Artemis Awakening Read online

Griffin wished he felt confident of his ability to climb, but tree climbing was a skill he had never mastered. The trees where he had grown up had been of the sort that shed their lower limbs to create a clear understory, not a trait that invited climbing.

  He settled for clambering up on a large, roughly cut block of stone that, from its proximity to a long watering trough, was probably a mounting block. At last he could get a clear look at what had just crashed out of the fringes of the forest and into the cleared lands that surrounded the village.

  By the standards of the world Griffin had left behind him, this wasn’t a very large machine. Adara had compared it in size to a cow, but that description only worked if the cow was taller than usual and had very long, thin legs holding up a flattened, roughly ovoid body and no head at all. Griffin thought her second comparison to a spider was better. Of course, this spider was shaped from a silvery-grey metal, dulled and dented, though whether from abuse or neglect he could not say.

  The machine paused in midstride, extending a probe which it used to inspect the area around it.

  Adara said, “Is that a machine?”

  Bruin replied. “It is. I have seen pictures of such in the Old One’s library. Once, when I was about your age, a diving pro found the carcass of something like that stuck in a reef.”

  Griffin called. “That’s a machine. Absolutely. It may look like a spider, but it’s a machine. What is it doing here?”

  As he spoke, the machine sucked the probe back into itself and began to move purposefully toward the village. When Griffin had first glimpsed it, the metal spider had seemed to move quickly. Now he saw that the front limbs were damaged, causing the whole construct to sway from side to side. However, despite this handicap, the metal spider moved with deliberation and purpose.

  The gates between the houses on the side of the village nearest to the spider had been closed. The one with which the cobbler and Mistress Cheesemaker had been struggling showed evidence of weather warping that had left a gap between the two sides of the gate. Nonetheless, the heavy, metal-bound wooden planks would have provided a considerable obstacle even to mounted warriors.

  “That should slow it down,” said Terrell with satisfaction, peering out through an arrow slit.

  “Maybe so,” the miller retorted, “but we’ve other gates to close. Come along.”

  Terrell did so. As he turned away, a hiss followed by a crackling reverberated through the air. Between one breath and the next, the gate that had sheltered Terrell burst into flames.

  * * *

  Adara gasped as the massive wooden boards caught fire as if they were no more than fine shavings. The metal straps that bound the boards melted like wax.

  The spider did not wait for the flames to die back, but came forward through the fire, staggering past the burning gate onto the village green. Once again it stopped and extended that long limb—she wondered if this was some sort of nose—and began feeling the air.

  “Clear the green! Clear the green!” yelled Master Cobbler, his cracked voice breaking as he raced toward the ancient bell that for so many years had rung alarm. These alerts had been for fire or flood—never once for raid or attack.

  “Don’t touch the bell!” Bruin bellowed, thudding from his tree onto the turf. “What good would bringing in the men do? That thing would cook them. Take cover and leave dealing with this spider to us.”

  Master Cobbler might well have asked what Bruin thought he and his students could do, but he had good sense not to argue. He turned toward his house, still crying the alarm. Mistress Cheesemaker’s strong voice could be heard giving orders—sensible ones about closing shutters and getting pails of water ready. She also sent some of the swifter children to warn the men in the fields not to come into the green. Adara, leaping down from her tree, appreciated the woman’s practicality as never before.

  As Adara landed, she heard a shrill whistle, followed almost instantly by the thundering of hooves on the turf. She knew that Terrell had summoned Coal, his favorite mount. A second rumble of hooves announced the coming of Helena the Equestrian, doubtless astride dapple-grey Moquino.

  “Stay spread out,” Bruin ordered. “If that thing snorts fire again, best we give it small target. Griffin Dane, do you know anything about how we might kill this thing?”

  “Not this one in particular,” Griffin replied, his voice level. “Not enough to tell you its strengths or recite its specs.”

  “Weaknesses?” Bruin said.

  “It’s broken,” came the quick reply. “Certainly no one crafted it to move in that halting fashion.”

