The Princess and the Wizard
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: There are Castles and castles in this, but I own neither. Rating: K Time: 1967 and elsewhen.
Author's note: To get a look at what Castle's unit looks like, go to http colon back slash back slash ctrp dash 3d dash 4thcav dot com backslash troop dot html Click on org chart.
After that they settled in for the night. When they started off the next morning, Castle began to notice a change in the scenery. The lush grass of the prairie was slowly disappearing, replaced by scrubby looking bushes, rocks and sand.
Kate noticed he was paying close attention to the changes.
"Things don't grow near the Pit of Astorkal. No one really knows why. While no one who's gone down into the pit has ever come back, people have camped at the top of the pit with no problems. But, still, nothing grows for a mile around the pit."
"I can't say that makes me feel any better."
They reached an area where nothing at all grew. They noticed that outside that zone they had seen birds flying and occasional small animals, there were none in the desolate zone around the Pit of Astorkal.
Reaching the pit, Castle, the women, Sergeant Wiggins and Sergeant Tranh dismounted. The pit looked to be about two hundred yards across and was circular.
"Almost like someone built it." Castle said. "You usually don't see anything natural that's a perfect circle."
"Perhaps someone did build it." Said Kate. "No one knows."
They went to the very edge and looked down.
"Someone's cut steps in the side." Castle said. "Can anyone see the bottom?"
"I gotta pen flare." Wiggins said. "We could shoot one down and see what happens."
Castle nodded and Wiggins pulled out a pen flare, looked down into the pit and fired.
"I think I saw the bottom." Castle said. "It's a ways down there."
"I wish I could get Bad Mother down there." Wiggins said.
"Who is this bad mother?" Alexis asked.
"The name of my track. Actually, I wish we could get the whole fucking US Army down there."
Castle checked his watch.
"I'd rather go down there with as much daylight as we can get. We'll start tomorrow at dawn."
No one argued.
They left at dawn. The stairway leading down was about twenty feet wide and had a four-foot tall wall to keep people from falling off the edge. Castle knelt to examine the stairs.
"Not much wear on these for stairs that have been around for…How long?" He looked at Kate.
"No one knows. Thousands of years we believe."
"There'd be little evidence of wear." Alexis added. "Very few people go down and no one comes back up."
"Somebody must have come back up, otherwise how would anyone know there are spiders or anything dangerous down there? Or the golden egg?"
He stood up and examined the wall of the pit.
"It's smooth. Not as smooth as, say, polished marble, but pretty smooth. It isn't natural, but man made."
Kate shook her head.
"Made, yes. Man made? We'll never know."
Castle kept Kate close to him for two reasons. One, he liked having her near, and secondly, he worried about her reactions if she had to fire her AK. He also had one of the grunts stay close to Alexis the Red for the same reason.
The stairs seemed to go on forever and the deeper they went, the darker it got.
Castle stopped and looked up.
"I can see the opening above us and it's damned small. I'm going to try the starlight scope and see if I can see anything further down."
He worked with the scope for a minute, then put it away.
"Too much light, but I may have seen something below us. Hard to tell, though."
At last, they reached the bottom of the pit and faced the entrance to the Cave of Dolom. The entrance was large, a good fifteen feet high and thirty feet across.
"The entrance doesn't go straight in." Castle said. "It goes off to the right and it looks like it turns again."
Castle organized the unit to enter the cave. He put his infantry machine gun team in front with an M 60 machine gun. Behind them were to troopers with LAW anti-armor missiles. Then a grenadier with an M 79 grenade launcher, then Castle, the women and his RTO, followed by the riflemen, then another grenadier, Sergeant Tranh's RPG team and last of all, the RPD machine gun.
They walked slowly and found that after a bit the tunnel turned to the left, then to the right and then to the left again.
"Can't see the exit from here, sir." Someone said.
"We'll find it when we get what we came for."
They came out into a huge cavern. They stopped to take it all in.
"It's lit up like Times Square at New Year's Eve." Castle said. "I wonder where the light comes from?"
Wiggins looked up.
"Goes up a hell of a ways. Must be five, six hundred feet." He walked to the edge and looked down. "And at least that far going down. Maybe more."
Ahead of them was a walkway similar to the stairs they had come down that ran off into the far distance. All around the walkway was a glittering array of spider web-like cords about a foot thick. Unlike spider webs, they were not woven in any sort of pattern.
"Only one way to go." Castle said. "Be careful."
A crystal spider jumped over the parapet of the walkway and ran at Alexis. Its body was a good foot across and its legs were three times that length. Alexis kicked it hard and knocked it back. Kemper fired a round into it and it shattered.
"That's big as spiders go." Castle said. "If that's the giant spider, we're okay."
They weren't.
Two spiders dropped onto the walkway, one in front and one in back. Their bodies were a good six feet across and the legs accordingly long. Machine gunners and grenadiers fired into the spiders, smashing them.
As they walked through the debris, one of the smaller spiders dropped down and landed on the grenadier in front of Castle. He screamed as the spider bit him. One of the riflemen smashed it with the butt of his M 16 and stomped on it for good measure.
