RP Session 10: "Mired in the Mire"

Bendane Kingsparr: HP 20/8+12 | HD 3 | Inspiration [✓][✓][✓] | Exhaustion 1.
Ej: HP 21/9+12 | HD 3 | Inspiration [✓].
Rahkazar: HP 35/15+20 | HD 3 | Inspiration [✓] | DECIDER.
Rawiya ola-Yetim: HP 20/10+10 | HD 3 | Inspiration [✓].

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Available NPCs: Che'vanna Rohannan
Wealth: 55.8gp
Daily Expenses: 2.4gp/day
Rations: 20
Total XP: 1,095/2,700
Day Count: 48
Reputations:
Elves of Kulik +1 neutral (with Ej +2 friendly)
Skin Thieves -1 slighted
Valani Myssathelyll +2 friendly

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Reach Jital Alive: +300xp milestone
Find & Obtain Samples from the Black Fingers Dig: +400xp milestone/+350gp
Obtain the Heirloom Amulet from Shannara Uksonnos'her: +1000xp milestone/+800gp
Bring Wurthenk Some Valuable Information: +??xp milestone/+??gp
Find the Source of Valani's Troubles Before the New Moon (Day 48): +100/+200/+400xp PERSONAL milestone (varying levels of success)
Obtain a Curative for Blissra: +450xp PERSONAL milestone
Reach the Guardian's Valley: +100xp PERSONAL milestone
Return 12 Oath Ribbons to the Families of their Owners (3/12): +5xp/ribbon, +40xp on completion PERSONAL milestone

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Current Initiative Order: Out of Initiative

A new course decided, the Bravos pressed on downriver. Conditions were far from balmy and the air was close and damp, but the swollen river made a fine highroad with all of its debris and blockages swept up against the ragged and sunken riverbed.

By day's end they'd found their fork and taken the left branch beneath the watchful gaze of a cluster of silver-plumed wading birds whose ugly croaks in no way matched their majestic figures. Those croaks seemed to haunt this stretch of the river, alongside the occasional mighty splash as the large avians swooped low to natch some hapless fish or frog from the river's surface.

The most difficult part of the day was finding suitable land upon which to make camp. Any clearing at the riverside was swampy and flooded, and there was no sleeping in the canoes as there had been the boat - if the rain came whole they slept a canoe would turn from bed to coffin quickly.

Eventually as the light grew too wan to go on they went ashore and, leaving their boats as far from the river as oar-tired arms could drag them, they trekked a half hour into the jungle to find a bare hilltop. At first Ej feared that it might mark a colony of army ants, but it seemed that the waters had driven off the millions that had crafted this clearing and they were able to build a fire and enjoy a comfortable night beneath the stars.

The night by the anthill passed uneventfully save for the mosquitoes who only seemed buoyed by the wet. Their larger cousins, the ones the Bravos had dealt with on their ride downriver, remained blessedly absent.

Getting back on the river not long after dawn they made good time with the floodwaters, often able to set aside their oars and let the river take them for long stretches before the current became turbulent or the river narrowed. At one point they passed a small cluster of black-scaled freshwater crocodiles who slid lazily into the water. Bendane saw a great dark shape larger than his whole canoe travelling along in stealthy silence beneath him for a few minutes but the intimidating reptile seemed satisfied to observe, and with a flick of its powerful tail it vanished beneath the brown river.

By the day's end they pulled their canoes ashore a few yards before the riverbank spread out into a mass of mangroves. Ej explained that they probably didn't want to make camp there - not only was the ground unreliable but all manner of venomous water snakes made their homes amongst the mangroves, as did the crocodiles, massive constrictors and more.

With no good bank to drag the boats ashore, they had to take turns watching the moored boats. It would only take a heavy rain to sink the little craft to the bottom of the river, and there would be no retrieving them should that happen - not by normal means at least.

It was a grim watch standing waist deep in the river with a million heartbeats and two million eyes hidden in the dark of the jungle - the cries of insects and animals only grew greater at night and often more shrill, and the sudden splash of something large retreating through the river or the thrash of some unseen traveller making its way through the canopy could be unnerving in the cool, dark water.

Rahkazar suffered worse from the leeches, and had to spend a good half hour burning the fat little slugs off with a smouldering stick before she could return to he bedroll.

A subdued and early night saw them all rise well before the sun to go through the bags Rawiya had filched from the Maylentyr kitchens. Pickled eggs and brown bread toasted on the embers of their fire, even a slab of oily butter (though no one had seen a cow since arriving on Valani... or a chicken when it came to it) broke their fast.

Whether or not their craft might boast some dubious value as
memorabilia, a quick scout by Ej showed that the next leg of their journey would be mangroves and mud, and the prospect of adding days to that crossing quickly saw the Bravos elect to drag their canoes to a high clay bank overlooking the river (startling a cloud of brightly plumed parrots that were licking salt from its face) and leave them well clear of any flood water, with a bright scrap of cloth suspended from the nearest branch.

