Spider Wars: Book Three of the Black Bead Chronicles (24 page)

“
Are they going to get you
in trouble?” she asked, suddenly feeling incredibly proud of him.

“
Let them try,” Connor
said with a predatorial grin. “I have just cause to take them on
and they know it. Tell me again about the eggs that glow in the dark.
What happens if they fall near a dome? How hard is it going to be
finding them and destroying them?”

“
They’re bio
luminescent,” she reminded him. “I think if we go out just after
sunset they would still be glowing, even a couple hours after the
light fades.”

“
How do we kill them?”
he asked at he chewed on his fourth sausage link.

“
They’re eggs. Maybe all
we have to do is squash them?” she ventured to guess.

“
Pfft,” her Third
snorted in contempt at her amateur efforts at strategy. “They are
tough enough to get shot through that black thing and fall all the
way down to the ground. I bet we’ll need something big and heavy to
break them open first and then we can squish whatever is inside.
Besides, you said they froze and died out in space. We may have to
burn them to thaw them out first. I threw a frozen egg in a bonfire
once. It exploded. That would be worth trying,” he said with
relish.

Cheobawn suddenly had an
image of giant bonfires filled with Spider eggs sizzling and hissing
and disgorging their half frozen contents. She shuddered and pushed
her bowl of breakfast pudding away.

“
Let’s talk about
something else,” she said, picking up her teacup.

“
You still haven’t told
me about your fight with Mora,” he prompted.

“
Yeah, that,” Cheobawn
said as she put her cup down and started playing with her spoon. “I
came out of the com-sphere after talking to the Ghostman and she was
sitting there with a look that said she had been eavesdropping and
had heard everything. We started arguing. She said I liked my secrets
because it made me feel important. She said Tam complained about me,
about how I did not tell him things,” Cheobawn looked up into
Connor’s face and the growing horror there. “I got so angry. I
accused her of turning Hayrald into her toady. Oh, Connor, the look
on her face … If the desk hadn’t been between us I think she
might have hit me.”

Connor put his fork down and
uttered a long list of his favorite curses, all of them fervently
meant and spoken from the heart.

“
Did Tam …” she asked,
“He didn’t tell Hayrald he was having second thoughts about
inviting me into the Pack, did he?”

“
Bloody hell, of course
not!” Connor said more loudly than he should have. Elder heads
turned towards them, disapproving looks and meaningful harrumphs
coming at them from all sides. Connor leaned closer and continued in
a softer voice. “Gah, she should talk, our First Mother, mistress
of all the secrets in the world,” he said, his ire apparent in
every curve of his body. “Tam worries that he will lose you. That
you will take it into your head to join some other Pack or worse,
take the Forever Vows and disappear into the Temple. If he talks to
Hayrald, he does it because he needs advice on how to make you
happier.”

“
I would never leave you.
You are the only people I love,” Cheobawn choked out. “She
threatened to send me away, Connor.”

A look akin to terror
flashed across her Third’s face before he got his emotions under
control and replaced it with something a little more self-confident.

“
She was bluffing. You are
part of a Pack. Even a First Mother has to follow the rules about
Packs. You gotta try to not make her mad at you from now on, though.
At least until Tam and Megan get out of the gods cursed Temple.
Promise me, hear?”

“
OK,” Cheobawn said,
“I’ll try but Connor, I don’t know if I am strong enough. She
knows I am mad at her and it makes her mean.”

Connor scrubbed his face
with his hands and then ran his fingers through his ebony hair.

“
Alright, listen,” he
said as he bit his lip in deep thought. “I am going to talk to
Phillius about this just to get some advice but in the meantime, stay
away from her and if you have to be near her, make sure you are not
alone.”

“
Can we trust any of the
Coven’s Husbands?” Cheobawn said, shaking her head doubtfully.
“Hayrald said that he understood if I decided to hate him but that
I would forgive him one day, though he would not admit to any crime
against me.”

“
By all the gods,”
Connor hissed, his fist convulsing around his butter knife. “You
are not allowed to talk to anyone in the inner circle. I have
decided. Tell them they have to talk to me instead. Tell them I said
so.”

It was a ridiculous strategy
at best but for some strange reason this made Cheobawn happy. She
smiled and meant it for the first time that day. It seemed a good
omen for their foray out to the orchard pastures. The smile lasted
long after they went to the weapons locker and was still hanging on
at the corners of her mouth after they left the changing room but she
lost it completely as they approached the South Gate.

A young Father name Urbo
stood at the guard post but he had company. Raddoc, Mora’s Husband
and Hayrald’s Second, stood at his side. The Elder looked out of
sorts. Cheobawn, careful not to make eye contact, studied him out of
the corner of her eye. He looked stretched taught and spread thin,
the way someone who had been up all night dealing with problems of a
pressing nature might look. Mora and the Coven had been busy while
Blackwind Pack slept. Raddoc was in charge of the day to day business
of the dome and the security teams who watched over it. She was not
surprised by the words that came out of his mouth next.

“
Blackwind?” Raddoc
said, consulting a check list he held in his hands. “Right.
Attached to Ramhorn’s round-up foray. The weather is still clear
and cold but the Watch Eyes say something is brewing beyond the
Spine. Do not expect fair weather after midday. There is also a
general Level One security alert. Anyone who goes out from now until
told otherwise will also be burdened with the duty of looking for
evidence of an invader species. You are to report any and all
anomalies no matter how insignificant to the duty officer. Is that
understood?”

“
What’s anna-mollys”
Connor asked.

“
Anomalies. Anything that
does not belong,” Raddoc sighed in exasperation. “Strange things
that you don’t have a name for.”

