Ch: 23 An Apology Apple

Midday found the bathers on a low hill, overlooking the marsh Esperanza described. The road traveled on a causeway and a few sturdy stone bridges, elevated three feet over the swamp.

A wide channel of slow moving water, nearly covered by floating detritus and water plants flowed onto the river, making it much larger without increasing its rate of flow much. A reedy bog filled the lowlands, it stretched at least a couple miles to a low ridge of hills to the south.

The River Road climbed back onto dry land a half mile away on a low hill. At the near end, a small mound began the causeway after a short stone bridge.

Near the midpoint was an… Island would be too generous a name, it was surrounded by water, barely. A scant four yards of bridge, over murky and muddy water separated the ‘island’ and the road proper, raised on a gravel and stone berm.

“Set up house here gang, unknown creatures are the risky side of the business. We don’t want it to find us, until we are ready to find it.” Liam called, looking down on the wetland a few hundred yards away. “Put your thornbush up Gary, I feel uneasy here.”

The exhausted pair were more than happy to comply, singing soft and low while dancing together, separated only by their instruments.

Give me, a kiss to build a dream on,

And my imagination…

Sometimes Tawny wanted to murder those two. They built a fine house though. For the first time in a while, Garys hedge of thorny, acid berried, toxic brambles appeared. The huge white blooms, almost luminous in the overcast day, made it seem less threatening.

“Gary, Shai, are those Duskmoons? Again?!” She smiled and stamped her foot at the couple. “We talked about this!”

“We did, they are illegal to distribute or sell, not to own or cultivate. I checked it out with Tony, and they are only banned in Wheatford, I checked, we are not in Wheatford.”

“Gary has a point.” Ivy said, carefully harvesting pods from the vines.

“The pollen lets me sleep, really sleep. I can hide them from you, but I’m not giving them up. Do you have any idea what it's like having a pre teen god living inside you? The angst is horrible.”

Tawny sighed desperately. “I will write you a chit for it… on the condition that you supply the temple of Healer in any town we stop in, with your excess.”

“Agreed, now I kinda feel like a drug dealer…” Gary said, heading inside. They began plotting over lunch.

#

“I have some rituals that might help locate concentrations of magic, but Gary and the house are going to throw them off. Let’s try and bait it out first.” Ivy said.

“Agreed, anyone have a skill, spell or ability that might help? Shai’s house is a strong position, we would be foolish to give it up.” Liam said, looking at Gary, all the rest did the same, looking at him calmly and waiting.

Assuming they were waiting for a response to Liam’s ‘Shai’s house’ wisecrack, he stared back just as calmly.

After a moment they turned to Shai, who sighed deeply and scooted her chair around to face her boy. “Gary, ye did never say what gift ye did get from Secret, hae ye knowledge of what it be?”

“Oh! I pretty much stopped trying to think about that… Cause ya know, stupid. Let’s see.” He said, closing his eyes.

Notes began to appear in the hands of the literate Bathers.

Might:Normal, Homebody

Resilience:Plus,Secret, divine contract, Fractured Soul

Agility:Plus, spear Wanderer's Legacy, Pockets!

Will:Normal, Artisan

Mind:Normal, Interface

Animus:Normal, Familiar Stranger

“What be ‘Fractured Soul’?” Shai asked, setting an impatient gaze on him.

“I don’t know, that’s all I get. Probably not much help with whatever aquatic nasty we have here.” He said, mildly disappointed. “That was a long wait for not much info. I’ll chew Secret out tonight.”

“I thought he was Knowledge…” Tallum rumbled, confusion written across his face.

“He’s Knowledge to Becky, but my Contract is with Secret. Before you ask, I have no idea what that means or what this does.”

“So the hard way it is… who gets to be bait?” Tallum asked.

Gary raised his hand. “I can draw it’s attention and influence it with my flute if its dumb, I really hope its dumb.”

#

After lunch, they armed up and marched as a group down to the water’s edge. “Ready?” Liam asked the assembled friends. As they nodded grimly, Gary slung his shield on his elbow, planted his shortspear point first in the muddy ground for easy access and began to play his recorder.

