Forest Kingdom Trilogy 3 - Down Among the Dead Men

saw anything like this.”
    “It’s obviously been here some time,” said Hammer. “No spider could weave a web that size in a few hours.”
    “It wasn’t spiders that made this web,” said Jack firmly. “No spider spins like that. There’s no pattern to the strands. No pattern that makes any sense.”
    “Maybe a strange kind of web means a strange kind of spider,” said Hammer.
    “Is this what happened to the people here?” said Wilde.
    “How the hell should I know?” said Hammer. “I suppose it’s possible, but I’d bet against it. If they had been attacked by spiders, the bodies would still be here, wouldn’t they?”
    “Not necessarily,” said Jack. “Some spiders drag their prey back to their webs and spin cocoons around them. Then they either store the bodies to eat later or use them to lay their eggs in. The larvae eat their way out of the body after they hatch.”
    The outlaws looked at one another, and then peered into the web to see if any of the unmoving shadows were human in shape.
    “We’ll have to go back and try another way,” said Wilde.
    “We can’t,” said Hammer flatly. “There’s no other way that will get us down to the cellar. We’ll just have to cut our way through this mess, that’s all. Cut it … or burn it.”
    He gestured to Wilde, and he stepped warily forward and thrust his torch at the nearest clump of webbing. It blackened and steamed, but wouldn’t break or shrivel. Wilde pulled the torch back and looked almost challengingly at Hammer, who scowled at Wilde and then at the web.
    “All right, we do it the hard way. Wilde, you take the left, I’ll take the right. Jack, hold the lantern and watch out for spiders.”
    Jack took the lantern from him, and Hammer stepped forward and hacked at the nearest clump of webbing with his sword. It parted reluctantly under the blow and clung stickily to the blade. Hammer had to use both hands to jerk the sword free. Wilde smiled mockingly as he placed his torch in a wall bracket, safely out of the way. Hammer lifted his sword to cut the web again, and then stopped as the two separated strands of webbing before him slowly wound themselves together again. Wilde backed away. Jack bit his lower lip uncertainly. He was starting to get a very bad feeling about the web.
    Deep in the webbing, something moved. A shadow stirred in the middle of the milky haze. It was tall, like a man, and the three outlaws watched uneasily as it moved slowly toward them, walking through the thick strands of webbing like a man striding through mists. Jack and Wilde fell back a pace as it drew nearer, but Hammer held his ground, sword at the ready. The shadow loomed up against the boundary of the web, looking more and more like a man. Except it was thinner and bonier than any man should be. It reached out a hand toward Hammer, and the webbing bulged outward and split open. Milky strands parted stickily as the bony hand thrust forward. The fingers were nothing more than yellowed bone, crusted with old dried blood and rotting strings of meat. The web bulged out again, stretching and tearing, and like some obscene mockery of birth, the creature clawed its way out of the web and stood before the three outlaws, smiling a smile that would never end.
    It was mostly bone, a living skeleton of a man who had died long ago. Scraps and strings of decaying meat still clung here and there, to bones stained with blood that had dried long before, but it was the web that held the grisly figure together and gave it shape and purpose. Where muscle and sinew should have been, thick milky strands glistened slickly in the dim light, curling and twisting slowly around the dead bones like dreaming snakes. The creature looked unhurriedly from one outlaw to another. Nothing moved in the empty eye sockets, but still it saw them, and its death’s-head grin never wavered.
    “Is it alive or dead?” said Jack.
    “It’s dead,” said Hammer. “One way or another.”
    He stepped forward and cut at the creature’s throat with his sword—a fast, vicious, professional blow that should have torn the creature’s head from its bony shoulders. Instead it raised an arm with inhuman speed and blocked the blow easily. The blade jarred against the solid bone and glanced away harmlessly. Hammer quickly recovered his balance and cut deliberately at the raised arm, aiming for the strands of webbing that held it together. The sword tip sliced easily through the milky strands, cutting