Empire of Fu Manchu

Plateau of Leng
Earth’s Dreamland
March 30th, 1940


Intelligent or not and however fearsome in a fight, the purple Spiders of Leng were first and foremost predators. When an avalanche of eight-legged monstrosities suddenly overwhelmed the twenty Waffen-SS riders, of all the crossbows fired in panic only one had hit well enough to actually fell a beast. In the next instant, shrieking and trashing in absolute agony and horror, most of the SS-men found themselves torn from their saddles and impaled by the four vicious spiked appendages arranged around the hideous mouths of the monsters, holding them in immobility for the feeding. The pain from the deep poisoned stab wounds, however excruciating initially, soon paled to insignificance as the unfortunates felt rows of black, razor-sharp teeth bite with crunching, squishing noises into their torsos, tearing into the flesh and crushing bone while tongue-like proboscises in the mouth snaked into the wound to suck the gushing fluids. Then the screams ceased to express fear, or despair or any other emotion save raw, unimaginable pain, which displaced any other thought or perception. The screams of the horses, suffering the same gruesome end as their masters, were virtually indistinguishable from theirs.

As the Spiders descended on the group, Skorzeny had time for one “Follow me!” as he drove his horse mercilessly back the way they had entered the defile. One of the huge spider-beasts, a great dominant female, had picked him out as a special treat, and jumped at him, legs spread wide and prehensile spikes extended for the catch. Instinctively the Austrian swung his sword in a flashing arc that cut deep across the face of the thing, splitting one of the huge eye globes. At the same time, he swung from the saddle into the direction of attack, leading to the spider’s underside, coarse, stinking and stubby with little short black hairs, grazing the top of the saddle where his body had been an instant earlier. Another spider blocked the way, but it was busy feeding off a still shrieking cavalryman, it’s whole body pulsating with hideous suckling. Driving his fear-crazed mount up the hillside, Skorzeny next caused it to jump on the chitin-plated back of the thing and then onto the ground on the other side, and away from the gruesome charnel pit the defile had become. One other of the patrol was right behind him – no one else made it out alive. One man who had been unhorsed but not yet caught ran a few steps after the galloping horses, crying piteously before four long spider legs caught him in a crushing grip and pulled him, sobbing as one without hope towards the prehensile spikes, the rows of black teeth, the sucking tubes…

As they galloped savagely along their previous tracks, the infernal screaming behind them began to die away.

‘Mein gott! Mein gott! What where those things? WHAT WHERE THOSE THINGS?!’ the trooper shrieked, still in the grip of complete panic.

‘Pull yourself together, Oberschütze!’ Skorzeny roared, venting his own panic on the subordinate. ‘There’s no time for questions! In a few moments they will have finished with our comrades, and then they’ll come after us! You ride straight back to the fort and tell them to prepare to fight for their lives! I’ll go warn the team at the railhead!’

‘Jawohl, Sturmbannführer! Momentarily calmed by given a specific task by his commanding officer, the trooper saluted and turned his horse away.

On one of the hills overlooking the gore-splattered cleft, Fu Manchu rose unsteadily to his feet, his vision still swimming with dots of light. Gingerly he felt the side of his head and was not surprised to see crimson dripping from his black leather glove. The quarrel from Skorzeny’s crossbow had grazed his cheek and clipped of a tiny piece off the top of his ear, before deflecting off the skull. A centimetre more to the right, and that would have been the end of the Devil Doctor. Fu Manchu silently swore over his own stupidity in once more underestimating the infernal Austrian, and woved never to repeat the mistake. For a few seconds, he watched with flaming eyes the two fleeing horsemen before turning towards the now relitively and mercifully silent feasting going on below.

‘Queen K’Drash! You must send forward your host immediately, before the humans in the fort have time to prepare for your onslaught!’

The largest of the spiders, it’s whole face drenched in quickly congealing blood looked up from the cooling carcass of an SS-Scharführer. ‘We enjoy the spoils of our victory, Fu Manchu. It would be unwise even for you to try to deny us that,’ it rasped in a voice made hissing by plethora of sharp teeth and wet by slimy apendages slithering around inside the mouth.

If Fu was often exasperated by the sheer stupidity of humans, guided as they were more by their hearts or genitalia than by their brains, he considered that the Spiders of Leng, in their gluttonous idiocy could be labeled “intelligent” only in the broadest possible definition of the word.

‘By all means then, have your fill. And loose one in two of your herd when you assault the fort!’

The Spider Queen regarded the Devil Doctor with large, black unblinking eyes for a few moments and then absentmindedly withdrew it’s prehensile spikes from it’s victim with a battery of sucking noises. The corpse fell limply on the snowy ground below, but spattered almost no blood.

‘This one has gone cold anyway. All of you!’ she shouted in that repulsive, inhuman voice. ‘Go collect the herd! We have hunted – now the Spiders of Leng will march to War!’

Fu Manchu walked back to his Mongolian warhorse, fettered to a rock outcropping a ways off. He was mildly surprised to see it still alive, although the poor beast was rolling it’s eyes in terror. Apparently the Spiders still feared him enough not to touch anything of his, however tempting. That was gratifying.

Sitting up, he tentatively loosened his sword in his scabbard and then drew it with a flourish. A familiar warmth, the anticipation before battle, ran through him like a strong liquor as he watched the gleaming double-edged straight blade, which was hilted and tasseled like a Chinese Jian. It had been far too long, he thought dreamily, and it was a silly thing, a leftover from a more primitive self – but he couldn’t wait for the battle to begin. A REAL battle this time, the way it should be, pitting cold steel against hearts of iron, not the cowardly long-distance sniping that passed for modern war.

Taking part would be pure self-indulgence, he admitted. But every man had to have a vice or two. Fu Manchu smiled cruelly as he sheated his sword and trotted of to join the marching host of the Spiders of Leng.​