Should they need to take to the river again the canoes would not be hard to find, and if some poor traveller came upon them then that would be an act of charity they were unlikely to regret. There were, after all, no plans to return.

The first day in the mangroves was miserable. Every step was a battle to push through the sucking mud and the little saplings were able to tear through boots and whip at limbs. More than once Ej called them to a halt an instant or two before a snake, the first black and gleaming like an assassin's leathers and the second gaily coloured like a bed of flowers, slithered by on the surface of the floodwaters with sinister grace.

It was not the snakes that they should have feared though. Rawiya spent much of the day hanging back and investigating pieces of driftwood, collecting interesting pieces that weren't too waterlogged to dry and work later. A dark branch with a bruised purple tint and a gorgeous grain was something she simply couldn't pass up, but snatching it from the water she was horrified when a garish centipede the length of her forearm emerged like an arrow from the recesses of the branch and sunk its punchers into her arm.

The pain was horrific, but as the day went by her wound began to blacken, her arm tingled and she began to sweat profusely despite shivering with cold. Ej examined her wound gravely, and though he assured her that it would not be fatal she would also need to preserve her energy as they went forward, and it would be days until she began to recover. He proclaimed it was time that they stop for the day, and so with the sun still high they sought a camp.

Nowhere was truly dry when it came time to lie down for the night and they slept on a pile of driftwood trapped amongst the mangroves - a natural raft that stank of stale water and made fire impossible. The night in the jungle was as bonechilling as the day was sticky and waking was the hardest it had been since their days in chains beneath Solace. But they rose, ate in silence and trudged into the next day.

Making a camp in the swampland was difficult - the insects came and went when they were on the move, but when it became evident that Bendane and Rawiya were staying their numbers increased by the hour. It was only thanks to a small knoll surrounded by stinking mud that Rawiya's aversion to leeches was not tested.

With Bendane's description and a hurried sketch drawn by the Rylithythinyl master herbalist meanwhile, Ej and Rahkazar set out into the swamplands. The skies were clear and so even with few landmarks it was a simple enough matter to make a search for the tree whose sap held a cure for all ills (and with a patient to test these properties on at camp there would be no more convenient time to find such a tree.)

Sadly the mangroves seemed interminable, and though Ej was a native to the steaming wilds of Valani and Rahkazar a skilled survivalist after a lifetime on the march, they found nothing that even slightly resembled the drawing. What they did find, however, was concerning.

Passing through a particularly dense copse of vine-choked mangrove, both were surprised to find a small square barge moored against the dense tangle of vegetation. The thing groaned hollowly as its sides were rubbed raw against the living pier to which it was tethered, but it wasn't rotten and ancient as the husk they'd passed near a month ago when first they Bravos entered these jungles.

The top was covered with a web of rope like a heavy fishing net, interwoven with vines and fallen tree limbs, almost as if someone had tried to conceal the vessel from above as well as behind the flooded jungle.

The craft was silent but for the sound of the water slapping against it.

Slipping stealthily through the stagnant sludge of the swamp, Ej neared the shallow-hulled vessel the first thing Ej noticed was the grey miasma of flies that hung around the deck, their frenzied buzzing growing ever more grating as he drew closer.

Next came the smell - tart, almost acrid, but undoubtedly foul. As he reached the side of the vessel, low enough in the water that he could pull himself up and peek over the edge, it only grew stronger and a churning nausia rose up in the wild man's belly.

Glancing over the edge of the vessel, Ej could see that the deck was clear and in good repair. A few crates sat at the boat's prow where one might usually find fishing tackle or nets on such craft. One crate stood open revealing glass vials packed in dry reeds, and in these a bluish fluid that seemed to sparkle and catch light of a hue and direction not in keeping with the ambient sunlight.

The door to the cabin that occupied the centre of the vessel stood open, a trio of steep stairs leading down into the shadowed hull. The bolt hung from splintered timber, and the door itself swung and creaked with the gentle rocking of the craft. In the doorway a boot and a slit-open shirt lay discarded on the deck. Both looked to have been removed not by being unlaced but by the blade of a scalpal.

The galling buzz of flies and the gentle thudding of the barge against the mangroves was the only answer that Ej received.

It took a moment for Ej's eyes to adjust from the dazzling daylight to the uncomfortably warm gloom of the narrow cabin, and when they did he was glad to have his lungs filled. The room was sparely furnished, with just a quartet of canvas bunks anchored to the wall on either side and some crude clothing chests for the crew's meagre personal items.

In the centre of the floor in perhaps an inch or so of water, lay two humanoid figures. Clad in black cloaks of flies and already writhing with maggots it was still impossible to miss that from their head to their toes both had been cleanly flayed, leaving muscle and sinew and bone exposed, and the floor awash with a jammy mass of putrid gore.

