If the area could be skirted.

If there was no attack.

Standing, he felt his mind flash to an alternate possibility. He and Dumarest, wandering this world, two hunters living on the land, knowing and relishing the taste and feel of a primitive existence, sharing and finding joy in their own, personal world.

A moment, then it was gone and only a semiregretful glow remained. The main hunt still remained. The stalk, the challenge, the need to act, to delude, to beat intelligence and caution with the same of his own.

He said, "Earl? Are we ready to move out?"

"Not yet." Dumarest, Bochner noticed, had removed all the padding he'd worn. "Strip. I want everything but your own clothing. You too, Dilys. And you, captain."

"Why?"

"For smoke. Most of the padding is plastic and it'll produce a thick, black cloud when burned."

"Smoke?" Egulus frowned, then thought he had the answer. "To get rid of the spiders? Will it work?"

"It might. At least, it will stop them seeing me."

"Seeing you?" Dilys remembered what he had said. "Earl, you're not going after Threnond!"

"Someone has to."

"But why? He's dead. You said so yourself."

"No, others said that. I'm afraid he could still be alive." Dumarest stooped and lifted burning sticks from the fire, "If he is, then he's in the worst land of hell. We can't leave him in it."

He carried the mass of burning wood to the place where the belt had fallen and she followed him, searching for words, for a reason why he shouldn't do what he obviously intended to do. Only a madman would want to climb the tree to face what could lurk above. Threnond was dead-he had to be dead. How could he possibly be alive?

Bochner knew. He said urgently, "Earl, the risk is too great. Even if they did sting and poison him, there's nothing you can do. We have no cure. You'd be throwing your life away for nothing."

Dumarest said, "If you want to help, stand guard while Dilys feeds the fire. If not, get the hell away from here. Captain?"

"I'm with you, Earl." Egulus came forward, his arms filled with discarded padding, eyes anxious as he stared into the dying night. "I don't understand this, but in space we help each other. Threnond wasn't a spacer, but he'd bought passage and I guess I'm responsible for him, in a way." He added with simple dignity, "Just tell me what you want me to do."

"Stand guard, keep watch, take care of anything which might attack." Dumarest glanced at the bole of the tree, his eyes following it to the summit. "It's light up there. Dilys, start making smoke."

It billowed from the embers as she fed plastic to the embers, thick, black, acrid. Rising in a pillar about the bole of the tree, drawn upwards by the dawn wind blowing over the forest, spreading in odd vagaries of shape, coils hanging as if solid, to writhe, to drift like reluctant phantoms, to stain the greenery with fingers of pollution.

In the midst of it, Dumarest climbed upwards like a mechanical doll. A rope circled the tree, the loop enclosing his body and forming a rest against which he could strain while his boots found holds on the trunk. Hands flapping the rope upwards, body moving in synchronization with feet and support, he was gone before they knew it, a dim shape which vanished into darkness.

"They'll get him," said Egulus. "He won't be able to see them and they'll get him before he knows it."

"No." Bochner released his breath in a long sigh. "He knows what he's doing. The smoke will clear the area."

Of spiders and oxygen, both given time. And the released poisons could be as fatal to man as arachnids. Why was he risking his life? Why?

High above, Dumarest paused, blinking, conscious of the pain in his lungs, the constriction. The cloth he had wrapped around his mouth did little to filter the smoke from the air and it was time to lose even that protection. A quick move and it was around his throat, the blade of his knife clamped in his mouth, and again he was climbing up to where the leaves made an umbrella to trap the smoke as it hid the sky.

The sky and other things.

Something thin and sticky touched his cheek, stinging, as he forged upwards and tore it free. Another traced a silken path over his sleeve, more joined it, formed a mesh which parted as he jerked his arm, lifted to settle on his hair. The smoke protected him, settled vapor preventing the silk from adhering as designed to do, maintaining the freedom of motion he needed. A rustle and his hand lifted, caught the hilt of the knife, slashed as mandibles snapped an inch from his cheek, slashed again to complete the ruin, then again to send the oozing creature from its perch to plummet below.

One taken care of-how many others would be waiting?

The things were the size of a small dog, legs doubling the body area, mandibles capable of closing around a neck. The hooked limbs could rip and tear flesh from bones, but the most dangerous part was the venom which would numb and paralyze with immediate effect. One bite, if it broke the skin, and he would be worse than dead.

A branch interrupted his upward progress and, in a sudden area of clarity in the smoke, he saw a scuttling shape, silk streaming from its spinnerets, limbs rasping as it lunged towards him. Chiton broke beneath the smash of his fist, covering his knuckles with ooze, and a thrust of his knife drove steel into the main ganglion, cutting and twisting and severing the muscles leading to the mandibles. Higher, and the smoke thinned, ebon wreaths tracing smears across the morning, soiling the first pearly light.

Touching the twinkle of diamond dew, which graced the clouds of gossamer hanging in delicate veils.

Laying a patina of darkness on the long shape shrouded and bound with layers of web to branches which crossed and made a platform.

A bier for the, as yet, undead.

Threnond was stung, paralyzed, locked in a mental torment of helpless awareness. Meat processed for later consumption by the newborn spiders which would hatch from the eggs festooning his chest and throat, his stomach, groin and thighs. Doomed to lie immobile while the hungry mandibles gnawed into his flesh. To know the horror of being eaten alive.

His eyes were open, glazed, already seats of torment. Targets for the glare of the rising sun. Blindness would be the first of his many extra hells.

There was no cure and only one mercy.

Dumarest administered it, then slid down the bole of the tree to land, coughing, doubled and retching as acrid vapor tore at his lungs. He heard Bochner cry a warning, then the impact of a sudden weight on his back, the snap of mandibles at his shoulders, the touch of chiton against his cheek. A touch which fell away as the hunter smashed the scrabbling spider to the loam, to thrust his wooden spear into its thorax, to crush it with his boot as it fretted the shaft.

Another which, crippled, moved slowly back up a tree. A third, which Egulus killed as Dumarest, fighting for breath, stumbled free of the smoke.

"So, you found him." Bochner glanced at the red smears where Dumarest had wiped his knife against his thigh. "And gave him an easy way out."

"Thank God for that." Egulus glanced uneasily up at the smoke. "I know what it's about now. Some spiders sting and paralyze, and others do not-how did you know which kind these are?"

"I didn't." Dumarest straightened, fighting a sudden giddiness. He had inhaled too much poison. "I just couldn't take the chance."

"He was lucky," said Bochner. "Threnond, I mean. He was damned lucky."

Dilys said, "Lucky? I thought he was dead."

"He is. That's what I mean." The hunter glanced at Dumarest. "Sometimes that's what a friend is for-and he had one of the best."

Chapter Eleven

The fire was small, the animal skinned and suspended over it slowly cooking, the smell tantalizing as it stimulated primitive appetites. Watching it, Dilys remembered her youth. Would the spit have been considered a machine? The means of starting the blaze? Vagrant thoughts, which grew in the dullness of fatigue. Fruits of an undisciplined mind.