RP Session 4: "A Halfday's Ride

Tossing his reins to Adalric, Rhoderick slid from his thrice accursed mount.

He ran for the Web bridge, it couldn’t be much difference from running the rigging of a ship surely?

With a shout to the Storm Mother he towards the bridge directly across from the Goblins hoping their cowardly natures would lead to the fleeing

Corson steels himself, unslinging his shield, and follows the young brash lord!

Tovrunn had just barely ended her focus on piloting her summoned inferno when their company found themselves before a new challenge. Cursing under her breath, Tovrunn gave chase to her beloved and the other men, lagging behind and insuring that none of their party was left behind.

The webbed bridge, an eerie mockery of man-made architecture shuddered and stretched under the mass of two horses and armoured men, yet held with remarkable strength. Its surface was covered with the filth and leaf-litter of this haunted wood, so as long as one could avoid getting deeply stuck in the sticky core it did not seem to impede progress as much as the hanging veils. Lancaelad drove Ogre forward with a guttural hyah!..

Head down and gritting his teeth and hoping the Goblins continued to show their races usual lack of accuracy Rhoderick sprinted onto the webway across the Gorge.

...and the warhorse's mighty hooves tore through the binding strands with ease. Lan flinched as arrows sizzled through the air and clattered off his upraised shield, and glanced back under his arm to see Corson close on his mount's tail and the rest not far behind. Maybe the man had the mettle to make a knight after all. "Corson! Take the two on the right!" he yelled before Ogre galloped ahead across the silken bridge.

Lan leaned low to avoid the scratching branches of the tree on the far side of the crevass, thanking the Storm God that he didn't have time to consider the awful plunge onto misty rocks below. He drew hard on the reins and leaned out of the saddle, swerving Ogre to the left and sweeping his crow's bill around like a cudgel, aiming to knock the closest goblin bowman into that terrible depth...

Corson nods and turns his attention to the goblins on the right, spurring his horse across the webbed bridge!

"Blast!" Corson looks around, lets loose the reins and reaches for his blade to cut his mount free...

Bringing up the rear of their troupe and at the edge of the spider-spun bridge, Tovrunn was in a prime position to observe the battle as it was unfolding. What she saw was deeply, deeply concerning.

"Corson!" Watching the green squire and his mount becoming entangled in the very strands that held them above an abyss, Tovrunn first moved to his side...and then saw Lancaelad struck. Badly. Horrified, she dismounted and attempted to lead her horse afoot over the bridge, conjuring a mote of her druidic powers to enshroud the brave knight in the heavy morning mists of her homeland.

Lan felt as if he'd charged into a field of thorns. A couple of the barbed arrowheads caught in the links of his maille, but other found their mark – one sprouting from the meat of his thigh, nearly pinning his leg to Ogre's flank, the other whistling by his ear, the fletching tickling his skin. He thought that a miss until he reached up and brushed the back of his gauntlet against the side of his head and it came away bloody – his earlobe now a torn shred.

Pain, nausea and anger gave way to fear. He was in a circle of death. An archery butt for the goblin bowmen, with him as the bullseye. In near panic, his eyes flicked to the web-throttled woods to the west. Endier was that way, somewhere. He could strike out that way, hope to fight through the silken nets and outpace the goblins among the trees. There was no sense in him dying here, so ignominiously! Perhaps he could rally a war party to return and rescue the others... perhaps he would have to compose a good story about how they fell...

Just as Lan was planning to leave his companions behind, a thick silver fog rose from the undergrowth around him. In an impossibly fast moment, he was shrouded in mist as if a veil had been drawn between him and the goblins. That was enough to give him hope – he could strike from the fog and retire to it like the elven knights of legend, concealed from enemy volleys!

His spurs dug into Ogre and the warhorse wheeled around, emerging from the fog bank like the first thunder of a storm. Working on his memory of where the goblins had been crouched, Lan tore through the webbing and swept past the one under the shadow of the great tree on this side of the web-bridge, his crow's bill raking across its chest like a steel claw.

As he turned to plunge back into the fog, his eyes widened as he saw a bristling, monstrous limb the size of an ancient tree branch looming out of the crevasse. "What in the god's names is THAT?!" he cried out, a little more shrilly than he would have liked, before thankfully vanishing into the fog.

For the love of the Storm uttered the Neserite as the Spider appeared, he glanced at Lan and then back at Corson and judging the need to free the squire more urgent than the now obscured knight he spun on his heel and went to help free the mount, or at the least the rider!

Corson tries to pull himself free, but is stymied by the webbing...

"Erik helped us..."

They never should have come here. Tovrunn could see that now. The North had its own problems, and there were forbidden places that were taboo, but as far as Tovrunn knew there were no spiders the size of castles. And her memory stretched a long way.

Should they survive this, her inheritors would have quite an experience to relive.

"Erik guide your muscles Corson," she said, touching him briefly in the shoulder. "We'll have to find some way to draw it away..."

Which, given how she was still glowing with the gift of the stars, was very likely to be her. A daunting thought, but one she could survive if she was careful. But no matter what happened next, staying here in the monsters web was out of the question.

Sweat ran down Lancaelad's spine despite the coolness of the northern
moor-mist Tovrunn had summoned, and he shivered. Somehow, hearing
the clamour and confusion was almost worse than beholding it, for the
imagination ran wild, providing its own illustrations of the goblin warbarks,
the rustle of their movements through the dry undergrowth, the
creak of bowstrings, and above all the vast bristling rasp and eerie nearsilence
of the dragon-sized spider. The young knight took a deep breath.
His flesh stung and oozed where the goblin arrows had pricked him, and he hoped even treacherous scum such as these would not stoop to smearing their arrows with filth or poison... but this was the Spiderfell, and they served the awnshegh lord of venoms. He feared another shot might be his last, but somehow scraped the dregs of courage from the bottom of his heart and set his spurs into Ogre's rippling flanks.

He burst from the fog in a silver plume, crouching low to keep the webs out of his face. A cold dart of despair pierced his chest as he saw the goblins had pulled away – too far for him to strike and retire as he had done. He would have to risk their wrath, but at least the fog would be behind him to keep the ones to the south from drawing an aim on him. A quick glance to the side showed that the others were struggling across the sticky, treacherous bridge. All he could hope to do was clear this side of the ravine for them.

"Yaaah!" he snarled, his hand locked tight around the haft of his crow's bill, but arm shaking from the knowledge the immense thing they called Shivhi was lurking behind. Despite his jangling nerves the sweep of the steel point was good, catching the squealing goblin under the chin in a spray of dark blood, lifting it bodily into the air by its jaw and sending it crashing dead to the forest flaw.

Lan drew hard on Ogre's reins and spun to face the second archer, raising his shield between them. "Come, then," he panted. "Die for your master!"

Sweating, glancing over his shoulder and swearing at the web, at Corson, at the Spider and at everyone in general Rhoderick frantically tried to help Corson free…