It seemed that Lan Martak’s presence, and even friend Inyx’s, helped him live up to his duties as Webmaster. Without them, his courage sometimes flagged and he did weak things. Now he fought without them, but the reasons were noble. Krek could not in good faith allow these pathetic little mere spiders to perish simply because their Webmaster had been so foully murdered.

“…the buggers now,” came the faint words drifting up from the valley floor. “Set your torches.” Hearty laughter echoed the length and breadth of the valley as the troops lit their torches and prepared to burn out the webs and their spiders.

“Krek, they… they will burn us!” Kadekk shrilled.

“Drop webs at either end of the valley,” Krek ordered. He rubbed his legs together in satisfaction when he saw the immense hunting webs lowered to block escape. Only when he was sure all the grey-clads had their torches ignited did Krek give the next order.

“Drop the climbing webs.”

From both sides of the canyon soared the powdery, dry climbing webs. In feathery clouds they flew out and floated downward, the air retarding descent of the light, strong webs.

“But Krek, the torches will burn them,” protested Kadekk.

“I do not have time to explain,” Krek said. “Watch and learn how to use their ghastly fire weapons against them. I really do not know if even such as they deserve this fate.” Krek thought on it for a moment before adding, “Yes, they do. They do deserve all they will get.”

The first layer of dry web reached a halfway point. Krek gave the signal for another toss to send even more webbing out. By the time he ordered the third flight of webstuff, the first had reached the ground. The soldiers held their torches aloft, laughing and making crude comments. The laughter turned to shrieks of fear as the web caught fire and continued to fall around them, sending twenty-foot-high tongues of fire into the sky.