RP Session 10: "Mired in the Mire"

Bendane spent several hours on hands and knees, meticulously scrubbing with soap and salt and water that was as clean as could be expected in these stagnant conditions. Eventually, the blood and gore was reduced to a terribly suggestive ruddy stain on the wood, and a lingering scent of copper and vented bowels that nothing could fully expunge. He wasn't quite sure how the idea of claiming the barge had come to be immediately accepted, but he suspected Rawiya was at the root of it somehow. Wasn't this sort of trouble exactly why they had abandoned the canoes?

Still, her plan for using the slimy weed-strands was admirably clever, and the former quartermaster's corpsman remarked that he had once seen a boat refloated by piling up earth and debris around it, building a lock to raise the water level. It would be time consuming, but constructing a series of little ponds and canals to displace the weight of the hull over rough ground would be easier than dragging it by main force.

As Bendane set about cleaning the boat, Ej scouted about the area, not straying too far from the new campsite, but determined to make sure whoever left the mess was truly gone, and did not lurk in threat. Finding the boat empty for the taking seemed a strike of luck, but some murky memory nagged at him: it could just as easily be bait in a trap.

Elves seemed to prefer cremation to deal with their remains - which was an absolute choice, if nothing else. Bendane could see no way of mustering enough dry wood in this marshland for the long, low heat that was required to reduce a body to ashes, even with cantrips to strip the moisture one fasces at a time. The marsh would eagerly restore whatever he could desiccate.

Instead, he was forced to pick the noblest-seeming mangrove and excavate a two shallow graves in the silt around its roots. Crayfish and worms would make short work of the bodies that had been peeled by the evil work of the face-thieves; it was the most dignity that he could afford them in this place.

Bendane stood for a while, covered in beige mud to the knees and shoulders, a silent vigil over the graves. Then he took out his knife and scratched a message into the bark.

Here lie two unknown. Death took all from them even their
likenesses. Beware.
He sighed, shouldered his shovel wearily and returned to help with the efforts to portage the barge deeper into the marsh.

Squeamish about the bodies until they were in the ground, Rawiya felt pangs of regret and sympathy near the end of Bendane's display. What would Chalikushu say of her letting spirits wander off without fanfare?

Beneath the medic's epitaph, the Yarin very carefully carved two figures on the bark, with traits both distinct and open to interpretation. She didn't know who these people really were, but they deserved something. One image loosely represented a bright-eyed, smiling baker she portrayed in a play about finding the perfect pie recipe. The other indicated a stoic, scraggly-haired hermit who brought sage forest wisdom to a musical in which she briefly featured. Identities like those ought to at least get this unfortunate pair past the gate.

"It's not the same as stealing faces if I hand them over willingly, yeah?" Rawiya pointed out to her friends. "I guess now they'll just have to decide between the two of them who's who. Hope they make the right choice."

She patted the tree's trunk fondly, gazing down at the grave. "Time you finally stopped looking for the answers and let them come find you instead. Rest well."

Leaning on a shovel, Rahkazar watched Bendane and Rawiya perform their various send-off rituals without a word. She had helped Bendane with the digging, providing additional muscle to help make better progress, but once the bodies had been buried she had refrained from saying much. Offering funeral rites was...strange, to her. Perhaps it was because she hadn't been the cause of their deaths.

What to do with the victims of violence like these two was something of a controversy among the orcs. Orc warriors buried the dead of both enemy and ally alike, as closely to each's preferred method of honoring the dead as could be done. To do otherwise was to invite the spirits of their enemies to return; there was a long held and deep seated fear of the vengeful dead clawing their way from the grave to drag orcs to theirs. Similarly, for cases of illness or age or accident it was a family's responsibility to bury the recently deceased. But murder? One where the murderer has this far escaped justice? What is to be done then?

Some religious scholars and priests had taken this question and determined that it was a bad omen to bury the victims of unresolved murder, the more extreme among them even going so far as to forbid the family from making their spirit tablets. The dead, they argued, deserved their vengeance, especially if the living failed to deliver justice in their behalf. Others argued that to not give the dead their proper rights was to shift the object of their vengeance from the ones who were responsible for their death to those who refused them the honor and dignity of a proper burial. In cases where the voices of the dead could be heard, every opportunity was taken to do so, as was the custom everywhere from what Rahkazar knew. But that was a case-by-case occurrence, and one that only partially side-stepped the question as a whole.

"I'm sure they'll make the right choice," Rahkazar said finally. She wasn't sure what she thought of the debate as a whole. She was a warrior, not a cleric. That said, if she had any thoughts on the matter it's that refusing to honor the dead was wrong. "Find your justice, strangers," she said to the graves, bowing her head. "And if that justice is found at the edge of my blade, guide it to be true."

The reddish-brown stains on the wood were diagrams of death.