  “Can it spit more than fire?” Adara asked.

  “Possibly,” Griffin said. “I’m sorry. You want one of my brothers, not me.”

  He sounded despairing, but Adara noted with approval that Griffin made no effort to run or hide. Unarmed, unarmored, as ignorant as any of them, still, he would hold his ground.

  Helena the Equestrian came to a halt near where Terrell had just swung up onto Coal’s bare back. Unlike her student, who bore no weapons, she carried a short lance.

  “I was practicing,” she said. “Something in the urgency with which Coal jumped the fence told me I should not come empty-handed. What is that thing?”

  “A machine,” Terrell said shortly. “It spits fire. I would be nothing but charred flesh had I not gone to help Master Miller close the third gate.”

  He looked pale, as anyone who had experienced such a close call had the right to be, but Adara thought this was the paleness of anger, not fear.

  Strange, she thought. None of us is particularly afraid. Could that be because despite the reek of smoke in the air this attack is so unreal?

  A flash came into Adara’s mind from Sand Shadow—the puma informing her that she was nearly insane from fright, as anyone with any sense would be, that humans were more stupid than a kitten yet in spots who drowns chasing its own reflection in a pool.

  Yet the puma did not run. Her attachment to Adara was too strong. Even as a mother cat would fight to protect her young, so Sand Shadow would stand with Adara.

  So with my choices, I hold two lives, Adara thought.

  “What is it doing?” Terrell asked, stroking Coal along the crest of the stallion’s neck. “Since that spider burned through the gate, it has simply stood there, moving that thin arm through the air.”

  “I think,” Griffin Dane said, “that it is trying to sort out conflicting signals. From how it’s acting, I wouldn’t be surprised if its sensor array is damaged.”

  “What is it sensing for?” Helena asked.

  The answer came in motion not words. The spider’s thin limb stiffened and pointed directly at Griffin Dane. All around the outer band of the ovoid body colored lights began to race faster and faster, red becoming orange, orange fading into …

  “It’s going to spit again!” Adara shouted. “Griffin, get away. Weave about. With those broken legs it cannot easily move after you!”

  She followed her own advice, but with an addition that came to her in a flash of inspiration. If the spider was injured, then it might be distracted in its efforts to locate Griffin and so be delayed in spitting that deadly fire.

  Running with all the speed at her command, Adara pounded over the green until she came alongside the spider. She could feel the heat of it. Although the air was full of the odors of hot metal and burning wood, there was an alien note, as if something else was burning as well.

  Adara didn’t know whether or not to be insulted that, thus far, the metal spider did not seem to notice her or think her worthy of attention.

  Well, then, she thought, before it changes its mind, I must attack. One thing is for sure. I won’t get another chance this good.

  Pushing off from the ground, Adara jumped as high as she could, imagining her body elongating as Sand Shadow’s did when the puma leapt, that her spine was stretching, her fingers clawing out at the tips. The spider’s legs were long in proportion to its broad, flat body, but its back was not
all that much higher than the top of Adara’s head. Adara landed neatly atop the metal carapace, clawed for a hold in the cracked and dented surface.

  Adara’s one worry in making this mad leap had been that the spider’s metal would be hot but, although she felt warmth, the surface on which she had landed was not unbearable. Likely the heat she had felt was from where the spider built up its spitting fires.

  When Adara’s weight hit the spider’s back, the crippled legs shook. The spider pitched forward. For a moment, Adara thought it might fall. Then, making a strange, whirring noise, it caught itself.

  As assured as she would ever be of her perch, Adara sought how she might wound the thing further. She noted that some of the dents in the carapace ran along seams. Normal human fingers could not have taken advantage of these gaps, but the tips of her claws came to a sharp point and were much stronger than ordinary fingernails.

  An image flashed into Adara’s head from Sand Shadow, filling her in on what was going on around her. The spider had extended two more of those slim limbs. One—one of those “nose” ones—was examining Adara, the other, pointed like a spear, but flexible, was moving as if to pierce or slap. Despite the obvious threat, Adara was reluctant to jump down—after all, she might find herself diving into a gout of the spider’s fire. Instead, she prepared to dodge, her claws still prying at the seam.

