Twelve Stories and a Dream (6 page)

"Hullo!" said the gaunt man.

All three stopped abruptly.

"What?" asked the master. "What?"

"Over there," said the gaunt man, pointing up the valley.

"What?"

"Something coming towards us."

And as he spoke a yellow animal crested a rise and came bearing down
upon them. It was a big wild dog, coming before the wind, tongue out, at
a steady pace, and running with such an intensity of purpose that he
did not seem to see the horsemen he approached. He ran with his nose up,
following, it was plain, neither scent nor quarry. As he drew nearer the
little man felt for his sword. "He's mad," said the gaunt rider.

"Shout!" said the little man, and shouted.

The dog came on. Then when the little man's blade was already out, it
swerved aside and went panting by them and past. The eyes of the little
man followed its flight. "There was no foam," he said. For a space the
man with the silver-studded bridle stared up the valley. "Oh, come
on!" he cried at last. "What does it matter?" and jerked his horse into
movement again.

The little man left the insoluble mystery of a dog that fled from
nothing but the wind, and lapsed into profound musings on human
character. "Come on!" he whispered to himself. "Why should it be given
to one man to say 'Come on!' with that stupendous violence of effect.
Always, all his life, the man with the silver bridle has been saying
that. If
I
said it—!" thought the little man. But people marvelled
when the master was disobeyed even in the wildest things. This
half-caste girl seemed to him, seemed to every one, mad—blasphemous
almost. The little man, by way of comparison, reflected on the gaunt
rider with the scarred lip, as stalwart as his master, as brave and,
indeed, perhaps braver, and yet for him there was obedience, nothing but
to give obedience duly and stoutly...

Certain sensations of the hands and knees called the little man back to
more immediate things. He became aware of something. He rode up beside
his gaunt fellow. "Do you notice the horses?" he said in an undertone.

The gaunt face looked interrogation.

"They don't like this wind," said the little man, and dropped behind as
the man with the silver bridle turned upon him.

"It's all right," said the gaunt-faced man.

They rode on again for a space in silence. The foremost two rode
downcast upon the trail, the hindmost man watched the haze that crept
down the vastness of the valley, nearer and nearer, and noted how the
wind grew in strength moment by moment. Far away on the left he saw a
line of dark bulks—wild hog perhaps, galloping down the valley, but of
that he said nothing, nor did he remark again upon the uneasiness of the
horses.

And then he saw first one and then a second great white ball, a great
shining white ball like a gigantic head of thistle-down, that drove
before the wind athwart the path. These balls soared high in the air,
and dropped and rose again and caught for a moment, and hurried on
and passed, but at the sight of them the restlessness of the horses
increased.

Then presently he saw that more of these drifting globes—and then soon
very many more—were hurrying towards him down the valley.

They became aware of a squealing. Athwart the path a huge boar rushed,
turning his head but for one instant to glance at them, and then hurling
on down the valley again. And at that, all three stopped and sat in
their saddles, staring into the thickening haze that was coming upon
them.

"If it were not for this thistle-down—" began the leader.

But now a big globe came drifting past within a score of yards of them.
It was really not an even sphere at all, but a vast, soft, ragged, filmy
thing, a sheet gathered by the corners, an aerial jelly-fish, as it
were, but rolling over and over as it advanced, and trailing long,
cobwebby threads and streamers that floated in its wake.

"It isn't thistle-down," said the little man.

"I don't like the stuff," said the gaunt man.

And they looked at one another.

"Curse it!" cried the leader. "The air's full of it up there. If it
keeps on at this pace long, it will stop us altogether."

An instinctive feeling, such as lines out a herd of deer at the approach
of some ambiguous thing, prompted them to turn their horses to the wind,
ride forward for a few paces, and stare at that advancing multitude
of floating masses. They came on before the wind with a sort of smooth
swiftness, rising and falling noiselessly, sinking to earth, rebounding
high, soaring—all with a perfect unanimity, with a still, deliberate
assurance.

