RP Session 10: "Mired in the Mire"

The voice was silent for a few long moments, as if weighing Ej and Rahkazar's words. "Find the stones anchoring either beam. Lift them carefully - don't twist the wood. You should be able to open the jaws of the trap and lift out his foot."

Another long pause.

"I got word three or four days ago that a group of thieves had joined up with someone I used to work with. Picked up their trail yesterday. I was working on getting ahead of them when I noticed the three of you. Folks think they can take advantage just cos they know where you live. Figured you coulda been more thieves." The voice took a beat, then added "still could I spose."

Dismantling the man-trap gave Bendane the chance to examine its construction: Two hardy planks that looked to have seen the sea run through with long rods of metal spanning a long trench (not recently dug), underneath them a line of some kind of long spines interlocked like teeth until someone stepped on them. Then both pieces of wood would swing in on the anchored rods, and the spines would in turn puncture a skin bladder of the noxious chemical that now coated Ej's leg.

Anyone stumbling into the trench would be largely unharmed, but the moment they quite naturally tried to retract their foot the flesh would be stripped from their calf in ribbons, though Bendane wondered how effective the envenomation might be with that amount of bleeding. Perhaps it was necrotising? Preventing the wound from healing naturally.

The trap appeared to have been built long ago and merely set recently (and perhaps hurriedly), and now he knew what he was looking for the field-surgeon could see a number of other particularly dense patches of jungle debris that might well hide other such snares. The phrase 'I was working on getting ahead of them' suggested that this encounter might well be a chance to save Rawiya a similar fate.

There was a lengthy silence as the figure presumably considered Rahkazar's words. Though his familiar's echo-location was hardly ideal for reading emotion, the immobility of the torchbearer did nothing to disprove the Bendane's decoy theory. "You're right, I can hardly tarry here all day with those thieves on the move. But I also can't confront the group we're tailing - too many of them. And if I set up a few snares like these in their way... well, I couldn't promise your friend'd walk away. You though... you've the look of a band who can handle themselves."

There was another pause.

"Alright, you want to work together? We can do that. But I call the shots, and if I say you're turning back then we missed the chance at confrontation and you're turning back. I don't need more people knowing where I am. Deal?"

Crouched at the edge of a low ridge, their heads just poking above the foliage that hung down to the canopy not far below, Rawiya and the small folk stared out into a clearing about fifty yards away. A circle of flax-roofed conical huts on the far side of the clearing were clustered around a fire and a series of rough tables, but the bulk of the clearing was filled by row upon row of crops growing under a web of handwoven nets that drooped from tall poles.

The plants had broad, flat leaves of a particularly pale, vivid green. It was hard to tell much else at a distance, but what was more apparent was the guards patrolling the outside of the clearing in watchful trios and the other folk moving between the lines of crops with baskets, their hands and faces covered, harvesting some oddly pearlescent fruit with the same care one might afford a viper.

"What do you think?" hissed Edwinna, lowering the spyglass from her eye and offering it to Bigwhistle.

"Looks new. Big too. They're growing the operation."

"I thought we only wanted the map?" Barnas asked with a frown, rubbing at his large nose unconsciously.

"If there's a whole new fucking field here then things get more complicated. Trapmaker might've moved."

"So we need to scout it out then?"

"And maybe snag what we can while we're down there?" added Ninny, rubbing her hands.

Edwinna shot her a glare, but then pursed her lips. "Maybe" she conceded.

"Problem is" Bigwhistle put in "that I've been trekking with you for a week, and you're about as quiet as a dockside shitter. And they're all humans and elves."

"Hmmm" Edwinna acknowledged, seemingly ignoring the colourful analogy. Sliding down the bank on her ample rear end just far enough to sit up she looked Rawiya over. "What about Nudghe here?"