The pale blue liquid tasted of nothing, and effervesced in her mouth. For a few pensive moments nothing happened. The trees remained silent. Perhaps the potions were spoiled? Rawiya supposed if she had just become immortal she might not immediately notice. It wasn't until she droped with a thud back onto the bedroll she'd been lying on that she realised she'd been floating a few inches from the ground for a few seconds.

The trouble with experimenting with brews made to imbue their effect when taken in their entirety was dosage: Too little and the test was wasted, too much and you risked the potency of the spell when eventually consumed. This bottle was decidedly larger than the previous, but having had success with the other brew Rawiya poured a roughly similar amount onto her tongue - scarcely a mouthful - and the effect was instant.

The world around her slowed to a crawl, the sight of Bendane stowing his tinctures and poultices became sluggish. A kingfisher leaping from a branch to take to the air turned from a bluish blur to a sharply outlined shape, hanging impossibly motionless in the air.

Then the moment passed and Rawiya's surrounds accelerated again until they returned to normal.

It occurred to Rawiya that both concoctions might well have been secreted away by the Maylentyr quartermaster in the event that he had to make a swift escape with the coffers.

Picking their way back to the boat - not hurriedly so as to disturb Rawiya's treatment - the Bravos found the vessel unchanged from when Rahkazar and Ej had first discovered it save that the cover of night made its grisly cargo all the more terrible. Still, as long as whatever had put an end to the previous crew did not return it would make for a better refuge than the open swamp. Even the flies had quieted in the cool of night.

It was slow arduous work moving the boat, only made possible by the gradually-receding flood waters and the slick marshland. Rawiya's coils of sodden weeds made work easier when the ground was dry, and though in truth his physical assistance made little impact Bendane's plan to bring the flood waters with them made passage through the denser mangroves easier. That left Ej and Rahkazar the lions share of pulling and pushing, with hefty ropes that must have once been bound to oxen or whatever insectoid equivalent the elves of Valani had harnessed to drag the vessel here.

Even with the combination of ingenious path laying and brute force progress felt almost insignificant. And yet, little by little they made ground.

By sunset Bendane had grown pale and wan, but the rest were in good spirits at the prospect of making camp in the cabin of the boat - a real bed in the sticky wilds of the inland island was a promise that their aching muscles longed for, and when they doused their fire and retired it was everything they'd hoped. Lulled to sleep by the creaking timbers of the barge and the soft lapping of the shallow waters.

Despite Bendane's apparent malaise there was much ground left to cover, and eventually the floodwaters would recede and make their task impossible. Thankfully the second day proved far simpler than the first - a detour to the north and a single uphill struggle brought them to an area of shallow water almost entirely free of the spear-tipped mangroves that dominated the rest if the swamp. Though the standing water reeked of rot and the ground was like thick slime beneath them the day passed with surprising ease (or as much as could be expected when a party of five were called to manhandle a whole boat) and hauling their bodies onto the deck as the sun hung low in the sky wasn't the impossible chore it had been yesterday.

A gentle breeze moved the water just barely, and the gentle rocking accompanied by omnipresent frogsong might almost have been pleasant were they not tending to strains and blisters throughout the evening.

Ej watched the new moon rise with a sense of resignation as the low mumble of Bendane and Rahkazar's conversation fought a losing battle against the song of forearm-sized crickets, the chirping of a rainbow of minute frogs and the tense wingbeats of swarms of mosquitoes and beetles. The jungle was never quiet, never still. A million heartbeats thrummed within a mile radius around them at all times, and all of those heartbeats belonged to creatures shameless in voicing their full throated desire to kill, or eat, or rut through the night. Too find food enough to reproduce before inevitably becoming food for something else.

Tonight another voice - a voice of deceit would be added. The stay that the skin thieves had promised had ended, and while they were unlikely to target Ej or his companions unless crossed (the Master of Wood would not brook their minions warring - if they noticed) they would be seeking to infiltrate themselves amongst the civilised folk of Valani. He could only hope that the settling of the unnatural weather might have quieted their spiteful panic.

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Troubled or not, the day had been a gruelling one and Ej was asleep long before Bendane roused Rawiya from her blankets for her watch, and as the Yarin stepped out onto the moonlit deck of the Faint Praise... of the Marsh... had they left that undecided? By the time she stepped out for her watch images of a hand carved plaque announcing the little vessel's name (and perhaps evidencing that it was certainly not the nameless vessel lost in the swamps) were already forming in her head.

Keeping close to the barge so as not to wholly abandon her watch, Rawiya slid past a peppering of dead fireflies that lay on the rails and dropped into the knee-depth water with a splash no more conspicuous than a corpulent toad and began wading about the immediate area looking for a piece of marsh wood large enough to whittle. It seemed fitting that the barge be rechristened in materials from the swamp after all.

