Lockhart reigned to a halt at the top of the hill where he and Katie spied out the village.  He figured Elder Stow needed to stop to check their direction.  Katie looked behind them to see if they were being followed.  Sure enough, the well-dressed Moor and six others came rushing out of town on their tail.

“Hurry,” Katie told Elder Stow.  “Which way?”  Elder Stow stopped fiddling with his screen device.  He clipped that device back to his belt and pointed across the open field.

“The others are in this direction.”

“Can’t exactly hide in the lack of cover,” Lockhart said, and he started out.  Katie and Elder Stow followed.  Katie kept looking back.  The field was a farm field only covered with winter grass and weeds.  She saw the Moors arrive. She saw them pause and look in their direction.  Then she saw them continue off down the road like they were letting the travelers go.

Lockhart slowed as he led the group in among some trees. When they were far enough in, he asked, “Did they follow us?”

“No,” Katie said with one more look back.  “They continued down the road at some speed.  Maybe the idea of the spiders scared them more than the need to get us.”

“Wait,” Elder Stow said as he juggled his scanner and tried to read it while his horse walked carefully through the underbrush.  Katie looked at Elder Stow, but Lockhart stopped, so the other horses stopped as well.  A knight stood among the woods and blocked their path.  Six men came from the trees, three on each side, and they were armed.  The knight had two matchlock pistols pointed in their direction and spoke.

“Stand and deliver,” the knight said.  It was a woman’s voice, and she started to laugh as she put her matchlocks away, and added the word, “Lockhart.”

“Catherine?”  Katie asked, and with a glance at Lockhart she said, “Well, Lincoln wasn’t here to ask.”

“Yes, Katie,” Catherine said.  “I already hugged Sukki.  We were coming out to get you from the village if we could.  We are following the Moors, looking for their base of operations, but don’t want them alerted if we can help it.  Come.  I’ll tell you all about it when we can relax.”

“My Father,” Elder Stow said.  He stared at his scanner.  “The spiders have invaded the town.  There is a battle there, but most of the spiders have come to the edge of the buildings and continued. There is no doubt they are following us, and they are fast.”

“Quickly,” Catherine yelled and turned her horse.  The travelers and Catherine’s six men followed in her wake.  They crossed several more farm fields, passed by a couple of houses and barns, went through another small woods on a farm trail, and came out at a very big barn next to a stables and a couple of out-buildings. The big farmhouse, nearly a manor house, sat by a road that ran down the hill to the main road just west of the village.

People dismounted.  Sukki, Tony, and Nanette ran up to the travelers, but Catherine jumped and began to give orders to her men.  “Get the servants and Old Miguel from the house.  Check the far field and bring the men and cattle.  Check the driveway-road, but no further than five minutes and come right back.”  She turned to Elder Stow.  “Will your screens cover the stables and fenced in area?”

Elder Stow had to stop and look.  “I will try,” he said.

Catherine grabbed Lockhart’s and Katie’s attention. “The Baron has taken his men to fight for Isabella and sent his family to Toledo to wait the outcome of the struggle.  We have the place to ourselves but for a few servant-caretakers left behind.  We should be safe here for the time being.”

“Not safe if the spiders are following us,” Katie said.

“Just working on that,” Elder Stow spoke, though his eyes were on his screen device.  “Gather everyone in the barn, and the animals.  This will take another minute.”  He began to walk toward the barn even as Tony and Sukki arrived to pace him.  Nanette went straight to Katie and Lockhart.

Catherine continued.  “Get the horses in the fenced area.”  That area stood beside the barn and looked big enough for a dozen horses to run and play.  The cattle might be a problem, depending on how many there were.

Nanette led Elder Stow’s horse and told Katie her news.  “The Moors are servants of the Masters.”

“We figured that out,” Katie admitted.

“Lady Catherine says she has been secretly following them to try and find their base of operations.”

“Understood,” Lockhart said, as they arrived at the fenced area and let their horses in with the others.  Two men closed the gate, and Catherine looked to where the cattle should arrive.  She breathed when she saw the first and the men whipping the beasts to get them to move.

Elder Stow had his screen device in one hand.  He said he was ready.  He had the scanner in the other and kept a watch on the progress of the spiders.  Now, he had no doubt they were after the travelers, though whether they zeroed in on the refined metals in the weapons or the energy signals from Elder Stow’s own devices, he could not say.