  Adara sensed Sand Shadow pacing forward, willing to attack, though uncertain where to strike such an unfamiliar opponent. Here was no back to leap upon, no neck to bite and break. Then a thudding of hooves against the turf heralded someone new entering the fight.

  Terrell, astride Coal, came galloping forward, Helena’s lance tucked beneath his arm. To avoid the chance of being hit by the spider’s fire, he was angling in from the left side. Adara felt the lance impact solidly against one edge of the spider’s ovoid body, heard something drop to the turf. The spider shuddered but it did not fall. She felt something click and heard the now familiar whirring noise.

  Sand Shadow’s images told Adara that Terrell’s lance had broken off the long limb that had been about to swat at Adara—but the impact had nearly unseated the man.

  Now the spider had turned its attention from the annoyance on its back to the one that had slammed into it. Terrell was wheeling Coal about for another pass, ignoring that panels on the spider’s side were sliding open, revealing an area that glowed an ominous red.

  Tugging back with her claws in the seam, Adara met with neither blood nor flesh, but rather some sort of padding. Beneath this were an assortment of items so unlike anything she had seen that she could not even put a name to them.

  Still, the spider carries them beneath both hide and padding. Messing them about could not do it any good.

  Adara was reaching in to poke at the spider’s guts when a memory of Bruin scolding her not soon after she had come to live with him rose fresh to mind. “Don’t stick your finger into a bees’ hive unless you’re asking to be stung.” There had been neither bees nor hive involved, but young as she was, she’d understood.

  Therefore, although the spider was rocking back and forth, and Sand Shadow was flooding her mind with terror-filled images that illustrated how precarious Adara’s position was, Adara took a moment to reach for her bone-handled hunting knife.

  With the claws of her left hand firmly anchored in the spider’s hide, she stabbed into the spider’s guts.

  * * *

  Griffin hardly knew how to react when Adara leapt upon the metal spider. What did she think she could do barehanded against a war machine? He was about to shout a warning, to try and convince her to get down, when Bruin’s gravelly voice spoke close to his ear.

  “Don’t distract her. It’s too late for that. In any case, Sand Shadow tells Honeychild that Adara hasn’t gone completely mad. Nor is she alone in the fight…”

  Bruin pointed. Griffin saw that Terrell—now mounted on a magnificent black horse—had wrested a long, heavy staff or spear from the hands of the older woman who had just arrived on a strongly built dapple-grey. From little signs between them, Griffin guessed that the woman must be Helena the Equestrian, whom Mistress Cheesemaker had mentioned was Terrell’s teacher.

  Terrell handled the weapon—a fragment of one of his brother Alexander’s lectures on antique weapons cropped up and identified it as a lance—as if he knew how to use it. Clamping the lance firmly beneath his right arm, Terrell bore down upon the metal spider, orienting on the side from which tentacles had extended to harass Adara.

  Almost more rapidly than Griffin could take in the scene, Terrell’s lance had sliced into the probes the spider had extended toward Adara. They dropped from the main body, their silvery length twitching on the turf for a moment before falling still.

  As soon as he had finished warning Griffin back, Bruin had seized up a heavy shovel with a thick blade from among the tools left near the fence and begun lumbering toward the spider. Honeychild loped at his side. Both bear and man were massive in contrast to the thin-legged spider, but Griffin knew all too well how deceptive such contrasts were.

  Terrell had regained his seat and was wheeling the black horse for another pass at the spider. Whether he was ignoring the threat offered by the red lights glowing around the spider’s rim or he simply hadn’t realized their significance, Terrell pressed his mount forward, lance lowered.

  He was not alone. Although she’d given up her lance to Terrell, Helena had seized a garden hoe. As Terrell came in from the left, she took the right, dragging the hoe against the spider’s crippled legs, using her horse’s strength to pull the war machine off balance.

