led him to reach inside his smock to feel the area with his fingertips; it seemed to be covered with tiny ulcers or blisters. Then, as an experiment, he turned the thought mirror so that its concave side faced inward. Instantly, the pain intensified so that he gasped aloud; Doggins gave him an anxious sideways glance. For perhaps a minute, his brain was like a boat tossed on a choppy sea of agony. Yet this pain finally succeeded in concentrating his will, and he experienced a sense of reestablished control. It was intoxicating, almost as exciting as vanquishing the spider. All his life, he had become accustomed to surrendering to a certain degree of pain or exhaustion. Now he had overruled the lifelong habit and for a moment felt like a man standing on a mountain top.
They had reached the end of the street and found themselves looking across another wide avenue, whose time-blackened buildings appeared at once monumental and shabby. Facing them on the opposite corner was a twenty-foot-high wall, its top surmounted by long spikes. The face of the wall was perfectly smooth, as if it had been cut out of solid rock. It looked as unclimbable as a vertical cliff. In the moonlight, the barracks reminded Niall of the citadel on the plateau.