Bendane couldn't take his eyes off the patterns. They suggested skins coming off in long wet strips. Bloody rain shadows where the face-thieves had crouched as they flensed their victims. Pools around footprints where the creatures had adorned themselves in attire of soft elven skin and revelled in their stolen lives. He remembered timber bunkers, frontline chirugury shops that had been little better than slaughterhouses, even if their purposes were reversed. Shovelling bowels back inside screaming men, barely having time to stitch them up before the next hacked-up living carcass was dumped on the table.

He ended up not waking the next person for watch, spending half the night on deck as far away from the sight and smell of that little red room as possible. There was no rest there. He paced the boards, barely able to muster the energy to swat away the biting flies that filled the night air. For the first time in a long while, his fingers twitched around the shape of a remembered hookah, and he craved the burnt honey taste of shadowlotus smoke.

By morning, the circles around his eyes were dark as new moons and he was even more silent and stooped than usual. He did not slacken in his contributions to the party's efforts in the least, however; he had long ago learned how to labour through fatigue, making everything an unflagging rote mechanical effort.

Ej rose just before the first rays of sun eased through the foliage to dapple the murky landscape. He stretched langorously, joints popping softly as he limbered up for the day, breathing deeply.

"Good ... morning," he remarked to Bendane, pausing in the middle of his salutation at the mage's sunken demeanor, concerned. "Have you been bitten by something as well?"

Rising with Ej and shaking off the sleep with a yawn, Rahkazar too gave a mighty stretch, popping her neck in the process. Looking at Bendane sleepily, Rahkazar blinked twice before realization jolted her the rest of the way awake.

"I was supposed to have last watch!" She said, looking at the wiry wizard apologetically. "You should have woken me!"

Bendane started from the numb consideration he was giving the misty mangroves, glancing around to see the warleader and envirourge joining him on deck. The small raft tilted slightly to this end with so many feet concentrated on one side, the muddy waters lapping at the planks.

"You..." his throat was raspy and clogged, so he had to pause to clear it with a rough cough. "I estimated that you needed the recuperation more than I, given your exertions yesterday." He waved away the apology, but looked at Rahkazar for a moment, taking a breath as if he was about to pose question that was troubling him... then shook his head, postponing it for later.

"There is something that might generously be called an omelette on the cookfire, made with the last of the swamp hen eggs and pale cheeses from the Maylentyrs. That is another reason to avoid the raft shack, of course... we have all been eating so many pickled truffles and other rich treats that it smells like a barracks after bad bean night," he said, trying to make a joke of it.

The portage-work was starting to become routine now, and while that enabled aching muscles to fall into a familiar pattern it also lulled the mind and senses into complacency. By now Bendane had figured out the most efficient way to help their newly salvaged raft along through the marshes, and despite his tiredness the day passed with surprising ease.

He even managed a weary joke as they settled in for the evening. "We commenced this journey with canoes, and now we are in possession of a barge. If we continue at this rate of progression, we shall have our own sailing ship to match the Blue Sail by the time of our advent in Jital."

"That would be lovely," Rahkazar grunts as she takes a sip from her tea. When they had settled for the night she had taken it up on herself to brew up a relaxing drink to help ease the soreness of their muscles and minds. "A good ship, a crew, open seas just waiting to rob us of both. Sounds like our luck, don't it?"

It was hard going, tough going, but after abandoning the prize at the Maylentyr house they needed a payday. Or at the very least, a craft to better navigate the island with. Needless to say, motivation to retrieve this boat was high.

"There had better be decent prospects in Jital, I am sick of roughing it through this muck," she said, glowering at the treacherous marshlands they were currently making their way through. "I'm not stranger to rough conditions, but this island is abysmal. No wonder every mood we've come across is sour."

"I just know the gnomes are going to appreciate all our hard work!" Rawiya exclaimed, not looking up from some fine detail she was adding to the garb of her puppet version of the illusionist Qwys. "Someone on this island was bound to, eventually. But the barge must have a name, if we're to sell it as a proper storied vessel, yeah?"

Only pausing briefly to make her nimble figure flip its limbs and flap its cape, the Yarin's eyes flashed with steely confidence.

"Something that inspires fear on land or sea. Something implacable and unavoidable. Something that lives longer in memory than the greatest triumph." Rawiya took a breath and wet her lips with the tip of her tongue, smiling wickedly. "We should call it the Faint Praise."

"Faint Praise, huh?" Rahkazar chuckled. "Why not Spirit of the Marsh? Strikes a better chord in my ears. Or would that be too on the nose?"

---

Later that evening, when the others had turned in for the night, Rahkazar stayed behind as Bendane took up watch.

"Something troubles you," she said softly, as the wind picked up the sounds of croaking frogs and chirping insects and lifted them high into the air. It was not a question.

"I've seen that look before. The one where the empty quiet of night is preferred to the twisting treachery of sleep. Where even blinking brings back sight of things that need never be seen twice. The shamans that tended our spiritual needs cautioned us against trying to bear such burdens alone."

Rahkazar watched the silent, still, bone-thin wizard for a response. She knew that he was not a pious man, but the invitation stood.