Three men came up the road, riding all out.  The spiders appeared to be catching up.  Tony pointed at the spiders rushing across the field and crashing through the woods.  Elder Stow held off as long as he could.  The last of the men and cattle crossed the boundary.  Two of the three road riders made it, but the third rider got snagged by a shot of webbing and pulled from his horse.  The horse made it.  Elder Stow turned on his screens.  Three spiders got trapped inside the screens, but fortunately, Decker and Kate were right there to blast the spiders.  The rest of the spiders crashed into the screen wall and could not get through.  Tony, Lincoln, and Lockhart added fire from their handguns, though they were not nearly as effective as the military rifles.

Some spiders tried to climb the screen wall which actually made a dome shape—a globe above and below ground, but they had nothing to hold on to and slid back to the bottom.  Some kept trying.  Others tried to dig to see if they could get under the screens.  While most continued to press forward, some spiders split left and right to follow the screens—to see if there was an edge or a way to get in from behind.  The spiders were smarter than most realized.

Catherine split her crew and had them follow the spiders left and right toward the back.  She said they had to fire their matchlocks and hoped the kinetic energy would be enough to carry through the screens and still strike the target with some force.  She was not sure, but she said clearly the crossbows they carried were not strong enough.

Nanette used her telekinetic energy to rise up about ten feet.  She grabbed whatever fallen branches and lumber she found in the woods and began to pin spiders to the ground.  Sukki, on seeing this, flew up beside her and said something about hating spiders.  She put both hands out and let her power fry dozens of spiders that were up against the screens.  Elder Stow, having handed his screen device to Tony, flew up to join them.  He had his weapon out and prepared to join the girls when the spider-shuttle came over the top of the trees, and after a moment, fired its main weapon on the screens.

The screens barely registered the hit, and Elder Stow mumbled that it was a good thing he did not set them over a larger area.  “The larger, the weaker,” he said, and returned the ship’s fire.  Elder Stow’s little hand weapon melted the shuttle’s main guns and after only a second, the shuttle’s guns exploded.  The ship began to spin and fall slowly as Nanette and Sukki struck.  Nanette crushed the middle of the ship—more an act of will than simply her telekinetic magic.  Sukki fried the engines in the rear of the ship and that explosion lit up the sky for miles around.

All the defenders inside the screens and their animals were protected by the screens.  Outside those screens, the manor house, one unprotected out-building, and the woods all caught fire.  Hot shards of metal rained down on the spiders still alive outside the screens.  The dozen surviving spiders, a few of whom were badly wounded, ran off, back toward the village. Catherine could not let that happen.  She stepped aside and the goddess Danna stepped into her shoes.

Danna said the word, “No,” and waved her hand.  Everything happened at once.  The surviving spiders all died, including the three that remained in the village.  The fires all got put out.  A twenty-foot-deep pit appeared in the field where the cattle had been grazing.  Every last shred of spider got put in the pit, and the pit covered itself like nothing happened.  All the shards, down to the smidgen size vanished, presumably sent to the island museum on Avalon, and Danna smiled for everyone.  “They breed quicky and massively,” she said.  “They would be right back at it by the end of the summer if they were not dealt with.”  She vanished, and Catherine came to live her own life in her own time.  And Catherine said, “Tony, you can turn off Elder Stow’s screens.”  Tony did so, carefully, and Catherine turned to Lockhart and Katie with a question.  “Tell me about the Moors.”

“The main one and six or seven others raced off down the road toward Barcelona.”

Catherine nodded.  “Al-Alaki is carrying a relay.  He is broadcasting to the stars to come and invade this world.  He sent assassins to take out Isabella, and twice to kill Ferdinand.  I am sure Columbus will be in danger the minute he shows up.  Like him or hate him, Columbus sets history in motion, and no, I cannot think of any alternative that would not be worse.  I have no power to make the human race play nice with one another.  All I can do is try to minimize the damage.”

“A relay from where?” Decker asked.  He cradled his rifle, just in case Danna missed one, though he knew that was impossible.