So focused on her task was she that Rawiya almost didn't notice the light, but as she rose to examine and then hurriedly reject a length of whitish birch (tossing it the moment a centipede stuck its antennae out of a pulpy mass of rot) she saw it bobbing through the trees. A light, flickering like fire, directional if anything was to be judged by its coming and going. Like the long shaft of light cast by a storm lantern... or from the mouth and eyes of a vengeful cannibalistic ghost.

But then, they knew that there must be other folk out here. Was it just another party of travellers hopelessly lost in the mire? Or was it worth rousing the others - in their beds after a gruelling day of portage and readying for another?

Creeping forward through the shallow water, Rawiya found a low bank that allowed her to leave the water and use the spongy soil to mask her careful but eager footsteps. Closing the distance towards the slowly searching shaft of light, she lowered herself to knees and elbows beneath a stretch of huge-leafed, waxy plants. Here she was able to poke her head up beneath a leaf perhaps twenty feet from the source of the light.

Momentarily dazzled as the light swept over her (and quickly ducking beneath her leafy trapdoor to re-emerge when the dark returned) she squinted in to a narrow clearing they'd deemed too dry for their purposes the day before. Here a half dozen figures were clustered around one who held a hooded lantern of the like used to signal ships.

These figures were small, stocky and heavy-limbed. They wore heavy cloaks of netting woven through with scraps of grey and brown fabric, and with clusters of wilting foliage as a formidable camouflage, though beneath these cloaks their muddy garb showed glimpses of garish colour. Each carried a hand crossbow similar to Rawiya's own and most had a cudgel or cutlass hanging on their belts.

The small group had stopped in the clearing and seemed to be in heated debate as the swept the light about, searching for something.

Unable to make out their hushed conversation, Rawiya took advantage of the undergrowth to crawl closer, to within perhaps twenty feet of the small party. Here she was able to cup her hands beneath her chin and take measure of the strangers - five gnomes and a halfling now that they could be seen more clearly.

"We shoulda stayed hard by the river" one of the gnomes, a fellow with a big red nose and a beard and mutton chops separated by a shaven strip of skin, was saying. "If she be gatherin' for the cooks out this way then she'd wanna be near the water."

Another, with a shading of dark stubble and a red scarf tied over one eye, scoffed."Why take to hiding in a damned swamp near the lake where them skin thieves be haunting just to sit right on the water ye damned fool?"

"Skin thieves? You rube! There be no such thing" barked another with a laugh. Her long hair was curled and tucked under at the bottom and seemed to have been kept meticulously from the swamp water, and her full rosy cheeks were marred by a long neat scar.

"Shut up all of shit-eating mongrels!" hissed the halfling with an authority far beyond his small stature. He had curly fair hair, a perfectly cherubic face, and a scowl that could strip varnish "And hood that fucking light else I'll jam it elbow deep up your arse and make a puppet of you. Jarbar knows these lands and she set the traps that did for Maddock's crew. We need surprise. That's why we're pushing through this shit at night. Now shut your cock-sucking mouths and quit your bitching."

Rawiya gasped, stifling the sound at the last moment by slapping a hand across her mouth. Jarbar the Trapmaker was a name she knew well.
Could it be the same? Surely that wasn't a common epithet. Was Tenazza's first mate still alive? And on Valani?

Unfortunately in stifling her mouth, Rawiya had drawn a deep breath through her nose, and with it came a substantial ant that was particularly unhappy about it's nasal imprisonment. Rawiya sneezed hard, and less than a second later she was dazzled by the full beam of the lantern.

"Halloa there, reckon we got us a little spy."

From the back of the group a gnome pushed forward. She wore a heavily embroidered frock coat in midnight blue and her rich chestnut hair hung in a fat braid over her shoulder. Her boots, though caked with mud, showed clear signs of quality work and her broad, flat nose was screwed up in a snarl.

Grabbing the halfling roughly by the hair she pulled him, protesting, slowly out of the way to get a look at Rawiya. The scrutiny was methodical, and nothing she found seemed to dull her distaste if the expression was anything to go by.

"It's a yarin" she announced to the group. "Gaudy clothes but filthy, so probably with those cooks Christoffel mentioned. They're territorial, so we got to stop her reporting back. What do we reckon? Cut her throat? Truss her up? Or maybe we let Bigwhistle here have his fun with her." The halfling smiled beatifically at that last part. "My Godsdamned name is Gabriel and you fucking know that" he said without taking his eyes off Rawiya.

"Shouldn't we at least question her?" Asked the gnome with the muttonchops quizzically.

"She'll only lie" replied bluecoat dismissively "and keep lying until someone comes to find her. Best to move on if we're keepin' her. Even still if we're to hide the body. Warning the trapmaker'd be suicide."

Bluecoat looked Rawiya in the face for the first time, reappraising her with a quizzical eye. "What do they call you girl?" she asked, the threat gone from her voice. It hadn't been replaced with sugar exactly, but perhaps not threatening to slit someone's throat was her version of sugar.

