I did return to camp; they hadn't secured their food, and one thing about running is that it could burn up a lot of nutrition. And then it hit me; I didn't need to carry away the giant saws. Armed with their own screwdriver, I could remove the handles.
Well, I got one before they tracked me back and their arrows drove me from the camp again.
"Gods Blood!" the foreman swore. "Damn thing isn't trying to escape, it's trying to delay us."
Well, yeah. I couldn't fight them, not all at once, and my efforts to divide them hadn't quite worked out. My hope at the time was that Spider was bringing reinforcements, and I just needed to delay them...
"Get to work on the tree!" the foreman announced. "Bring it down!"
Ah, shit.
Now, trees aren't weaklings. They have several advantages that just don't hold up against dedicated [Lumberjack] having people. Not with the massive saws they still had two of.
So many ideas for what I was going to write here, and NOW I have writer's block. But Rhishi was right; he wasn't a very good match for these six men. But I will point out that he is writing his memoirs, and they are not.
As always, thank you for your readership; it improves my day so much more than a tree filled with allied spiders.