Right and left of the horsemen the pioneers of this strange army passed.
At one that rolled along the ground, breaking shapelessly and trailing
out reluctantly into long grappling ribbons and bands, all three horses
began to shy and dance. The master was seized with a sudden unreasonable
impatience. He cursed the drifting globes roundly. "Get on!" he cried;
"get on! What do these things matter? How CAN they matter? Back to
the trail!" He fell swearing at his horse and sawed the bit across its
mouth.

He shouted aloud with rage. "I will follow that trail, I tell you!" he
cried. "Where is the trail?"

He gripped the bridle of his prancing horse and searched amidst the
grass. A long and clinging thread fell across his face, a grey streamer
dropped about his bridle-arm, some big, active thing with many legs ran
down the back of his head. He looked up to discover one of those grey
masses anchored as it were above him by these things and flapping out
ends as a sail flaps when a boat comes, about—but noiselessly.

He had an impression of many eyes, of a dense crew of squat bodies, of
long, many-jointed limbs hauling at their mooring ropes to bring the
thing down upon him. For a space he stared up, reining in his prancing
horse with the instinct born of years of horsemanship. Then the flat
of a sword smote his back, and a blade flashed overhead and cut the
drifting balloon of spider-web free, and the whole mass lifted softly
and drove clear and away.

"Spiders!" cried the voice of the gaunt man. "The things are full of big
spiders! Look, my lord!"

The man with the silver bridle still followed the mass that drove away.

"Look, my lord!"

The master found himself staring down at a red, smashed thing on the
ground that, in spite of partial obliteration, could still wriggle
unavailing legs. Then when the gaunt man pointed to another mass that
bore down upon them, he drew his sword hastily. Up the valley now it was
like a fog bank torn to rags. He tried to grasp the situation.

"Ride for it!" the little man was shouting. "Ride for it down the
valley."

What happened then was like the confusion of a battle. The man with
the silver bridle saw the little man go past him slashing furiously at
imaginary cobwebs, saw him cannon into the horse of the gaunt man and
hurl it and its rider to earth. His own horse went a dozen paces before
he could rein it in. Then he looked up to avoid imaginary dangers, and
then back again to see a horse rolling on the ground, the gaunt man
standing and slashing over it at a rent and fluttering mass of grey that
streamed and wrapped about them both. And thick and fast as thistle-down
on waste land on a windy day in July, the cobweb masses were coming on.

The little man had dismounted, but he dared not release his horse. He
was endeavouring to lug the struggling brute back with the strength of
one arm, while with the other he slashed aimlessly, The tentacles of a
second grey mass had entangled themselves with the struggle, and this
second grey mass came to its moorings, and slowly sank.

The master set his teeth, gripped his bridle, lowered his head, and
spurred his horse forward. The horse on the ground rolled over, there
were blood and moving shapes upon the flanks, and the gaunt man,
suddenly leaving it, ran forward towards his master, perhaps ten paces.
His legs were swathed and encumbered with grey; he made ineffectual
movements with his sword. Grey streamers waved from him; there was
a thin veil of grey across his face. With his left hand he beat at
something on his body, and suddenly he stumbled and fell. He struggled
to rise, and fell again, and suddenly, horribly, began to howl,
"Oh—ohoo, ohooh!"

The master could see the great spiders upon him, and others upon the
ground.

As he strove to force his horse nearer to this gesticulating, screaming
grey object that struggled up and down, there came a clatter of hoofs,
and the little man, in act of mounting, swordless, balanced on his belly
athwart the white horse, and clutching its mane, whirled past. And again
a clinging thread of grey gossamer swept across the master's face.
All about him, and over him, it seemed this drifting, noiseless cobweb
circled and drew nearer him....

To the day of his death he never knew just how the event of that moment
happened. Did he, indeed, turn his horse, or did it really of its own
accord stampede after its fellow? Suffice it that in another second
he was galloping full tilt down the valley with his sword whirling
furiously overhead. And all about him on the quickening breeze, the
spiders' airships, their air bundles and air sheets, seemed to him to
hurry in a conscious pursuit.