Once the music started, he dialed Familiar Stranger up to ‘heylookatmeoverhere!’. At the same time, he stretched Entrainment as far as he could reach, feeling for any response... Nothing.

“I’m gonna keep it up and start crossing, watch out for me.” Gary said, preparing to step on the bridge.

Barking and protests brought him up short. The whole group, including Otho, were staring at him in furious disbelief. “Step on that bridge alone and ye will be sleeping in yer stables fer the rest o this journey.” Shai said, her face as hard as a granite mountain.

Shai reched into his Pockets! and brought out a coil of trapdoor silk rope. She secured it to a pair of bronze rings built into his breastplate and kirtle.

Tallum and Otho took the trailing end and began playing the rope out, after looping it once around a bridge support and then around Tallum’s massive waist.

“Ok, now I feel like bait. Ready guys?” It was a slow process, He kept his gifts running hot and slowly strolled across the bridges and causeways. The group followed a few yards behind, watching the water uneasily.

#

One nerve wracking hour later, just as the overcast sky began to darken slightly, he felt a nibble. Something was responding to his music, sluggishly at first, but it was big and moving faster. “Got something, about a hundred yards out and moving this way.” He announced, before jamming his flute back where it belonged.

They were on a section of causeway, pierced every dozen yards or so by large clay culverts, allowing the water to pass under the road. “Let’s head for the island, maybe it will move into the shallows or come up on shore.” Liam said, putting the group in motion.

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They hit dry land in a minute of quick marching, while their as yet unseen quarry followed a short way back. It seemed unwilling to move into the light or reveal itself.

The creature lurked just off shore, hidden in the mud and murky water, stubbornly refusing to make an appearance. The most they spotted was a slight disturbance on the surface as it moved in the depths.

“Its big all right.” Gary confirmed. “Fast too… but only in short sprints, I wonder… Let’s go up the hill and plan a little, I don’t wanna be too close to the water.” He said, eyeing the muddy shore.

He and Shai summoned the house over, after allowing it to dissolve from across the wetland. The whole crew sat on the stoop and looked out over the darkening marsh. “Anybody got any ideas?” Becky asked, looking hopefully at Shai and Liam.

They both shook their heads. Gary however looked thoughtful. “I’ve only seen a few monsters, and my field guide lists several of the more common creatures.” He mused. “They all seem to be insects, arachnids and lower animals like mice and rats, even wallowbears are more rat than anything else.”

Tawny nodded and spoke up. “Insects are the most common, intelligent or self willed animals are far less likely to be infested with an outsider.” She lectured. “Smart creatures, with a well developed Animus are more likely to consume any invader, becoming stronger in the process.”

“Here’s my thought, there are no waterfowl here, no signs of animals watering or feeding nearby.” He scanned the shoreline near them.

“All the vegetation seems undisturbed, except the reeds and rushes at the water line. Do you guys have crayfish here?”

Liam and Shai groaned in unison. “Crawdaddies be big, dumb and hungry, an one goes monster, tis a matter o time ere it goes hunting on the river proper.”

Gary grinned hungrily. “That sounds delicious.”

The whole group looked at him in horror. “What? You guys don’t eat mudbugs?”

Gary went inside, whistling happily. He rooted around in the kitchen and came out with a huge frozen wad of something unidentifiable. “Groundworm tracts, I’ve been saving them for crafting, but bait is good too.” He sat down on the stoop with a hammer and an iron spike he conjured from nowhere.

“Where I come from, they are small, like the size of a mouse.” He said, driving his spike through the ball of noisome frozen guts repeatedly. “If you dangle anything gross and biological in their area they clamp on and won’t let go.”

He threaded spider silk rope into the mass, leaving loose loops of cordage all around. He looped the end of the line around a sturdy porch post and cast the disgusting ball of rope and filth into the water. “Now we wait.”

They did not have to wait long, with a subtle ripple, the rope twitched and Gary began to pull the cord in. Tallum came up to help, gripping the rope and hauling. “Slow and gentle.” Gary whispered to the big man. “Don’t loop the rope around you, if it runs it might drag you in.”

Slowly a huge humped form began to emerge, the silvery cord trailing into the murk. It had a high, domed carapace of mottled brown and green with eyes on stalks peering and darting about wildly.