Bluecoat smiled sweetly, the emotive equivalent of an oil slick spreading across water. "Well... Nudge, I'm Edwinna and these are my friends Barnas, Ninny, Clorvis, Hendrick, Gerte and-" her smile broadened as she indicated the halfling "-Bigwhistle. Now we were doing some business with a human called Jarbar, and she up and stiffed us, and now we're trying to find where she lives to have a word. Cept we don't know where her cabin's at. I don't spose this treasure of yours'd belong to Jarbar now would it?"

Edwinna considered her bubbly captive like one might upon finding a particularly colourful spider in one's boot. Was it dangerous? Were there more? Or would it scuttle off into the undergrowth the moment you looked away? The urge to bind her hands and feet and let the swamp decide her fate was strong, this one definitely couldn't be trusted, but treasure... that was just plausible enough.

She looked Rawiya over again. The yarin was definitely a spy.

"Bind her hands" she ordered the muttonchopped gnome she's called Barnas "and bring her along." She turned back to Nudge. "Hold out your wrists girl, nice and still. You prove your worth, maybe we let you off the leash."

It was a trick so old that it was amazing no one seemed to know about it. Rawiya tucked her thumbs into her palm, presenting fists but flexing her wrists. It would only be the work of some wiggling if the time came and she'd be able to shed even Barnas' fairly snug knots.

"Don't you worry none now" Edwinna soothed as the bonds were tightened. "Best not get a treasure map wet after all."

"We'll have a care" Barnas reassured. "These marsh waters all be no much more'n thigh deep anyway." Which, it seemed imprudent to point out, on a gnome was rather shallow indeed. Even if Rawiya did have algae marks around her armpits that proved him wrong.

The group seemed restive as she was properly restrained, which made taking their measure in so short a time challenging but Rawiya figured that the halfling (Gabriel or Bigwhistle or whatever he was called) must be an outsider - perhaps a local guide or some such - while the gnomes seemed completely out of place in the swamp. Of course the halfling was clearly not an ally. The impatient looks he was giving her told Rawiya clearly that she'd already be dead and hidden if he had his way. Why was every halfling on this island some kind of cutthroat? They'd been a generally parochial and pleasant folk in most of her experiences, but it seemed that made their bad eggs all the more rotten.

The rest seemed to be of a mind in terms of whatever their purpose out here might be. The deference they offered Edwinna seemed more akin to a tour group following their guide's directions than a bandit crew who feared their leader. They had an expert who was here to guide them to a shared goal, and that was that. The slack rope Barnas gave her the moment they started moving was enough to tell Rawiya that he had no intention of doing much more than dragging her around like a pet he'd been entrusted with for the weekend.

"Now" continued Edwinna "we're gonna find our way to the trapmaker, and while we do you can tell us all about this treasure of yours. And if what you have to say sounds promising I'm sure we can follow whatever errand you fancy too." With that she waved the group forward.

Edwinna looked at the halfling. "Well?"

"Ask a pissing elf" Bigwhistle spat back with a roll of his eyes "I'm not some bumpkin herbalist chasing stories about flowers."

"Oh for Pynninos' sake-"

"Language!" the halfling cut her off harshly. "Keep the Gods' names out of your mouth."

The one-eyed one called Clorvis brightened up. "I once won a prize fer me whistlin!" he announced through a gap in his teeth before stringing together a perfunctory melody in demonstration. The competition must not have been a heated one, but the tune was passable. With the addition of some enthusiastic hamboning and perhaps a jug and washboard Rawiya figured she might have a down home marsh band on her hands.

"We haul to make other folks rich is what we do, and we're tired of it" put in Ninny, her plump cheeks reddening with frustration. "Toil never made man or woman rich, nor even paid their debts, and Edwinna here's got a plan to make us all otherwise."

"Trapmaker's sittin on a map that ain't hers to sit on" added Edwinna simply. "We're fixin to change that."

It was a matter of moments to pick up the Yarin performer's trail. She took no pains to hide her passage through the world, and deep footmarks in the sucking mud little more than an hour old trailed around the boat with no special purpose before leading off straight into a thicket where the trail became hand and knee. On the other side the trail of a party of small folk - certainly not dwarves - delayed a while before leaving with Rawiya in their company.

There was no sign of struggle, and yet a scrap of fresh-cut rope lay discarded in the undergrowth. She'd gone willingly... tied up... with seven small folk who, again, were definitely were not dwarves.

About fifteen minutes later another set of tracks, alone this time and moving with quite some stealth had come the way the seven small folk had, circled the small clearing and them followed them away. The single clear print of a pointed-toed boot gave no clue except that the owner could afford to ruin quality footwear in this marsh.