“That is the question,” Catherine said.  “We are following him, hoping he will lead us to the broadcast center so we can blow it up.  I hated leaving Ferdinand under siege in Toro, but this will destroy the whole world if we don’t stop it.  So far, I had to get the Gott-Druk to remove the Honogon, permanently.  Now the spiders landed here, and I have Galabans in Barcelona that I don’t know what to do with.  I contacted the Elenar to try and remove them, but that is just the few to begin with.  There are others, far more powerful and worse out there that may be on their way.  These landed in the Al-Andalus area.  They zeroed in on the broadcast.  Others…” she shrugged.  “They might swallow the whole planet.”  She looked at the couple and hugged Katie. She said to Lockhart, “You have to move on while you can.”

The travelers snuck out of town the following morning before dawn.  The mayor and village council wanted them to stick around until this Kairos showed up, whoever that might be, but they figured out that they would likely meet the Kairos right about where the shuttle should be, if they hurried.  They felt the urge to warn her in case she did not know.  No one could imagine why the Kairos would not know there were alien spiders on the planet, but they all conceded that it was possible.

The sky opened up as they got the horses ready to ride.  It had been threatening for the last two days, and looked like it might even snow, but Elder Stow reported that it rained in the west.  “In fact, it has been raining in the west since we arrived, only now it seems we are going to get a share.”

“Ugh,” Tony said, and Lockhart agreed, but it did make their sneaking out of town easier.

###

Catherine wiped the cold rainwater from her eyes and looked carefully down the hill at the road.  Two dozen Moors paraded along like conquering heroes.  They were not.  She chased al-Alaki from Toro, saved Ferdinand’s life, again, and had spies following him.  She did not kill him, though normally she would never let a servant of the Masters live.  In this case, he had set up a broadcast station and was sending a message to deep space inviting various alien species to invade this world.  She had a hell of a time driving off the alien Honogon.  She called them the new exterminators, like the Balok all over again.

“They will stop in the next village for the night,” Catherine said, though it was not long after noon.  She concluded that they believed they shook off anyone that might be following them.  They appeared relaxed, and only traveled about six hours per day.  “We need to find a shelter nearby where the men can spend a quiet evening.”  She spoke to Jacob, her Jewish sergeant who faked being Roman Catholic well.  Jacob, and three of the ten with her were leftovers from the days when she lived as a highwayman, stealing from the rich, some on this very road.

She looked back at the men, mounted and miserable in the never-ending rain, but quiet, and they kept their horses in line.  Two of the men were knights from her home county.  They attached themselves to her, their Contessa, and would not let her go off to fight without guarding her person.  The other four were members of her castle guard.  They felt pretty attached too.

“The next village is near where the spiders landed,” Leechy said, and Catherine looked at him.  Leechy was a half-imp, half-goblin who hated the sun, but did not mind the daytime as long as it was mostly cloudy.  He wore a glamour that made him look human, more or less, mostly less, and he had a voice like he had gravel in his throat.  Catherine imagined some of her men thought Leechy might be another alien from some other world.  She thought in a way he was.

“We will have to keep our eyes open and double watch tonight,” she said, and she slid down the hill to her waiting horse.  She repeated herself so everyone could hear.  “Double watch tonight.  We don’t want the Moors alerted, and we need to keep our eyes open for giant spiders.”

“Giant spiders?” one of the men asked, and Catherine nodded.

“About as big as you, but with eight legs and poisonous.  Keep your matchlocks loaded and ready tonight.”  She mounted and led her men to a barn she remembered from her highway robbery days.

###

Sukki rode back from the point, her amulet in her hand.  Elder Stow rode in from the flank, his scanner loose on his belt.  He grabbed the scanner as soon as he stopped, but no one said anything at first.  Lockhart stopped at the top of a hill and had the binoculars out while Katie looked through the scope for her rifle.  They studied the village down below, looking for anything out of the ordinary.  Tony and Nanette came up alongside Lincoln so they could hear what transpired.

“Looks like they have visitors,” Katie said.  “A troop of Moors would be my guess.  Probably from Grenada.  They look like soldiers, not merchants.”

“I would have thought the Muslims would have stayed out of it,” Lockhart said and lowered the binoculars.

“They may be mercenaries willing to fight for pay,” Katie suggested as she put her scope away and Decker rode up to join the group.  “Castile is divided, and Aragon is fighting Portugal.  I wonder whose side they are on.”

Lockhart shrugged and looked to the sky.  At least it stopped raining.  “They don’t seem in a hurry to get to the fighting.  What time is it?”

