"Where are we running to?" asked the panting officer.
"Let's just worry about the away part right now," shouted the private, making a determined effort to run faster than her Captain. -- Anon Guest
There is an old saying, The Brass will kill you. Sooner or later, some lord with a horse and shiny armour will make the world's stupidest decision because that was how it was supposed to go according to some epic poem or some book he read somewhere. Sooner or later, some allegedly superior strategist will decide that your unit is perfect canon fodder for a feint or a distraction or merely a test of the enemy's strength and determination.
A soldier's mission, put simply, is to avoid for as long as possible the consequences of that particular saying. In this particular case, it meant avoiding the riled-up natives of Spider Hollow. Which was not, as it turned out, an ironic misnomer. It was, indeed, full of spiders.
Big spiders. Big, angry spiders who could understand and speak the common tongue. Big, angry, intelligent spiders who were greatly offended by Lord Blaythlocke's assertion that they were, "dumb beasts" who, "couldn't catch a gnat with that mess of a web." They were further offended when he cut a guide-cord of webbing that subsequently put the Queen's nest in peril. Private Yoss wasn't bothered by any of that. She had started backing off at the first sign of irritation from the big and intimidating spiders. Thus giving her a head start when they started to attack.
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