Leaving the boat behind them - it would be truly miraculous for yet another group of off-the-path travellers to chance by it during a few hours absence, let alone for that group to take on the toil of portage - the remaining Bravos followed Ej as the wild man picked out the incautious trail of Rawiya's kidnappers.

It was a welcome change to trek the jungle without the burden of the boat, and as the sun began to crest the jungle canopy and a cacophonous song of night was replaced by the equally deafening but wholly distinct chatter of day the trail reached the river that would have been a day distant had their morning progressed as planned.

Here the trail seemed to stop for a time amongst traces of provisions before turning north.

The night wasn't so dark that travel wasn't pleasant, though the jungle canopy denied much of the night sky and the swamp was as hard going as ever - perhaps more so without free hands. Rawiya hadn't fully appreciated how being leashed might impact her balance and the fight to free her feet from the sucking mud and lunge forward before her momentum thrust her planted foot back (and thus made the step at best lateral in progress) and now she had the addend challenge of swaying off balance every few steps.

To his credit, on the few occasions she had fallen into the muck Barnas had helped to haul her to her feet.

They heard the river long before they saw it, but upon reaching the banks. Many of the party were ready to rush to the waters and wash the sweat from their brows until Bigwhistle pointed out that the dark shapes of sodden driftwood lapped by shallows along the shore were almost certainly disguised crocodiles. At that Ninny planted her heavy booted feet and crossed her arms, painted face in a defiant pout.

"Right, that's it, I en't taking another step through this sweatty pit till I've powdered me nose and filled me belly." She crossed her arms and pointed her chin a Edwinna defiantly.

"Fine" conceded the other woman, waving a calloused hand dismissively as she peered with a modicum of horror at the motionless crocodilians "break your fast if it'll curb your bellyaching, but we'd best be at the trapmaker's hut before morning. Don't want her to see us comin' now do we?"

"It's likely a little late for that" said the cherubic halfling dryly.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Just that it might be we who might want our senses at their best to approach the home of the woman who goes by the moniker trapmaker." He replied snippily.

"You're telling me she's fool enough to live amongst a maze of armed snares where a score of beasts would be likely to set all of them off every day? She's not some beast of legend in its dungeon lair Bigwhistle."

"She also runs half the Shiny on the Risetide Coast. You think we're the first group to attempt to get to her?"

Rawiya was used to her prattle irritating people - it was almost the point - raising someone's ire made them incautious, made them underestimate her, gave her opportunities. In this case though her initial confidence seemed to have impressed the little band of gnomes and save for Ninny who was more concerned with pinching her cheeks and powdering her scar, and Bigwhistle who merely rolled his sapphire eyes, they all stopped to listen closely as the perky entertainer spoke.

When she'd finished Edwinna, face still an ever-present matronly frown, pressed through the ankle deep mud back to Rawiya and crouched in front of her. "I think perhaps we may be. Come now Nudge, this tree of yours? It's ship? It's treasure? We both know better. You're here for the trapmaker, right? You know too much not to be."

She reached down, loosened the rope around Rawiya's wrists. "Why guard our words so close? We needn't be so cagey with each other. You're alone out here. You must need allies if you're going after Jarbar, and if you had them where are they? Not much use I wager. Why don't we work together? You tell us what you know? We get the then talk shares? Or are you here about the Shiny? We could still help each other if you're with a rival distributor - that's not our game."

Pausing by the riverside as Bendane sent his familiar high into the still morning, Ej scanned the riverbank. The tell-tale trails left by the bellies of black camen showed that there had been no feeding frenzy before they went out about their day - that was something. There were traces of heavy white powder on the ground that looked like ground chalk mixed with animal fat or some such oddity. Boot-prints crossed this-way and that, and the neat peach-shaped print of a bottom dug deep into the
mud.

It looked like Rawiya's captors had stopped here for some time.

Far above Bendane's senses whirled and swept away from his senseless body on its orcish mount. Once he was clear of the canopy and its myriad predators - many of whom were hungry or curious enough to sample even the bones of a tiny bat, he looked down on the riverbank and the shallow marshland around it but it looked no different than any other stretch of marsh they'd been pushing through for days.

The smotheringly vital green blanket of the canopy was holding tight to its secrets.

Edwinna looked uncomfortable for a moment, uncertainty and irritation warring on her round face. "Alright" she began cagily. "Alright, so the trapmaker was a mate to one of the most famous pirates of the Risetide. Most pirates meet a messy end, but this crew just up and vanished one day. Decided they had plunder enough for this lifetime and the next. Word is that the higher ups hid their ship and their surplus somewhere on the island. Not at the port they sailed from - that place was raided and burned by the Confederation marines the minute the Moment of Clarety stowed her sails - but somewhere. We want to know where. Maybe we go get it for ourselves, maybe we sell that information to the highest bidder, maybe the Trapmaker keeps us comfortable to keep our mouths shut, who knows?"

