The ground kept rising as they went deeper into the woods.
The trees grew taller here, and their shadows fell across the narrow paths in long, broken stripes. Roots knotted out of the soil every few steps, and loose stones shifted under Owen’s boots when he put his weight on them. It was cooler under the canopy. The air smelled of damp leaves and moss.
Somewhere far off to their left, metal rang against metal. Someone else was still hunting.
Elias checked his bracelet for what must have been the fifth time since they left the Goblins behind.
"They’re pulling away," he said. "The ones at the top. Every time I look, they’ve got more." He let his arm drop. "And Calder. Did you see her face? She took your Stalker right out from under you, and then she looked at you like you should be thanking her for it."
"I was there," Owen said.
"I’m just saying."
"Talking about it isn’t going to get either of us any points."
"I can walk and talk at the same time, you know," Elias said. "It’s one of my talents."
Owen let that one go. He was finding it easier to let things go with Elias. It saved time.
* * *
They found plenty to fight over the next few hours.
Giant Rats rooting in the leaf litter. Small packs of Prowler Goblins that came screeching out of the undergrowth. And, more often the deeper they went, the bigger Goblins that hung back and waited for an opening, the kind Mira had taken from him. Owen didn’t lose another one of those.
Against the weaker creatures, he barely had to think. A step, a cut of the burning blade, and they went down. The Stalkers took a little more. One fought with a spear and kept trying to hold him at a distance, so Owen went in close where it couldn’t use the length. Another tried to lure him onto a slope of loose stones, and he simply waited for it to come down to him. He didn’t need anything except Fire and his sword. Nothing they had faced was worth more than that.
Elias fought hard beside him.
At first, he had used Rebound on almost everything that touched his shield. As the hours went on, Owen saw that change. Elias began to tell the difference between a blow he needed to throw back and one he could simply take on the angle of the shield and turn aside. He was saving his energy for the attacks that actually mattered.
At one point, a Prowler Goblin swung at him with a crude axe. Elias caught it on the shield’s edge, let it slide off, stepped around to the Goblin’s side, and put his sword into it. He hadn’t used Rebound at all.
"That was clean," Owen said.
Elias shrugged as though it were nothing. But he was grinning for the next ten minutes.
The light changed slowly through the branches, slanting more steeply as the sun moved. Their clothes collected dirt and leaf litter and splashes of things Owen didn’t want to look at too closely. Sweat ran down the back of his neck. They stopped now and then by a stream to drink, and once at the foot of a broad oak to sit for a few minutes, and then they went on again.
During one of those pauses, Owen glanced at his status. His Blades mastery had been climbing all day. Real fighting, one encounter after another, had pushed it further than months of drills at home. It stood at ninety-nine percent.
He closed the window and got up.
Their bracelets kept count. By the time the sun had moved well across the sky, Owen’s total had climbed from eleven to sixty-six.
Elias’s had gone from six to forty.
"Forty," Elias said, looking at it. He sounded pleased, and a little tired. "And I’m still not in the top fifty. I didn’t think it would be this hard." He shook his head. "Everyone’s killing things."
Owen looked at his own number. Sixty-six would get him in, if the examination ended now. But it wouldn’t end for hours, and he didn’t want to scrape through on the last place. He wanted to be well clear of it.
That meant going where the bigger monsters were.
He was about to say so when Elias stopped walking.
"Owen," he said. "What’s that?"
Thin, pale threads stretched between two bushes beside the path, near the foot of a rocky slope.
Owen slowed down.
There were more, farther along. They hung from the low branches and clung to the exposed roots, catching the light. A few paces on, something small was hanging in a web several feet off the ground, wrapped up so tightly that Owen couldn’t tell what it had been. Beyond it, the trees gave way to a narrow ravine running between two walls of huge, moss-covered rock.
Owen looked at the webbing, at the way it was strung and how much of it there was.
Giant Spiders. This was their hunting ground.
Elias was looking at the ravine. Pale silk covered almost every gap in it.
"Are we really going in there?" he asked.
Owen was considering it. Spiders were dangerous in narrow places. But a nest this size would hold more than one, and some of them would be worth a good deal more than a Goblin.
Before he could decide, a young woman’s voice came out of the ravine, high and frightened.
"Get it off—get it off me!"
Both of them turned toward it.
* * *
Owen was already moving. Elias came after him.
The closer they got, the more they could hear. Hurried footsteps scraping over stone. The rasp of a blade dragging against rock. And a second voice, another girl, sharp with fear.
"Marianne, stop pulling! You’re making it worse!"
The ravine was narrow, its sloping walls choked with thick roots and broken by dark openings in the stone. Webbing was everywhere. It covered the branches overhead, stretched between the boulders and hung across parts of the passage in heavy, sagging curtains. Silk-wrapped bundles dangled above the ground, and the bottom of the walls was littered with bones and old, grey scraps of web.