One huge pincer waved threateningly at the humans and dog, snapping at anyone who came close. The left still clenched the wad of bait and silken cords in a deathgrip, holding it to its hideous mouth parts.

“That’s big all right! Ready to get busy?” They nodded and moved to surround the beast. “If it tries for the water, let it.” Gary shouted, before looping a few more coils around the post and hauling it tight with a snap.

The creature went wild when the loops of silk snubbed down on its claw and mouth parts. With one claw pinned, the Bathers moved to the attack. Tawny and Ivy took over the rope, keeping it taut by hauling on the free end. Gary took position with short spear and shield, guarding the mages.

Liam and Tallum engaged the loose claw, drawing the monster’s ire by harassing the armored beast with their spears. Liam’s quick and precise strikes gouged at the thing’s shell, but could not bite through.

Worse, the mud was rapidly churning into a stinking morass, which the beast skittered through as freely as you please.

Tallum’s spear found a moment’s purchase, slamming the creature savagely. As it stumbled briefly, Dannyl slipped beneath the flailing limb to press the attack, only to slide in the filth and mud.

With a short whoop of challenge that swiftly became a bubbling splat, he found himself imprisoned in the multitude of skittering stomping legs. The things’s underbelly was covered in horrid flukes, each one flailing and battering at the young man with insensate fury.

Shai and Becky redoubled their efforts, their weapons striking against its legs with little effect, while Dannyl scrabbled in the muck for his lost whip.

The women's spears sounded like children clattering sticks against a picket fence. Its chitin-covered legs were impervious, though they succeeded in making it stumble from side to side at the end of its tether.

Otho the dog had a long, whiplike antenna in his jaws, held fast. The mutt was shaking and tugging at the sensitive appendage, making the creature tremble and squeal when he got in a lucky tug.

Shai, jabbed her spear between two of the thing’s legs and lurched backwards, prying with the shaft against the creature’s own bulk, with furious surges of her entire body.

With a hideous shattering crack and a squeal of fury from the beast, two legs shattered into pulpy masses of meat and chitin.

A filthy, but thankful Dannyl slipped from beneath the lurching beast, coming away with a thorough battering. “Becky’s getting swarmed!” He barked, once he spat out a good mouthful of swamp and half of a fat, squirming leech.

Shai took a spinning whirl to build momentum, before vaulting the creature in a shimmering jingle of singing bells and a wordless song on her lips. Driving the point of her spear into an exposed gap in its plated armor she felt it shudder beneath her.

She abandoned her spear, pulling a massive smith’s hammer from somewhere no one quite saw, as she leapt down to aid Becky with her side.

The small girl had dropped her spear and was fending off a horde of pinching nightmares with her rapier. While still working to pressure the monster, she skewered the smaller nasties with careful jabs in whatever gaps she could reach.

Shai took over with the beast, freeing Becky to clean up the pinching vermin swarming her knees.

The smith’s hammer took a terrible toll on the thing’s legs, crunching and splatting with mechanical strikes, Shai turned the creature into a cripple one hammer blow at a time.

Dannyl had his whip in play, lashing it around a leg as big around as an oak sapling, he twisted and tugged, while the chisel points in his chain did their work. Biting and chewing through the tough armor, neatly removing the creature’s leg with a ‘snick’.

He grinned savagely and called out “I got this side!” before moving on to another leg. “It’s not going anywhere!”

Liam was left grappling the massive claw, or more correctly, Liam was now a weapon for the beast to batter his comrades with.

He clung desperately to its limb trying to contain that weapon with his own mass. It was not a fun ride, but the thing was unable to get its claw on him or use its most dangerous attacks.

Seeing an opening, Tallum lunged, driving the point of his spear into a vulnerable gap in its carapace, piercing where the right shoulder would be on a sensible creature. A foot of leaf bladed steel sheared into tender flesh and lodged there. The entire claw popped off in Liam’s struggling arms, sending the surprised man into the reeds holding his trophy. He rose from the murk, only to be set upon by a horde of small abominations like the one shrilling its rage into the sky

Their pinching and wretched bodies swarmed around the action, Liam lost valuable time smashing, stomping and kicking his way free of the nasty things while his comrades fought on.

