Bjorn Frostmantle wanted the largest war-beast the northern clans had ever seen. Instead he held a spider that fit inside his palm. He fed it torn strips of hare from his fingers, the way you feed a sick pup. The spider chirped and swallowed. Its brass nasal helmet had grown loose on its small head. Bjorn had bragged for a whole winter about the beast he would raise. Now he crouched in the cold and hand-fed a runt. The problem was plain. His spider was too weak to hunt. Big prey fueled a hunter's growth, but big prey could kill a runt in one bite. So it stayed small, and Bjorn stayed its nursemaid. He could not grow the beast by feeding it scraps. It needed to fight. It needed something to shoot at that would not eat it back. He found the answer at the edge of his clearing. A heavy tracked machine sat there, armored and squat, its twin treads sunk in the frost. Sockets lined its hull, made for small crews. Bjorn had won it in a trade and never understood it. Now he did. It was a target-hunter. A safe hunt. He lifted his spider onto the hull. The runt slid into a crew socket that fit it exactly. Runes on the machine flared. A row of straw targets rose across the clearing, shaped like elk and boar. The hull hummed. A small cannon swiveled under the spider's legs. "Shoot," Bjorn said. "Earn your supper." The spider fired. The first shot missed. The second clipped a straw elk. By the tenth, it split a boar-shape clean through. Each hit fed something in the machine that fed back into the spider. Bjorn saw its legs thicken. Its abdomen swelled against the runic harness. The loose helmet grew snug, then tight. The runt was gone. In its place crouched a spider the size of a hound, then a pony, then larger. Its fangs gleamed like curved knives. Bjorn laughed and slapped the hull. His nursemaid days were over. He had his war-beast at last. Then the machine groaned. The spider had outgrown the crew socket. Its swollen body wrenched free and tore two hull plates loose. It dropped to the frost and did not chirp. It hissed. When Bjorn stepped close, it snapped at him. The gentle runt that ate from his hand was gone. Bjorn stood in the wreck of the machine, his hand still bleeding. He had gotten his giant. But it no longer knew his voice. Now he had to tame the beast he had made.

The beast crouched in the wreck of the tracked machine. Bjorn wrapped his bleeding hand and watched it move toward his cabin. It was dog-sized still, but its legs pumped fast across the frost. Its green fangs caught the light. The runt he had raised was gone. Now it hunted his home, and one charge would splinter the timber walls. Bjorn did not draw his knife. Steel would only make the spider angrier, and he could not kill the beast he meant to raise. He needed to hold it, not gut it. He looked past the cabin to the woodland's edge, where a magical webvine grew. Its pale tendrils spread wide, woven like a living net between two pines. He had left it alone for years. Now he needed it. He grabbed a strip of hare meat from his belt pouch. The same food he had fed the runt from his fingers. He threw it hard, past the beast, toward the webvine. The spider's oversized eyes tracked the meat. Old habit turned it. It scrambled after the scent, straight into the net of tendrils. The webvine closed. Its strands wrapped the beast's legs and pulled tight. The spider hissed and thrashed. Two tendrils snapped, but a dozen more held. Bjorn ran in while it fought. He looped a length of the vine over its swollen abdomen and knotted it to a pine trunk. The beast twisted toward him. Its fangs clacked shut a hand's width from his arm. "Hold," Bjorn said. "Hold, you fat brute." It did not know his voice. But the vine held. Bjorn stepped back, breathing hard, and watched the spider strain against the strands. The homestead was safe. The cabin still stood. He had caught his war-beast. But catching was not taming. The beast pulled at the webvine with every leg. He saw a tendril fray where a fang had scored it. The vine would not hold forever. And a bound beast that hated him was no war-beast at all. It was a captive that would break loose again, hungrier and larger, unless he made it know him. Bjorn crouched just outside the reach of its fangs. He tore the last strip of hare from his pouch and held it out on his open palm, the way he had when it fit in his hand. The spider went still. Its green eyes fixed on the meat. For a long moment neither moved. Then it lunged, not for the food, but for his hand. Bjorn jerked back. The fangs missed. He knelt in the frost with an empty palm and a bound monster that wanted him dead. He had contained the beast. The cabin would stand tonight. But the creature no longer knew him, and the vine that held it was already fraying. To keep it, he would have to teach it his voice again, before it chewed through and finished what it started.