“
Ah,” Connor said
solemnly, nodding like an oldpa over a game of Sticks and Stones.
“Understood.” Raddoc pinned the boy with a suspicious glare.
Cheobawn looked down and studied the tops of her boots where they
poked out from under her riding leathers. Connor knew perfectly well
what the word meant and he, more than anyone, knew what they were
looking for.

“
You should not goad the
Husbands like that,” Cheobawn said as the gates snapped shut behind
them and the cold settled around them to bite at their noses.

“
Yeah, well they only get
what they deserve,” Connor said, pulling his mask up over his face.
Cheobawn watched him stalk away, a little ghost of worry nagging at
the back of her mind. It felt somehow wrong, to set Connor against
the Elders, when the war was only between Mora and herself. Was she
stooping to Mora’s level, tossing all those around her into the
path of the sword that was aimed at her own heart?

It was a question to be left
for a quieter time. The stable yard was in chaos again. Half a dozen
patrols, all manned by more experienced Elders mounted their bennelk
as she watched, heavy lances at the ready. Vinara, voice strained to
hoarseness, bellowed her orders to wranglers who stumbled to comply,
exhaustion etched on their faces. Few Elders had had much rest last
night, it seemed.

Vinara looked down at them
as Blackwind presented themselves to her for assignment, a harried
look on her face.

“
Ach, Little Mother. This
is insanity. I ran the poor beasts ragged yesterday, thinking we
could rest them for a few days but the Luck of the dome has been
nothing but sour this winter. Promise me I will lose no more mounts
to great furry beasts with long teeth, I beg you.”

“
You don’t have to worry
about the smoke leopard,” Cheobawn said. “It was in my dreams
last night. He has taken the body of Star and gone to ground. It
spent the night curled around its full belly. Now it smells the
coming storm on the wind and is reluctant to leave its safe haven.”
This was only partially true. Sleep had been a sometime friend last
night. Between nightmares, she had lain awake, her mind sunk in the
ambient while the roots of the mountains shivered with each flare in
the sky. Concern for the smoke leopard had drawn her mind out beyond
the dome, down a deep draw, to a natural snow cave formed over the
top of a jumble of stone and fallen scrub pines. She was half mist
and half dream when she curled against its furry side while it yowled
at the demons in the sky, taunting them, daring them to come down and
test the sharpness of his teeth. Oddly comforted by that, she had
finally fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep.

“
Is that so?” Vinara
said staring down at her with a quizzical smile on her face. “A
wise kitty, that. I wish the rest of us were so smart. Was it a
truedream do you suppose? No. Never mind. If I were a big cat that is
exactly what I would do. Do you know about the thing that Mora has us
hunting, as well?”

“
Bubbles made of ice and
light, I think,” Cheobawn shrugged, looking around for Ramhorn and
Erin. “More pest than threat. The bhotta will feast upon them in
the spring and grow fat.”

“
Why the mad scramble to
find them, I wonder,” Vinara tisked in annoyance.

“
Perhaps there is a worry
that the storms have driven more than leopards out of the Waste,”
Cheobawn said, unwilling to put any kind of lie to Mora’s motives.
Erin waved from a small group of riders standing next to a handful of
bennelk. Connor waved back and tugged Cheobawn away from the Head
Drover. Gann stood among the bennelk with his hand on Cloud Eye’s
lead, Kite Wing not far away.

Are you well, Little
Mother?
Cheobawn asked her mount as they walked across the yard,
dodging grumpy wranglers and proddy bennelk as they went.
How is
your cough?

I am fit,
Cloud Eye
said.
Herd Mother is glad that we hunt the ice demons.

We are just getting lost
cows,
Cheobawn sighed, weary of arguing this point.

It is all the same thing
,
agreed Cloud Eye fiercely.

Meshel and Breyden flanked
Erin on either side. Both boys turned sour looks towards Connor as
Blackwind joined them.

“
You give me trouble
today, short stuff,” growled Breyden, “and I will squash you like
a bug. Follow orders, got that?” As Sigrid’s Second, Breyden took
the senior position. It was his foray to command.

“
Not a problem,” Connor
said coolly, “as long as it doesn’t countermand my Ear’s
directions.”

“
Listen, you little bug,”
Meshel seethed, his hands turning into fists, “If your Pack had
done its job yesterday instead of messing around, Sigrid would be in
one piece and we wouldn’t be going back out into the cold again.”

“
That’s enough,” Erin
snapped. “The Goddess spared our lives yesterday. Do not incur her
wrath by scorning her gifts. Blackwind and Ramhorn shared equally in
the blame and the consequences of yesterday. You will respect
Cheobawn. She is my adviser on this foray and you will respect Connor
as her protector.”

Erin took Cheobawn’s hand
and tucked it into her arm, while turning a pointed smile towards her
packmates. Cheobawn got the impression that there was a lot of
history behind that smile but in truth, did not really want to know
more about the convoluted politics between the lesser Ramhorn
members.

“
So what should we expect,
Mother,” Breyden asked, “on this foray?”

Erin looked down at Cheobawn
and waited.

Cheobawn cringed under the
scrutiny of Breyden and Meshel and found herself repeating the story
she had given Vinara.

“
Truth be told,”
Cheobawn added watching the last of the patrols thunder out of the
gate, “I fear we are in more danger from the points of lances than
from any animal the mountain might throw at us.”

“
The Coven plays their
games of secrets and strategies to the detriment of the rest of us,”
Breyden grumbled, watching them. “Telling us to watch for a threat
that has no name.”

“
Spider eggs,” Connor
said. “Big, blue balls of ice with giant spider babies frozen
inside. That’s what they are looking for.”