She squinted at Rawiya, trying to see if any of this was new information to her captive-turned... well... turned-something.

"Now the Trapmaker, she's the only one of the Gull's inner circle to surface since they called it a day. She came down to the swamps here and took over the harvesting of Star Blue - roughed up the locals, made it clear that throats'd be cut if the Shiny coming out of southern Valani didn't go through her, and it does. She's supplying moongazers for half the mainland coast, anyone not trading with the Myssathelyllin at least, from a cluster of shacks somewhere out here."

She jerked her head towards the halfling. "Bigwhistle here used to sell for her out of Jital. He's been to the farm. But he got stiffed on a big score, and now he's willing to give us a shot at the Trapmaker where she thinks she's safe."

"They take you out there blindfolded" Bigwhistle interjected "but I wasn't about to let that bullshut stand. Saw most of the trip out the bottom of one eye. Just in case I ever needed it. And here we are."

"So" said Edwinna, leaning back as she closed her story "you don't look like Myssathelyllin. Don't think they'd work with half-elves. So the way I see it either you're with the Trapmaker, you're like Bigwhistle here and you've got beef, you're setting up a rival operation, or you were just roaming alone through the swamps in the middle of nowhere looking for a tree in a jungle and happened to fall out of as bush in front of us. I know which I reckon's likely."

Rawiya had assumed that 'Shiny' was some kind of parochial euphemism for coin, but a word stood out amongst all of that exposition. 'Moongazers' was one term for the habitual users of a draught called Shine Eye. Most ports around the Risetide were littered with down-on-their-lucks with eyes that shone like moonlight, talking real fast about dreams and plans that were never going to come to pass. Dressed in rags cos every coin they could beg steal or borrow went on their next fix. It was such a problem in some ports that excise officers had started tipping the stuff into the sea when they found it, and that only made the price even higher for a dose.

The three Bravos and Che'vanna were still considering the implications of Ej's findings when the wilder noticed something else - something altogether more unusual - wood shavings. He'd become familiar with such things travelling with Rawiya whose whittling was the only thing that kept her nimble hands from trouble. Her captors would hardly have given her their customary knife though, even if her hands were somehow free. And these shavings were accompanied by long silken threads of stripped flax and the crushed stalks of some pale-coloured plant.

Someone had been busy at work here, and recently. Some of the shavings lay atop the far-flung powder that had marked their resting place.

It was odd, no doubt, but it didn't suggest anything particular...

Neither Bendane nor Rahkazar could offer any insight into the meaning of the detritus before them and so, urged on by the newfound threat of violatory probing, the three Bravos and Che'vanna saw little to be gained by lingering in by the riverside. The trail went north, and that was all there was for it. If the mysterious pursuer had lost the trail (which Ej had to allow was possible for a less skilled tracker) or simply broken away and perhaps gone by river they would simply have to accept that.

---

"Wha'd you ask her again?" asked the one-eyed Clorvis in a strained tone, rubbing his temple. They'd been at rest when Rawiya began her admittedly slightly embellished account of her exploits on Valani but now they were pressing through dense jungle up the riverbank.

"Who?" replied Ninny. Her knife-scored features somewhere between unfocused exhaustion and confusion, and the freshly applied powder was already streaking with sweat in the insistent humidity.

"Winna damnit!" Clorvis replied, the 'w' whistling through a gap in his front teeth.

"Don't put this on me!" bellowed Edwinna, giving both a hard look "he's managing her!" She jerked a thumb at Barnas who held Rawiya's now entirely ineffectual leash.

"What do you want me to do?" Barnas asked helplessly, spreading his palms in defeated supplication "gag her? You wanted to know what she knew and she's telling you!"

"JUST SHUT HER THE FUCK UP" Bigwhistle cut through the chatter with characteristic emphasis.

"You don't give the orders here hairfoot" Edwinna bristled.

"Look" Gerte broke away from he group to address Rawiya directly, a pleading look on her pleasantly round features "they got all kinds of folk at this compound who works with plants and such. One of them's sure to know your tree if we snatch 'im. We just wanna know why you seem like you knows 'bout the trapmaker, cos it seems like you do and we're all real scared that a sharp tree might fall on us or something, and no one's using that treasure if it's just buried somewhere, and I'd just really, really like to know what it's like to be dirty, stupid, screaming rich for a bit. Please? If you're one of hers just say and we'll... we'll... I dunno, cut you in?"

Everyone else shot her a sextet of thunderous looks.

"Well shit, I dunno."

---

Making their way through the jungle was a good deal easier since the band they were following had slashed a trail, though most of it wasn't much taller than waist height - thigh for the towering Rahkazar. In the lead of the group, Ej hunkered low and loped through the undergrowth on his feet and knuckles like a monkey, keeping his nose to the ground.

With Rawiya's kidnappers having to blaze a trail it seemed certain that they were making ground on them, and the song of forearm-length jungle cicadas (sounding like nothing more than the droning of a thousand thousand dragonflies) would be enough to keep the approach of even the armoured orcish warrior secret.