"Medic!" Castle yelled. "Check out Grayson."
Doc Mellon ran to the injured soldier and looked at his arm.
"Pain?" He asked.
"Actually, kind of numb. I remember in school, they said spiders stun their victims and eat them alive. Or was that alligators?"
Doc Mellon worked on the man.
"He's got a nasty puncture wound and his arm is numb. I've treated and bandaged his wound, but I don't have anything for the numbness."
"I might have something." Kate said and pulled out a small leather bag from her pack. She pulled out a bottle and spread a lotion onto the arm.
"Feels better already, ma'am." Grayson said.
"We need to get going." Castle said. "I can see movement above and below us."
They kept walking.
A truly gigantic spider dropped onto the walkway not fifty feet in front of them. It was as wide as the walkway and Castle thought that he could have walked under it without being able to touch it. Not that he wanted to try that.
"LAW!" He shouted. "Get a LAW on that thing!" He yelled as the machine gunner, grenadier and the riflemen, as well as Kate and Alexis opened fire on it. Their fire seemed to be knocking glass like chunks off of it, but not doing it any mortal damage.
The first LAW gunner went to the side of the walkway so that the backblast would fire away from the troops, who'd otherwise be badly burned. He did hit the spider, but only knocked two of it's legs off. That did cause the spider to back off slightly. The second shot hit the spider's body and knocked a chunk out of it, but didn't kill it.
"Everybody down." Yelled Sergeant Tranh. "RPG!"
As soon as everyone in front dropped, the RPG sped towards the spider, hitting it in its open mouth. The spider exploded.
"Keep moving!" Castle yelled.
As they moved, a dozen smaller spiders dropped down from above and attacked the soldiers. One of them grabbed onto the neck of the M 60 machine gunner, Tom Bradley, better known as the Big Kahuna, a surfer dude from Southern California.
"Get it off of me!" He screamed. "No! Don't shoot! You'll hit me! Do something!"
Wiggins managed to get his M 16 between Bradley and the spider and shot it, blasting it to pieces.
"Shit! Shit!" Bradley said as his knees buckled.
"Doc! Check the wounded." Castle yelled. "Someone grab the M 60."
Doc and Kate attended to Bradley and three others who'd been bitten by the spiders.
When he was done, Doc spoke to Castle.
"Everybody's pretty okay except for Kahuna. His brain is fucked up. We'll have to carry him."
"Wiggins, get two riflemen to carry Kahuna. They can fire their M 16s one handed if they have to."
"Sir," said Wiggins, "Take a look. These spider webs or whatever they are aren't organized like spider webs back home, they just go every which way. But a lot of them come together, like over there. See? Five web strands come together. If we shot at those…"
"We'll damage their webs." Castle finished for him.
"It's close. Let me try with a thump gun."
Wiggins grabbed an M 79 grenade launcher and fired at the juncture of the webs. The first round was high, but severed one strand. Wiggins discovered he didn't have to reload. Just like the magazines of the M 16s, the grenade launcher round was ready to fire again. This time he hit the junction dead center. When he did so, a six-foot wide spider started heading for the broken joint. Wiggins fired at a junction above the spider which shattered. The webs dropped and the spider fell to wherever the bottom of the cave was.
Wiggins spotted a junction where a dozen webs came together. He wasn't sure that the M 79 would destroy it.
"I need a LAW gunner!" He yelled and one of his men ran to him. Wiggins explained what he wanted done. After checking for the backblast, he fired. And missed.
"I need another LAW." He said.
"Check the one you have." Wiggins yelled over the gunfire. "I'll bet you have another round in there ready to go."
He did and this time he hit the junction. A huge section of webbing came crashing down and with it, dozens of spiders of all sizes.
As riflemen and machine gunners fired at the remaining spiders, the grenadiers, LAW gunners and the RPG team worked over the webs.
"Cease fire!" Castle yelled. "Keep moving forward. Shoot if you have a target."
Two hundred yards further one a huge spider fell from above and managed to grab onto the walkway with two legs, the rest of him hanging over a very long fall.
A grenadier shot off one leg and then the other and the spider fell. He must have hit something important to the structural integrity of the web as webbing and spiders fell. Whatever landed on the walkway was shattered.
"Something up ahead." Someone yelled.
The walkway began widening out and became an open space of several acres. And in the middle of the open space was the biggest spider they'd seen so far. It was different from the others, being cloudy rather than clear like the others. It was also sitting up on its rear legs. As they watched a dozen tiny spiders, no more than a few inches wide dropped from the spider. They ran towards the soldiers, but were destroyed by rifle fire.
"That's gotta be the momma spider." Castle yelled. "Everybody back. We'll let the RPG and LAW gunners deal with it."
"What the hell, LT." Wiggins said with a grin. "We aren't gonna run out of ammo. We should let everyone shoot."
"Okay, shoot. Just make damned sure you stay away from the backblast."
The monstrous spider wiggled around a bit as if trying to move, either towards the troops or away from them. Nothing happened.
As everyone fired, the spider slowly tipped onto one side and began disintegrating. Then there was nothing left of it but tiny pieces.
TBC