LEADING A PEASANT REVOLT IN BATTLE BROTHERS PART II

We return to the Darklands for a grim conclusion.

- Jon Bolding

The locals in Waidtal call the monstrous spiders that live in their woods ‘webknechts’. The things are horrors the size of a large dog. After a day spent wandering the woods, we find a boy hiding beneath a handcart surrounded by the strewn remains of a travelling group. It’s a quick tracking job from there, across the trade road and into a stretch of woods where the branches are thick with webbing. We march in. It’s an ambush

A wave of spiders comes skittering in from the trees. They come from every direction, so we have to fragment our usual battle line to hold gaps in the trees. Leonhard the Poacher puts down a spider with each javelin tossed.

The sheer number of creatures is intimidating, but they practically throw themselves on our spears. We can hear more of them in the woods. Our shield wall spreads out into a wide ring to try and cover all the gaps. The lads get spooked, and send out two rookies to scout.

It doesn’t work. A scout comes running back towards us—Bertwin, someone says his name was— screaming about eggs bursting open, but a spray of webbing from deeper woods trips him up. He dies there, just out of reach, and more spiders come swarming in over his corpse.

SLOW AND STEADY

The only bright spot in this is Albrecht the Sloth, a supposedly lazy beggar, who turns out to be pretty good at bashing spiders with a club. We’ve seen it before: Some people find purpose on the battlefield. Only in our horrible line of work, we self-appointed mercenaries of and for the people, could we have learned that.