The abomination let out a bubbling hiss, spitting wads of green foam at its attackers. The reeking swill blackened anything it touched, whether trees, grass or stone. When a clot of bubbling filth hit the rope, it parted with a sharp crack.

The entangled claw lashed around, driving at Tallum as he released his trapped spear and reached for his club. He saw it coming and knew. That pointed shard of boney chitin was aimed at his groin.

Gary had been watching, waiting but the monster had little interest in the mages in his care, Tallum however, seemed to have its full attention.

With a shout he dove in and brought his shield up just in time. He bore down, putting his sturdy oak and bronze construct against this stinking nightmare’s might.

A claw the size and weight of an anvil smashed the smaller man against Tallum’s armored bulk, pinning him against the giant. There he clung, with his shield wedged into the pincer, struggling to hold back the claw.

With a crunch and soft splatting sound, the thing’s claw dug into Gary, snipping and tearing at him with its one pincer in fury. With its weapon buried in Gary’s abdomen it began to struggle its way back into the mire, dragging its prize.

Tallum’s enormous club flashed down, striking the monster’s exposed shell a scant foot from Gary’s head. Cracks erupted and wept green ichor as Tallum continued to pound the creature into the mud. Gary slipped to the churned filth, unconscious.

Dark blood welled thickly from a terrible rent in his shield and breastplate, blooming across the murk in a crimson flood. Drawing a horde of smaller scuttling horrors to feast.

#

Khan was working alone in the stables of the Adventure guild. There was a lot to do, preparing the long empty stalls and filling the loft and stores with the little comforts Annie enjoyed. It was a relief when an orphan teen came trotting in, hailing him informally.

“Master Imran, a trade boat is at the dock, Otho said you needed some oats, I heard they have a good supply.”

Wild oats grew in abundance in the local area, but pickings were slim this time of year. He had a standing offer of an iron bit for each pound the younglings gathered in their free time, but Annie was not happy with the quantities available.

Annie enjoyed the walk, since they took the uplands gate and cantered a half circuit of the town before heading to the dock.

“Welcome to Trade boat Esperanza!” A moment later, recognition hit her face. “Sir Khan! This one remembers you did say Wheatford was your destination… But my darling, Annie, what has this brute done to you?” Her greeting for the man was warm and pleasant, but his horse was the object of her full attention.

Falco the dolphin was busy entertaining the market ward’s children, tossing a ball back and forth from the river to the shoreline. “Esperanza, please don’t spoil Annie any more, your Falco is a bad influence already.”

When he turned back from watching the antics at the shore, Annie was pulling a big tuft of carrot tops past her lips and looking guilty. Esperanza had no such qualms, brandishing another bunch of carrots at the enormous horse.

With a sigh that reached the heavens, Khan rolled his eyes and spoke firmly. “I need one hundred pounds of good oats, two bushels of carrots and… where did you get those slippers?”

All of the crew were wearing fanciful slippers of leather and fur, sewn in the shape of adorable animals and dyed in charming colors.

“Do you like them? We met the strangest group on the road… Adventurers if you believe it! One of them made them as gifts, such an odd boy, his woman though, she is a treat.” Her smile was a touch of affection and a hint of lechery. “This one doubts there is a chance with that fragrant delight, Shai will remain an unblossomed bud in the garden of my memories.”

Khan laughed and related a highly edited tale of his stay. “It was the bath that did it, ever since that, I feel like it's springtime already.”

The trader and her crew shared a look and nodded. “Falco says that group is very magical, they should have no problem with whatever is in the marsh.”

“What is in the marsh? I rode the causeway and saw nothing.” He asked, his laconic posture falling away.

“Something big and fast, it stays at the bottom, this one warned them of it, they should have no troubles.” She said, trying to get back to the business of trade. “Oats and carrots, what else can Esperanza provide?”

They concluded their trade quickly and the former knight led his horse off with his purchases slung across his horse, looking grim.

#

Before the next bell rang, a new minted Adventurer was pounding down the River Road, dressed in well worn armor in the colors of War. Three javelins trailed behind from his saddle, while a lance stood at his stirrup, pennant waving as man and horse galloped downstream.

#