“No more holding back, you little worms!” Jalakaag explaims. He skips forward toward his opponent already on his feet, employing the same double punch tactic. He liked the feel of it.
Though he is dissatisfied, overall, with his current ability to fight, Whiron figures that he must be wearing down the aggressive boys, especially since they are now having to continually pick themselves out of the mud. Moving to his standing enemy, he will again use his feet instead of his hands, saving them for defense, if needed.
Shortly after a full minute of being repeatedly thrown to the ground, the four gangers are in no condition to be able to continue fighting. They are not really hurt. No blood had been drawn by Jalakaag or Whiron, but they are all laboring to breathe and not functional enough to think clearly. The last boy to regain his feet tries to return to his skiff but finds himself back down in the mud. The two poles for maneuvering the tiny craft are still with it. Now that the gangers can no longer fight, the two friends need to decide their fate. In less than half an hour the four will fully recover.
Not really having it in him to be a killer, Jalakaag figures that the four boys have had enough of a lesson for the day. He instinctively accelerates his natural process of healing to better recover from the minor wound. He looks at Whiron to see he is only a little worse for wear. “What do you want to do at this point? We will likely need to deal with these idiots or others because of them in the near future, but I would like to give them that option.”
“We had recently been talking about the benefit of having a boat. Looks like these muddy little rats just sold us theirs. We leave them and take the boat. Obviously, we need to move on or we may have to beat these four again.” Whiron also mystically accelerates his own recovery.
The gangers are really in no condition to resist the loss of their boat. Though all are consciously aware of what is happening, they are more focused on catching their breath and avoiding any further beating. It is unfortunately likely that these aggressive adolescents will not understand that their lives were spared and will continue to be miscreants. As the two friends put their own catch and supplies in the boat, they notice that the skiff is decorated with several rat skulls to indicate its ownership.
Just as the two are ready to shove off, an elderly Ansylin man is seen standing back in the area where the fight had occurred. The man is so rail thin that, if it were not for his earlobes, he could pass for a Sioliri. The man smiles and nods when he is seen. “You two have potential, but you have yet much more to learn. Perhaps I will see you again.” With that he turns and disappears into the tall grass.
Relocation is so much easier with the use of the skiff, and the remainder of the Tenday passes without significant incident. During this time, Whiron discovers some edible plant materials that are not commonly harvested, some leafy herbs and some nuts from a marsh shrub. Jalakaag uses the sound trick to capture some panfish. Setting snares during the day produces a couple of running birds. While standing in the skiff in hopes of spotting a decent fish, their first nutria is seen on a nearby bank, Using the same sound technique the larger rat is stunned just like the fish. A drum is taken as well. The fish are all herpooned to hide the fact that magic was used. No subterfuge is needed with the rat, since everyone will deduce that it was snared.
Jalakaag smiles as he and Whiron pole their way through the marsh in their newly acquired skiff. “I must say, our speculation on the use of a boat was spot on. We need to make sure we do not lose it, especially while we are sleeping. Any ideas?”
Whiron sucks some air through his teeth and then immitates the call of a local bird. “The first thing that we need to do is get rid of these rat skulls, then we can mark the boat with our own ensignia. Since we have been able to take some birds, I say that we use parts of them. I do not think that anyone else uses those. After we trade in our current catch, we should take a longer trip, since the boat gives us a much better range and a way to carry more items.”
Having no need of the skulls from the rats, the two young men simply dropped them into the water after removing them from the skiff, adding the saved parts of captured birds as their own unique identifier. Having the boat basically tripled the distance that the two could travel in a day, allowing them to explore beyond the range reached by most others. Even other locals with boats tended to remain nearer civilization, having a superstitious fear of the unknown. This handicap does not plague either of these two friends. The Shifting season progresses into the Reprieve season, which is called the Drenching season in other parts of the land. This is the time of the Cycle when it sometimes rains across the coast and the river rises because of the deluge that the jungle receives on the other side of the Dragon’s Footprint.
The marsh is filled with songbirds that sit atop the reeds and strange brush, blown back and forth by the almost constant breezes, while they warble, whistle, and chirp as loudly as they can. Very small children often try to catch one, but they nor their eggs are of any value with regard to food. Mostly called plovers though there are several species, the second most common birds are similar to the thrushes of the forests far to the north across the desert. Though these birds can fly, they mostly marsh along the muddy ground listening for their food, various tiny creatures that bore through the mud. Though only about the size or mass of a person’s fist, these birds are edible and Jalakaag captures at least one every day when he sets his snares. During the wait, panfish have become a regular capture, using the trick of mystically generating a pulse of sound underwater. Only friendly adolescents are encountered during this season’s excursions, and they wave as the two older boys pole by in their skiff.
At this particular location, setting snares during the night does not produce any rodents or anything else edible, only tiny fowlers. This is the common name for small, furry animals, about the size or mass of a person’s forearm, that forage at night to raid the eggs from nesting birds. They will also kill sleeping birds, hence the name. They are not edible, as they have scent glands that ruin the meat; however, their hides are valued for the manufacture of leather goods, especially for the thickness of their long fur. The simple snares produce minks and baby otters. While only the hides are of marketable value, the rest of the corpses can be used for bait in hopes of drawing more fish or even crabs.
Whiron, able to make a little better deduction on where to place snares during the day, is able to capture some of the local, smaller running birds. Marsh hens or Rails, as the smaller variety are known, are similar in behavior to the plovers because they scratch through the mud and decomposing foliage with their feet, looking for crustaceans, worms, or even tiny reptiles to eat.
While the productivity of the new area seems to be good, new dangers await the two, the likes of which they have never seen. No one has even told stories of monster spiders. On one particular afternoon, the two are ambushed by spiders that have a relaxed leg area up to the size of their own torsos. There are six spiders, of which only one is female, three land on each young man, preparing to sink their fangs.