  Slower than the equestrians, Bruin showed himself at least as powerful. By the time he arrived, the spider had spat a small, ineffectual burst of flame at Terrell, but otherwise seemed too confused to take effective action. Bruin began battering at the weakest of the front limbs, using the blade of the shovel as a club.

  In the midst of all this chaos, Adara maintained her seat on the bouncing and jolting spider. Griffin could see rhythmic motion as she dug or probed at something with the long blade of her hunting knife. Every so often, something small flew up and away.

  She’s gotten through the protective armor somehow, Griffin thought, and is pulling the works apart. Doesn’t seem to have hurt the thing so far, but doubtless it has redundancies.

  He longed to join the fight, but knew himself too well. He’d done his share of close skirmishing—no one with six brothers of such active natures as his kin could fail to do so. From these he had learned his limitations—and how in close quarters fighting allies often fouled each other.

  Griffin noticed that both Honeychild and Sand Shadow seemed to have reached the same decision. The demiurges stood back, watching the action with close attention. Remembering what Bruin had said, Griffin wondered if bear and puma were somehow relaying information to their human associates. Certainly, that did not seem impossible—especially given the precision with which the two riders and Bruin managed to move around each other.

  Had the metal spider not been damaged from the start, Griffin doubted that even this concerted attack could have harmed the thing. As he watched, it occurred to him that whatever had damaged its legs had also damaged its firepower. The bursts of flame it shot forth were erratic and far, far weaker than the one that had taken out the protective gate.

  If luck holds … Griffin was thinking, when that luck broke.

  Terrell, grown a bit overbold, had again charged his black at the spider. He was aiming directly for the front, for the area from which the initial bursts of flame had come. It was possible the spider had held reserves for just such a moment, because when Terrell came on, it spat.

  Most of the blast caught the black horse squarely on head, neck, and chest. Bent to brace his lance, Terrell was spared the worst of the flame’s impact, but he lost his seat when the black horse screamed and reared, backing away from the flames.

  Terrell was flung away, crumpling unconscious on the turf in fron
t of the spider. Griffin heard Helena shout, Bruin bellow, but he knew that neither of them could abandon their own places to help the fallen man. Griffin was running before he realized he’d made any decision to do so, his hands grabbing hold of Terrell and pulling him out of the range of both the pitching, rearing stallion and the metal spider.

  If the man has a broken back, this is absolutely the worst thing to do, Griffin’s inner chatter noted. But I don’t suppose a broken back is anything to worry about if the options are being left to be trampled or burned to death.

  A ferocious scream cut through the mingled sounds of the skirmish. For the briefest of moments, Griffin thought the sound might be Terrell crying out at this rough handling. Then he realized the source was Adara, screaming as a wildcat would scream. He glanced up and saw her face contorted with fury, both hands gripping the hilt of her knife as she brought it down with sharp, strong stabs directly into the body of the metal spider.

  Griffin couldn’t spare attention to watch, but somehow he felt certain the spider didn’t have a chance. There had been something about how Adara had moved that said she was going to rip the monster’s heart out—whether or not it had a heart.

  Does she love this Terrell? Griffin thought with something like shock. For a brief moment, he felt regret—though whether at his choice to help the other man or that he hadn’t realized how much he cared for Adara he had no idea. Whatever the seed of that bitter emotion, Griffin didn’t let it stop him. He dragged Terrell over to the water trough, laid the man flat, then used his cupped hands to scoop out water. The black horse had not intercepted all the flames and Terrell’s heavy trousers were smoldering, although the thick wool seemed to have resisted catching fire.

  Griffin was checking for Terrell’s pulse—and relieved to find it beating strongly—when he heard a heavy door slam and running feet on the grass.

  “Is he alive?” Mistress Cheesemaker asked. “I’ve some skill with injuries…”

  She shouldered Griffin out of the way. One of her daughters—Martine, Griffin vaguely remembered—began handing her bottles from a leather satchel.