Bendane shifted uncomfortably as Rahkazar joined him, his shoulders bunching even as the sweat of the day dried between them. "The Faint Praise... does that make us the Damned with it?" he mused, trying to evade the orc's question. But her implacable directness could only be deflected for so long, much like a shield against her toothed sword. He stood for a moment longer, but was too exhausted to hold back the torrent of words and fears.

"How do you do it, Rahkazar?" he murmured softly. "We have none of us had an easy time of it on Valani, nor before it. There are no strangers to bloodshed and pain here. Rawiya has her stories that shape the world, her pretty poppets, her happily-ever-after lies to herself. Ej... I suppose to him it must seem natural, the unending saraband of predator and prey."

"But you and I, we have seen war. Not desperate escapes from a wrecker's prison, not skirmishes in the jungle. War. Even then, I have only seen its aftermath – the red ruin of men, the ashes that were homes. When I... when I must... when I kill, I do it from afar, with grim incantation. But you? You meet war blade to blade, lock hilts, look it in the eye and spit defiance in its face. When you kill..." he trailed off, staring into the marsh. "You have to wipe your face clean before your sword. Spit an enemy's blood out of your mouth before you can speak."

"I can barely stand to be in the same room as... the memory of that," he gestured vaguely at the barge's bunkroom. "How do you go on, again and again?"

For a time, Rahkazar mulled over Bendane's question, testing out each potential answer like a different blend of wine. How did she manage to sleep soundly, seeing what she's seen? There was no easy answer to it, she found.

Not thinking about it all, for one. But telling that to a man whose
business it was to think on things hardly seemed like actionable advice.
The particulars of Orcish religious practices was certainly a part of it, but there was no way to discuss that without discussing a wider set of beliefs that she wasn't sure she could do without upsetting him. But perhaps the easiest thing to say was that she had accepted who she was and what she did.

But that would taste a lie.

"I'm not sure what I can say, Bendane," she settled on finally. "There's no easy answer to that question. Not one that won't risk turning into a lecture, at least. Taking a life is never easy. Nor should it be. And war is something else entirely. Orcish beliefs about the gods and war and death make it easier, but for me...well. If you'd like to discuss it then the offer is open. But if not, allow me to say this: maybe not all religious rituals are meant for the worship of the gods. Maybe sometimes they are for
us."

For a moment, a strange expression crossed Bendane's thin face; disappointment in one he had come to respect. Even you choose give up responsibility for your red-handed deeds? You take the false succour of myth over facing the truth? He squared his shoulders in the manner of a man who had been hoping to share his burdens realising he would have to carry them himself, weary but centered.

He forced a ragged smile to cover his dismay. "You know, I thought the answer to that might be 'pure, unalloyed, white-hot-crucible rage'. I should not be surprised to discover it is more nuanced. You refuse to be a simple woman, warleader." The smile dropped. "I will not permit my personal doubts hinder us. I will keep bodies and souls together as long as my stitching needle and medicines hold out. And if I must kill..." his jaw twitched, he blinked hard over suddenly misty eyes, then gazed into the chirruping, slithering glades. "Besides, we are nearly through this part of the marsh. There is a chance that the tree that can cure Blissra grows somewhere between here and the river." That dim ember of hope was all he allowed himself, but it seemed to be enough to keep him going.

"Get to your bunk, Rahkazar. I will wake you when your shift comes."

"White-hot-crucible rage is not sustainable," Rahkazar said flatly, but kindly. "Not without losing more than what you can spare."

Cocking her head to the side, she studied Bendane closely. Her eyes allowed for more clarity in the dark than his, and caught more than he probably thought they did. She saw the look he tried to hide behind his rictus grin. Her own expression narrowed before she took a deep, cleansing breath.

"No," she said, a sentence unto itself. "I will go when we are finished. You'll forgive me for a lack of faith in the strength of your shoulders, but as I said before there is danger in carrying burdens alone."

Pausing for a moment to open up her waterskin, she drank deeply and passed it to the worried man before her. "I feel as though I have been misrepresented, my advice caught up in your vendetta against all things perceived as godly and therefore wholely evil. Neither my beliefs nor I will not be dismissed so faultily. However, I think that I can explain myself in a more neutral manner, if you'll permit me."

Waiting for his response, she asked simply, "What do you suppose the purpose of ritual is, good spell master? Surely you can think of one that can be reasonably divorced from worship of a deity."

That drew a faint but true and wry grin from the wizard. "Well, compared to your shoulders, perhaps..." He sipped at the water and listened. At first he frowned, feeling his own... complicated... views on the numinous were being as misrepresented as hers, but he put that aside and nodded for her to continue. He could hardly see her off if she wanted to stay and say her piece.

"Ritual is... practice and rote," he said after a moment's consideration. "The ritual of exercise until a muscle can lift iron easily. The ritual of drill until marching or bracing a pike is second nature. The ritual of memorising a song, a spell, a prayer, until every word is known fautlessly."

"But ritual can become mindless, and thus dangerous. Words drummed into a mind become void of meaning, thought-killing cliché. A warrior's reflexes can make him draw his sword at the sound of a dropped pot in his home. A muscle can be used to break a smith's arm," he added quietly.