“Two-forty,” Katie said.  Lockhart generally forgot about the wristwatch communicators, and especially that they were also watches.

“They look settled in for the night.”

“Blame the weather,” Katie said.  “I imagine six hours in the morning moving miserably through the rain is enough for a day.  They stop early enough to dry off before supper and sleep.  That is pretty much our pattern in the rain.”

Lockhart nodded and turned to Sukki first.  “My Mother and Father,” Suki said in good Gott-Druk form.  The Gott-Druk measured everything by the family unit, even military matters.  “The Kairos appears to be stopped off the road, south of the village.”  She pointed.

“Farm country,” Decker said, having just scouted the area.  “Plenty of cattle, sheep, and barns against the rain.”

“Elder Stow?” Lockhart turned to the Gott-Druk.

“My Father and Mother.  The Spider shuttle is just north of the village.  It is in a clearing in the midst of a small woods and looks undisturbed.  They may have sent out more than one scout ship, but they appear to be content to wait until they get the report on the lay of the land.  The villagers have not gone there in the weather and probably don’t know the spiders are there.  I say that because I see no dead bodies.”

“Can you show us?” Katie asked.

Elder Stow pulled up his scanner and called up a hologram of the area.  They saw farms to the south as Decker said, a large chunk of the village, and grazing land north to the trees which quickly climbed a steep and rocky hill.  Elder Stow tilted the projection so he could point to the clearing where they saw the shuttle craft.

Lockhart nodded and decided what he and Katie had discussed.  “Elder Stow, we need your scanner to beep if the spiders begin to move in our direction.”  He looked at the sky.  The rain might hold off for the rest of the day.  He wondered briefly if the spiders were being wary of the rain and the mud and not just waiting for their scout ships to return.  “Decker, you can take Sukki, Nanette, Tony, and Lincoln to the Kairos.  Katie, Elder Stow, and I will go into the village to get something for supper and check out these Moors.  We will figure out what to do about the spiders when we talk to the Kairos.  We have the communicators to keep in touch if there is a problem.”

Ten minutes later, Katie, Lockhart, and Elder Stow reached the edge of the village.  They found the Moors gathered around the village square in front of the town hall that had a flag of Castile hanging from the second story balcony.  Katie pointed and spoke.  “It does not say which side this village is on.  Probably Isabella being this close to Aragon, but you never know.”

“The Muslims appear to be bargaining for food for themselves and their horses.  I imagine the inn is full,” Lockhart said, and Katie clicked her tongue.

“I have a bad feeling about them,” she said.  “A Masters-creepy kind of feeling.  As bad as the spiders, but in a different way.”

They watched as one of the men bargaining with the Moors broke away from the group and came to confront them.  “And what do you want?” the man asked.

“We are simple travelers,” Lockhart said.  “We left our people back along the road. You appear to be busy.”

The man turned his head.  “The Moors want everything for nothing…”

“We can pay,” Katie said quickly.  “We have French and English coins.”  They had a purse full of whatever coins Quentin gathered for them in the last time zone.

The man seemed to like the idea of being paid, but his frown deepened as he mouthed the word, “Gypsies.”  His conclusion was unwarranted, but understandable for simple travelers who stayed on the road, sent a few in for supplies, and offered to pay with foreign coins.  “I suppose you will be wanting fodder for your animals as well as foodstuffs.  So you know, here at the end of the winter, our supplies are limited, and much of that was taken by the soldiers fighting in the west.  There won’t be much left when these Moors finish taking what they want.”

“We don’t need much,” Lockhart said, as two things happened at once.  A rich looking Moor, probably the leader of the military group came out of the inn across the street and walked toward where several soldiers were yelling back and forth with the village council.  And Elder Stow’s scanner went Beep, Beep!  That may have attracted the eyes of the well-dressed Moor.

The Moor recognized who he was looking at and yelled.  “The Travelers from Avalon.  Get them.  Kill them.”

Elder Stow shouted over everyone to be heard.  “Spiders.  A hundred or more coming this way.”

Lockhart told the village man, “Run and hide,” before he turned his horse around.  Katie grabbed her rifle and shot at the Moor.  The man ducked behind one of his soldiers who took the bullet.  Katie quickly shouldered her rifle.  There were too many innocent bystanders in the square.  She rushed after Lockhart and Elder Stow who quickly got back to the road and away from the town.