Princess of Amathar by Wesley Allison

for my turn at watch. I was very tired though, and after a moment’s reflection, as I have just recounted, that the thick green canopy above, in combination with the storm clouds rolling in provided almost enough darkness to remind one of night time, I fell into a state of half sleep.
    The first thing that aroused me from my slumber was a low growl coming from Malagor. I rolled over and looked at him. He was trussed up tightly in some kind of white netting, and he obviously didn't like it. Suddenly I was knocked back onto my back by something large and black and hairy. I stared horror-struck at a big black spider, fully fifty pounds, and with a body more than three feet across, sitting astride my chest. With the strength of my earth-born muscles combined with a great rush of adrenaline, I thrust the creature away from me. It was quite an impressive push, for it flew about twenty feet and crashed with a splat into the bole of a large tree. I stood up, but before I could draw my sword or do anything else, I found myself being wrapped by strands of sticky white netting, and I looked to find a dozen more of the spiders encircling me and coating me with webbing silk. Scant seconds later, I fell down onto my side, completely incased in a silk cocoon. Only my head remained exposed. My position on the ground put me face to face with Norar Remontar, and he looked at me and shook his head.
    "You fell asleep."
    "Yes,” I replied.
    "You were supposed to be on guard."
    "Yes."
    "Now you have killed us. These are Pell."
    "We're not dead yet,” I offered.
    "You will be soon," a grotesque, high-pitched, squeaking voice said. Chapter Seven: Doomed to Die
    I couldn't believe it. It was one of the spiders which had spoken--a particularly large, ugly, and bloated individual.
    "Soon I will bite you on your neck, and suck the delicious juices from your body."
    "I hope you get indigestion,” I replied.
    "I won't. I have eaten many Amatharians. You are delicious. Of course that furry one is not fit to eat.”
    The disgusting thing pointed one of its front legs at Malagor. "We will lay our eggs upon it."
    "You have killed us," Norar Remontar repeated.
    "I suppose I’ve disgraced myself by my negligence."
    "No. It was merely an unfortunate mistake."
    "I don't have to kill myself to atone for it?"
    "My people do not believe in suicide. If an Amatharian must make reparation for a wrong, he does it by doing service for the one he has injured. Besides, I do not think that you would have the opportunity to kill yourself."
    The large ugly spider creature spoke again.
    "You must remain alive. You must be alive when I suck your insides out." Now it is not so much that I mind someone, or in this case I guess it was something, talking about sucking my insides out, but I had the impression that this thing was baiting me and trying to scare me. I was determined to put a brave face on the situation, if only to give Norar Remontar a good impression of me. So I spat right in the spider's face, or what I took to be its face. It screamed out in a high pitched whine that made my spine tingle, and actually made Malagor yelp out in pain. The spider jumped and danced around in a circle, whether in pain or in ecstasy I couldn't say, but after that it seemed to keep farther away from my face for which I was grateful. If you would like to get a real idea of my predicament, simply go out to the back yard and move some wood or a flower pot until you find a large plump Black Widow spider. Put the spider in a jar, and look at it through a magnifying glass. Now imagine that face right up next to yours talking to you, and you will see almost exactly what I saw there in the forests of Ecos, for the Pell, as the Amatharians call these creatures, resemble nothing so much as a fifty pound Black Widow, without the red hour glass marking.
    For the first time since being trussed up, I looked around to take a real stock of our enemies. There were about twenty of the disgusting