Their hopes were high until a loud,sharp crack sounded over even the monstrous cicadas...

By necessity, Ej was tracking a little ahead of Bendane and Rahkazar. At ease in the jungle and with his head down on what he feared might well be an urgent task, he didn't realise that the covering of brush and fallen leaves shouldn't be so thick after a flood until it was too late. Planting his foot into the familiarly yielding undergrowth Ej felt the ground underneath, he lowered his weight and the ground yielded with the firm 'clack' of moving timber.

Ej felt his ankle slip down between two lengths of wood almost to the knee. Worse still, he could feel a veritable porcupine of long, hard spines pointing downward on either side of his calf. For now he was merely wedged firmly on one knee, but the moment he tried to extract his foot the points of those prongs would shred the flesh of his leg and ankle. Stranger still, the air was suddenly filled with an odd aroma that stung the wild man's eyes and nostrils.

With the benefit of Ej's cry of surprise, both Bendane and Rahkazar were able to stop themselves in mid stride, both with their feet hovering above similarly deep patches of groundcover, which stretched across the trail they were following. There must have been at least a dozen of them. Both kept their balance and were able to plant their feet firmly on the safe side of the line of snares.

"Well done" called a voice from among the treetops somewhere above "but one'll do. Those barbs are poisoned, so I wouldn't go yanking yourself out in a hurry even if you've got a taste for bleeding."

Ej couldn't see his foot, but he could feel wetness - something was flowing into the little hole in which he now found himself snagged, and it seemed to be the source of the awful smell.

With a 'whoosh' a torch ignited almost directly above, and the sudden flame was enough to make out a figure, clothes mottled with mud and leaves, peeking from behind the bough of one of the massive trees with the papery bark and the purplish bean pods. "Who are you and why're you following me?"

"Then what..." Gerte trailed off "...what do...I mean..." She trailed off, and then gave Edwinna a pleading look.

"We're almost there" snapped the matronly gnome with a snort. She turned her attention to Rawiya. "If yer with the trapmaker or her suppliers then we hold you. If yer not and you prove yourself worthy of trust? Maybe we can use you." She fanned a hard look across all of the others. "Either way, she stays bound and she shuts her mouth when we say so."

She pointed a short, thick finger at a hill poking up out of the jungle not far ahead. "We get up there, should give us eyes on the compound with Barnas' spyglass. Right?" Edwinna looked to Bigwhistle, who rolled his eyes and nodded. "Then we plan our approach." She looked back to Rawiya. "And you behave and don't try to blow our cover, maybe tell us what you know, keep us thinking you're useful an' it was worth dragging you through the jungle all day then maybe we keep you around."

It seemed that Edwinna had convinced herself that Rawiya was tied to whatever 'compound' they were looking for, but Rawiya's constant smoke-screen of chatter had all of the gnomes entirely off-balance. Was she an ally of the trapmaker? A fellow opportunist? An agent of whatever cutthroats Jarbar was in league with out here? Or perhaps an officer of the Confederation seeking out smugglers in the sweltering jungles? It was impossible to say.

There was little to make out of the figure - just an arm and a head and a glimpse of torso leaning out high in the canopy above. Only the torch was truly distinct, and it burned with a phosphorescent intensity. There was no way that all of this had been set up between Rawiya's passing and their own arrival. Not by one person. Not by natural means at least.

"We called it alchemist's fire" came the voice "but with few ingredients left out."

Bendane's familiar hit the canopy with a crash and dove down towards the tree. Bats were hardly creatures of subtlety, but the jungle was virulent and one more body bumbling through the overgrowth was far beneath remark. It caught a branch in one little skeletal claw, sending a hefty cicada scattering, and swung into a hanging position a few yards from the figure. From here Bendane could see a hollow high up in the tree, a crude platform, and the figure emerging from within the little hollow, eerily still.

"A Yarin you say? Alright. So the newcomer's yours then? If your friend travels with thieves then that's hardly a boast. What's your business so far inland?"

"Three of you, one of me. I'm sure you can see why 'just come down here where we can reach you' isn't the most appealing offer" the voice called back. "You want to talk, let's do it like this."

It wasn't a refusal.

"You think these thieves snatched your friend? Why? You didn't get a ransom note right?"

As the voice spoke, Bendane sent his awareness closer to the figure. The bat's eyesight was weak, but with a series of squeals he was able to get a good sense of the shape of the figure. It was certainly an unnatural kind of stillness seen up close, even as it spoke. But then again the voice was undoubtedly coming from there. Of course there were many relatively simple magical solutions that might allow someone to project their voice, even Bendane's own Chauncy would serve admirably as a decoy torchbearer.

Whatever the case no skin nor feature on the figure in the tree was visible enough for certainty.

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?"