Clatter, clatter, thud, thud—the man with the silver bridle rode,
heedless of his direction, with his fearful face looking up now right,
now left, and his sword arm ready to slash. And a few hundred yards
ahead of him, with a tail of torn cobweb trailing behind him, rode the
little man on the white horse, still but imperfectly in the saddle.
The reeds bent before them, the wind blew fresh and strong, over his
shoulder the master could see the webs hurrying to overtake....

He was so intent to escape the spiders' webs that only as his horse
gathered together for a leap did he realise the ravine ahead. And then
he realised it only to misunderstand and interfere. He was leaning
forward on his horse's neck and sat up and back all too late.

But if in his excitement he had failed to leap, at any rate he had not
forgotten how to fall. He was horseman again in mid-air. He came off
clear with a mere bruise upon his shoulder, and his horse rolled,
kicking spasmodic legs, and lay still. But the master's sword drove its
point into the hard soil, and snapped clean across, as though Chance
refused him any longer as her Knight, and the splintered end missed his
face by an inch or so.

He was on his feet in a moment, breathlessly scanning the onrushing
spider-webs. For a moment he was minded to run, and then thought of the
ravine, and turned back. He ran aside once to dodge one drifting terror,
and then he was swiftly clambering down the precipitous sides, and out
of the touch of the gale.

There under the lee of the dry torrent's steeper banks he might crouch,
and watch these strange, grey masses pass and pass in safety till the
wind fell, and it became possible to escape. And there for a long time
he crouched, watching the strange, grey, ragged masses trail their
streamers across his narrowed sky.

Once a stray spider fell into the ravine close beside him—a full foot
it measured from leg to leg, and its body was half a man's hand—and
after he had watched its monstrous alacrity of search and escape for a
little while, and tempted it to bite his broken sword, he lifted up his
iron-heeled boot and smashed it into a pulp. He swore as he did so, and
for a time sought up and down for another.

Then presently, when he was surer these spider swarms could not drop
into the ravine, he found a place where he could sit down, and sat and
fell into deep thought and began after his manner to gnaw his knuckles
and bite his nails. And from this he was moved by the coming of the man
with the white horse.

He heard him long before he saw him, as a clattering of hoofs, stumbling
footsteps, and a reassuring voice. Then the little man appeared, a
rueful figure, still with a tail of white cobweb trailing behind him.
They approached each other without speaking, without a salutation. The
little man was fatigued and shamed to the pitch of hopeless bitterness,
and came to a stop at last, face to face with his seated master. The
latter winced a little under his dependant's eye. "Well?" he said at
last, with no pretence of authority.

"You left him?"

"My horse bolted."

"I know. So did mine."

He laughed at his master mirthlessly.

"I say my horse bolted," said the man who once had a silver-studded
bridle.

"Cowards both," said the little man.

The other gnawed his knuckle through some meditative moments, with his
eye on his inferior.

"Don't call me a coward," he said at length.

"You are a coward like myself."

"A coward possibly. There is a limit beyond which every man must fear.
That I have learnt at last. But not like yourself. That is where the
difference comes in."

"I never could have dreamt you would have left him. He saved your life
two minutes before.... Why are you our lord?"

The master gnawed his knuckles again, and his countenance was dark.

"No man calls me a coward," he said. "No. A broken sword is better than
none.... One spavined white horse cannot be expected to carry two men
a four days' journey. I hate white horses, but this time it cannot be
helped. You begin to understand me?... I perceive that you are minded,
on the strength of what you have seen and fancy, to taint my reputation.
It is men of your sort who unmake kings. Besides which—I never liked
you."

"My lord!" said the little man.

"No," said the master. "NO!"

He stood up sharply as the little man moved. For a minute perhaps they
faced one another. Overhead the spiders' balls went driving. There was a
quick movement among the pebbles; a running of feet, a cry of despair, a
gasp and a blow....