Forest Kingdom Trilogy 3 - Down Among the Dead Men

them in two, but the severed ends flowed back together in a second, as though they’d never been parted. Hammer froze, startled, and the creature lashed out with a bony fist. Hammer threw himself aside at the last moment, and the fist swept on to smash into the corridor wall with enough force to crack several of the smaller bones. The creature recovered its balance in a moment, and turned its endless grin on the outlaws again. It felt no pain. It had been dead a long time, and was beyond such human weaknesses as suffering or compassion or mercy.
    “What the hell is this?” said Hammer. “Some kind of lich? Jack, you ever seen anything like this before?”
    “No,” said Scarecrow Jack. “There’s never been anything like this in the Forest. It has no place among the living.”
    “That’s where you’re wrong, nature boy,” said Wilde. “I’ve seen this before in the Forest. In the Tanglewood, to be exact, on the border of the Darkwood. The web is alive, a single living creature that devours its prey by enveloping it. And after it’s sucked the meat off the bones, it puts them back together again and sends them out into the world to find new prey. Pretty smart, for a web. Hard to kill, too.”
    Hammer glanced briefly at Wilde. “What were you doing in a dangerous place like the Tanglewood?”
    Wilde stiffened at the open contempt in Hammer’s voice. “I used to be a hero,” he said flatly. “Remember?”
    “That was a long time ago,” said Hammer.
    The creature suddenly lunged forward, and the outlaws scattered. Wilde drew an arrow from his quiver and nocked it to his bow. The creature spun around to face him, and Wilde sneered into its unwavering grin. He aimed and let fly in a single smooth motion, and the arrow punched through the creature’s skull and out the back, sending the creature staggering backward. It slammed up against a closed door, and Wilde fired three more arrows in quick succession. The heavy shafts smashed through the skull and sank deep into the wood of the door, pinning the skull to the door. It struggled to get free, but the deep-sunk arrows held it fast. Wilde looked at Hammer with all his old arrogance.
    “I’m as good as I ever was, Hammer, and don’t you forget it.”
    He broke off abruptly as the creature sagged back against the door and went limp. It hung lifelessly, supported only by the arrows through its skull. And then the strands of webbing that held the creature together writhed and coiled and fell away, dropping to the floor with soft pattering sounds. They humped and slithered across the floor with unnatural speed, and plunged back into the main mass of the web. Bloodstained bones collected in a heap on the floor, until all the webbing was gone and only the skull remained, pinned high up on the door. The jawbone was the last to fall, taking the endless grin with it.
    Jack started to say something, and then stopped and looked at the web. Something new was happening in the seething milky heart; he could feel it. Wilde and Hammer followed Jack’s gaze as the thick ropy strands writhed and twisted until the whole cloudy mass was boiling with slow, sluggish movements.
    Wilde nocked an arrow to his bow and fired it into the writhing mass. The arrow disappeared without trace. A long strand of milky webbing raised itself into the air like a tentacle, and Jack had to throw himself to one side as it suddenly lashed out at him. Hammer stood his ground and sliced through the tentacle with his sword. The severed end fell writhing to the floor. What was left of the tentacle rose farther out of the main mass until it was the same length as before. More tentacles surged up out of the web, clawing at the air like so many searching fingers. Jack backed quickly away.
    “We’ve got to get out of here, Hammer. There’s no way we can fight something like that!”
    “He’s right,” said Wilde quietly. “It can’t be killed. We’ll have to go back.”
    “No,” said Hammer. “There is a way.”
    He sheathed his sword on his hip and reached up for the hilt of the longsword on his back. The long leather-wrapped hilt seemed almost to leap into his hand, and the great length of blade swept out of its scabbard in one swift movement. The sword was almost seven feet long and six inches wide at the crosspiece. The weight must have been immense, but Hammer hefted the blade one-handed as though it weighed nothing. The gleaming steel had a sickly yellow sheen that was subtly