They freed Lutha from the webs of the demons, and Dawn healed her once more. The Kharlin seemed to feel better, though she was still quite jittery. Understandable, after she had been caught, bitten, poisoned and spun in a cocoon by the demons and the whole rest of her village had been taken by them.

Afterwards, they all returned to the Kharlin village. Though Kharma was devoured by impatience. He wanted to leave immediately to find and rescue his tribe. But Dawn held him back.

“We need a plan.” She said bluntly. They were sitting on the benches before the fire-pit in the village. “It won’t help your friends and relatives if we are caught or killed ourselves. We can’t afford to stumble around blindly and hope we will be lucky enough. We have been lucky too often, I have been lucky too often. This time, we can’t afford to trust on just our weapons and luck if we want to free your friends and escape with them.” Dawn paused for a moment to muster her friends.

“Fighting the demons with sword and bow - and claws,” she said with a look at Ankou “is little more than suicide. If I’m fighting with the sword they have the reach on me with their legs. With a bow we might get off an arrow or two before they reach us, but we don’t know if an arrow will be enough to hurt one badly or even kill it. I rather doubt that. And we would have to manage to target and get a good hit on a demon first. Not easy if we are fighting several spiders, who might even come at us from above.“

Kharma was pacing. “Have to fight them. No choice.”

Dawn said: “I didn’t say we don’t fight them. I said we don’t fight them with sword and bows only. We have to fight smarter. As far as I can tell, they are vulnerable to fire. At least their eggs and their webbings are, so there’s a good chance the grown demons are too. Of course, there we have the teeny tiny problem, that even if we managed to burn the spiders in their webs, we might burn your tribe too. If they have been taken there. So, not exactly a method we can apply.”

Kharma said: “We get tribe out before burning.”

Dawn retorted doubtfully. “Get out over a hundred persons by stealth without getting discovered by and fighting the monsters first? Seems unduly optimistic to me. Moreover, your villagers might be paralyzed and injured. I certainly can’t cast Nurture on all of them at once. And we can’t carry them all out between us three. I don’t see how it could be done.”

She thought for a while. “We have to lure the spiders away from the villagers somehow. If we show ourselves, I’m pretty sure that at least some of them will follow and hunt us. It won’t be easy to keep them at a distance, they’re fast. And gods help us if they manage to catch us.” Kharma snorted: “Kharma fast too.”

“Yes, but remember there are a lot of demons in the caves. I think I might have an idea. When we were exploring the underground city, there were some passages that could be closed off with a portcullis. We would have to close the one in the upper passage first and then lure the spiders into the cave on the third level and close the lower portcullis. They’d be trapped between the two. Of course there might be some difficulties.

We’d have to:

1. be able to close the first portcullis

2. lure the spiders into the third level without getting caught

3. get out of the third level ourselves while the demons stay inside

4. close the second portcullis directly after us

There are a lot of things that can go wrong with that plan.” She concluded, “but it might work.”

Kharma had already perked up: “Is good plan, we go rescue tribe now.”

Dawn sighed: “Be patient Kharma. Remember, if something goes wrong we are all dead. We can’t be sure it will work and even if it will, we may not be able to lure all the spiders out after us. We need a second and even a third plan to deal with them before I am willing to start a fight.”

Lutha, who had been listening quietly, suggested: “They are spiders, you could try to poison with tincture against vermin.” Dawn said: “Not a bad idea. We can’t be sure it will work, but it will add to the options we can try. Even if it just hurt them, it could help us. Do we have such a tincture, or the ingredients so we can make one in greater quantities swiftly?” Lutha replied: “We have some. Could make more in a few hours.” “We will work on that together, as soon as we’re finished with the planning.” Dawn told her. “So we will have the vermin killer tincture, but how do we get it to them? Could we rig some traps so it will be poured out when the demons go by underneath?”

“It would take quite a lot of preparation.” Lutha said. “Yes, and we will have to explore the cave closely, to find the best locations for those traps.” Dawn replied. “So, we need to bring some rope to rig the traps. Kharma and his stone singing will help with that too.” Kharma nodded eagerly: “Kharma useful. Will help.”

Dawn added: “We still need another option, in case one method won’t work. Last time the demons didn’t follow us into the water. If they can’t swim, it might be possible to drown them. But I don’t know how we can get them into the water in the first place. Do you have any ideas?” Kharma shook his head. “Don’t believe they enter water.”

Dawn chewed it over for a while. The others were silent while she thought. “The only thing I can think of that might have a chance of working, is creating a sort of dam and wait for the water to accumulate. And afterwards destroying it. That would create a flood wave. But I don’t really see how to do it. We would have to check out where the water in the spider’s cave comes from, and find a suitable space to dam it up. And we would have to be able to drown the spiders without drowning the villagers as well. Moreover, I guess it would take a long time till the water had risen up high enough behind the dam. That won’t work I’m afraid. Or at least only under very special circumstances.” She shook her head. “Not good enough. We need more ideas.”

Kharma told her: “Still say burn demons.”

“Hmm, maybe we could create some fire arrows. As long as you got a hit on them anywhere we’d be good. Even a grazing shot could be deadly. But only if no villagers spun in with their webs are in the vicinity. So we’d lure them away and you hide and shoot and burn them with fire arrows. Can you handle a bow, Lutha?” The Kharlin nodded. “I have used bow before. I can shoot.” Dawn rubbed her nose. “I will take a bow and train a bit with it, so that I have a chance to get a hit on them, too. Of course I'll be not as good as Kharma or you, but better than nothing. So we have our plan. Lure them, trap them, poison them, burn them. If one of the methods won’t work, try the next one. Sounds good.”

Dawn looked at her friends, then at Lutha. “We need to make vermin killer tincture and fire arrows. Lutha and I will create the rest of the tincture. Can you do the fire arrows Kharma?”

Khara looked doubtful: “Never made any before.” “I’ll show you how it is done,” said Lutha. “It is not that hard.”

Dawn smiled: “Very well. Then I will take the time to train a bit with a bow. And afterwards we need to pack, eat and sleep at least a few hours. We leave at first light.”

She patted Ankou and rubbed his ears: “And you’ll be our tracker. I count on you to ferret out the way to the demons.” Ankou nudged her knee and purred softly.

They all turned towards their tasks with alacrity. Dawn was glad for the work. Not only was the task of creating vermin killer tincture a suitable one for a wise woman, but she forgot about her fear while she was working on it. Even the training with the bow diverted her. It took her a while to get the skill and she wouldn’t count on a good hit, but the demons were large targets and with fire arrows even a bad shot would do.

They grilled some lizard steaks for their supper and laid down to sleep. It was a fretful night for them all. They needed the sleep, but Dawn especially was haunted by nightmares of the big spiders and was glad when they started the day. Her friends didn’t look very fresh either.

At first light, they set out. Swiftly they followed Kharma to the ravine where they had found Lutha the day before. From there they followed several cracks and scrambled over a lot of rocks and rubble. They needed to backtrack a few times, when Ankou wasn’t sure about the way. Finally, he led them to a high plateau. They were looking down on a deep gorge. On the other side, almost at the bottom, they saw a big aperture in the cliff face.

“That has to be the entrance to the caves,” Dawn said. “Let’s go into sneak mode, everyone. Now we’re playing for keeps.”