This wasn’t one spider. It was a colony.
Farther in, something moved. Owen saw several strands of web quiver all at once as the movement travelled along them, passing from thread to thread across the ravine.
He understood what that meant. Touch the wrong strand, and everything else in here would know exactly where they were.
A short way ahead, he saw them.
Two girls, struggling in front of an unusually thick mass of web. One had a sword and was hacking at the silk wrapped around the other’s lower leg. The second girl held a spear, and she was keeping it pointed up the rock wall, jabbing it at a Giant Spider to keep it back while she tried to wrench herself free.
Both of them were filthy. Silk clung to their sleeves and their hair. The swordswoman had a shallow cut on her arm, and the girl with the spear couldn’t step back, not with her leg stuck fast.
Owen knew them.
He had met them both at Princess Adelaide’s ball. Eveline Harcourt, who had greeted Clara and Elise like old friends, and Marianne Loxley, who had spent most of that conversation asking whether he was courting anyone.
"Owen!" Elias pointed. "There!"
A big spider was coming down the rock wall toward Marianne, head first.
Elias’s shield and short sword appeared in his hands.
Owen summoned his sword and let Fire run down the blade. He went forward to meet it.
The moment they stepped into the webbed section of the ravine, the whole place came alive.
Spiders came out of the openings between the rocks. More dropped down through the silk above. Their legs scraped against the stone as they came, and the thick strands of web bounced and swayed with their weight.
Skkrrrrk.
Six of them. Four were Prowler-sized, as big as dogs, all legs and dark, glistening bodies. Two were much bigger. Stalkers.
The two big ones were coming for the girls.
Owen went straight at them.
The first Stalker was still coming down the wall, its long front legs reaching. Owen ducked under them and cut upward. He didn’t let the fire spread. He kept it pressed thin along the cutting edge, and the blade went deep.
Shhk!
"Hssssss!"
The spider jerked back and scrambled for the rock wall. Owen went after it before it could get up out of reach and cut again.
Shhk!
It dropped onto the stones and curled up.
His bracelet flashed. Twelve points.
Above him, the web shook.
The second Stalker was coming over the top of the boulders, using the hanging curtains of silk to move above him, out of the way of his sword. Owen saw it coming. He moved away from the girls, drawing it after him, until it had to come down to reach him.
Behind him, Elias had the smaller ones.
Two Prowlers came at him from the side of the ravine. The first lunged, and he took it on his shield.
Thoom!
Rebound threw it back against the rocks. Before the second could reach him, Elias stepped forward and drove his short sword into it.
Sktch!
The first spider was already back on its legs and coming again. Elias had to back up to get his shield around, and as he did, he backed straight toward a strand of web hanging just behind his shoulder.
Eveline saw it. She swung her sword and cut the strand clean through before he touched it.
"Thanks!" Elias said.
He had room now. He caught the spider’s lunge on his shield and finished it.
Two kills. Eight points.
Marianne had finally torn her leg free of the silk. She couldn’t move well, but she didn’t need to. When a third Prowler came at Elias’s open side, she thrust her spear into its path and forced it back.
"Go on!" she said.
Elias went. He killed it.
The last of the small ones dropped down behind them on a single thread, silent.
"Elias, behind!" Eveline shouted.
He turned just in time and caught it on the shield. This time, he didn’t use Rebound. He turned the shield to let the spider’s weight slide off to the side, and as it stumbled past him, he stabbed it.
Four kills. Sixteen points.
The last Stalker had come down to Owen.
As it moved, it dragged a heavy sheet of web across the narrow passage between them. Owen saw where the edge of it ended. Only a few steps from Eveline and Marianne, who were still backing away from the thickest part of the colony.
If he let the fire loose here, it would run straight up that silk and into them.
So he didn’t.
He kept the flames tight along the edge of his blade. He cut through the strands that were in his way, a single clean stroke, and stepped around the spider’s reaching legs as they came for him.
The spider turned to follow him. As it turned, it lifted, and for a moment, its underside was open.
Owen saw the angle.
Everything he had ever been taught about where to put his feet, when to strike, how to hold an edge true, came together in that one movement. He stepped in and cut.
Shhk!
The blade went in through the opening and up into the soft underside. The fire went with it, all of it pressed into the cut and none of it spilling out into the web.
The spider shuddered once and collapsed.
Owen pulled his sword free and looked around the ravine.
Nothing else was moving.
At the edge of his vision, something glowed.
He knew that light. The Infinite Arsenal.
But Marianne was still pulling silk off her leg, Eveline was breathing hard, and Elias had already gone to check the openings in the rocks in case anything else was waiting in them. Owen left the notification where it was and went to the girls.
"Are you hurt?"
"Not badly," Eveline said. She looked down at the cut on her arm as though she had only just noticed it. "Thank you. Both of you. If you hadn’t come—"
"Lord Owen," Marianne said. She was staring at him. "That was you?"