Rodomonte's Revenge by Gary Paulsen

Author:Gary Paulsen [Paulsen, Gary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-80388-7
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2011-08-23T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

Tom looked back, swallowed, then shouted something—what, Brett was too busy and frightened to hear—and leaped to the edge of the pit, his sword swinging. He cut Brett’s arm free. Brett stabbed down into the black hole, which had now sucked in his legs up to his knees. With Tom gripping his collar, he worked his feet loose, cutting the web away from his ankles.

Something hissed.

The spider crawled out of its tunnel. It was mean and angry and a thousand tints of ugly, a squat brown body ringed with swarming black legs, a head with eyes like mud and fangs like dripping pincers. It leaped on Brett, reached greedily for his throat, driving Tom away. It smelled like something that had died and been left too long in a corner.

“Eat this, bloodsucker!” Brett jammed his pistol into its mouth. The spider’s momentum carried his arm down its throat, all the way up to his elbow. He fired twice. The laser bolts exploding inside the spider rang like distant thunder. It shivered, folded its legs beneath it, and slithered dead into the hole.

Brett grimaced as he wiped his arm off on the trail. “Yuck. Spider spit.”

Tom didn’t say anything. He sat with his back against the mountain, panting, his face as pale as weathered paint.

“What’s the matter?”

Tom swallowed and wiped the dripping sweat from his forehead. “Did I ever tell you how scared to death I am of spiders?”

Brett smiled. “I thought you weren’t afraid of anything.”

“I lied.”

Brett crawled out of the pit. “Thanks for coming back.” The wind kicked him in the back, almost toppling him over the edge. “We’d better get going.”

A hundred yards up the trail the wind became so strong they had to crawl. Fifty yards farther they were on their bellies. Even that wasn’t low enough; Brett had to spread his arms and legs to keep from being blown over the side. He looked down. The plains seemed so far away that he could have been in orbit.

“This is as far as I got last time,” Tom called back over the howling gale. “The wind just picked me up and tossed me over. There was nothing I could do.”

“How much farther do you think it is to the castle?”

“Miles.”

“We’ll have to go back until the wind dies down.”

Tom nodded. “We can’t stay here.”

By the time they reached the spider tunnel, the wind was too strong for them to go any lower. “We’ll never make it,” Tom shouted.

“We’ll have to take shelter in the tunnel.”

“Not me. Remember, I hate spiders.”

“It’s either that or get dashed to bloody pieces.”

Tom thought for a moment. “Okay, but you go first. Shoot anything that moves. When you’re done, I’ll come down.”

Brett warmed up his trigger finger and dropped into the hole. He fell ten feet before landing on the spider he’d killed earlier. It felt like an underinflated water bed. As far as he could tell, the tunnel was clear.

“Come on down.”

Tom dropped, hitting the spider with his heels hard enough to split it open.

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