Ngamurudyin nods at something on the ground nearer the shallow loop of water. [Language unknown: "Nte olecfomaho man it olsi es. Peteet el the t k sonce artblebut, noeker k perea i, llce Ll ma mi ure beai el encanyati has stiin plek eeee."]

[[Optional EDU for a tiny bit more information to be found on the ground there.]]

Standing at the water's edge Ngarungadurung can just see the little tree he's looking for. It looks extremely sturdy and healthy, life filling the leaves that show their upsides to the sun.

Ngamurudyin waves for the whitefellas' attention. "Cottonfella go up," she says, nodding at the land near the jut of the cliff over the water, then raising a hand to indicate where small plants had been disturbed by climbing.

"D- dash it, why would he-?" The sergeant shakes his head and motions her to come back. "Leave 'im. 'e knows where the water is, ought to be able to find 'is way back to camp at least. We'll leave word there."

The redcoat is tense all over. The creek runs quietly in the bright sun. The blood left on the rock is dull and old.

Ngarungadurung crouches down to study the place by the pool, then rises and walks to the little tree by the waterside. He lowers his head, whispers, makes some indecipherable gestures and puts his ear to the sapling, as if communing with it.

Long experience in the ways of life and death let Ngarungadurung glean insight from the section of shore he'd stared at. There had been fragile fragments of shells there, not from aquatic life.

The young tree's bark is sweet and textured-smooth, its leaves full and flushed to their edges with colour despite the drought elsewhere. Listening to it brings Ngarungadurung the intimate rush and clunk and shift of any tree so interrogated, but he feels the welcome in it, the contentedness of a life stretching up to the sun.

Over near the cliff, Ngamurudyin looks straight up, abruptly tensed. The sergeant sees this, or perhaps hears a different texture in the cicadas' shrieks, and tries to herd those present downstream towards camp. "Let's leave 'ere, come on," he snaps, only partly to her.

Jack is confused by the man's sudden rush to depart.

"Hang on, Sergeant. We came t'look for Cotton, didn't we? Shoul'n't we let th' trackers have their go?" He lifts his eyes to the escarpment and hollers, "CO-OT-TON! HEN-RY! CO-O-OT-TOOO-ONNNN!!"
This message was last edited by the player at 20:49, Wed 29 July 2020.

"Yes Sergeant I would rather we did not leave him out here, though the signs are not good." She rubbed her face with the end of her scarf.


-

Ngarungadurung leaves the tree and walks back, unhurried, towards to Compass Woman. He glances to the ridge with a somber demeanour and cants his head slightly to one side, listening.

[Language unknown: "Tr thseni wa n tell ur ntinteave bepo oulencandver. O Ev ilhong me P wi o es ss stthi n."]

He gestures to the rocks where the tracker had spied traces of Cotton's ascent.

Ngamurudyin had seemingly been trying to determine the same by sound. [Language unknown: "K ntevorone tedhe alekmo...ic, chhi weeen m ess wil,"] she murmurs, staying still, looking up. She does not stop him, however, and the heat and cicada song shrill around him like one thing as he reaches up to find hands and footholds on the rock. The country does not hold him on its surface as easily as places he has known; does not know him.

Jack's hollers find no answer but the constant chanting of insects. The sergeant's tension is only rising. "Listen, that lad 'ad water an' a good guess at the way back to camp, and 'e climbed up there and went off again. Somethin wanted 'im in the forest and 'e went. Would you-" he trails off, seeing Ngarungadurung scaling the rocky outcropping at the easy part of the join and then the side of the cliff. "Hoi! Get down from there!"

Brigitte hears the snap of a living branch somewhere above. She remembers that sound.

Ngarungadurung's hand is all that has reached the narrow spit atop the cliff when that same white youth runs out onto the formation, alive and terrified. He seems to take note of Ngarungadurung of a sudden, flinching away and unbalancing himself in his urgent headlong run, not seeing the cliff edge.

The sergeant turns his back on it and tries to physically push Brigitte and Jack into motion, class propriety in the former case be damned. "Come on, come on, get out of 'ere," he grates.

Ngarungadurung holds himself tight against the rock face, not certain if his presence will have any further effect on the youth--or vice versa.

Ngarungadurung's presence only causes the youth to notice the cliff edge two urgent, loping steps later; he tries to stop, as before, falling in the same place. This time, Ngarungadurung can see the paler scrapes and the pinking start of blood as the lad's sliding momentum barks his bared forarms, see a new kind of terror flood his expression in the instant his rolling does not quite stop. The whitefella catches his eye for half an instant, stark, blank and endless fear all there is to read as he tries to grab the cliff edge and cannot, is already turning.

Jake Cadlow falls, and screams, and the jutting rock tears through his arm and the scream goes from fear to pain, right until the next form of sandstone meets his skull.


"AAAAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUGGGH~*"


There is a splash the watchers cannot see. The cicadas continue to cry out. The creek runs clear and calm and bright across its stony bed and leaves flicker in the wind. All is as it was and the sergeant is shaking.

_
This message was last edited by the GM at 13:36, Sat 01 Aug 2020.

Jack breaks for the cliff face and begins to scramble up, trying to follow the holds that Ngarungadurung used. If he can get to the top, what if he can intercept poor Cadlow and break the cycle of his constant fall.

"BACK in LINE!" the sergeant roars, and Jack knows he'd better hope he's fast enough to be out of grabbing range before the redcoat has his wits together.


[[So you're aiming for a Hard DEX roll vs. being grappled (or Dodge if preferred) before anything else...

If you suceed at not being grappled and possibly subsequently punched out for "either escapin' or mountain madness, I don't know", roll me a Climb, please.]]

Jack Duggan rolled 62 for Dodge 25.

Well.

Not certain what is happening between the two white men, Ngarungadurung finishes his climb so to clear the way for the Jack-fella.

"Hands off Sergeant or the Major will hear of it" Was all Brigitte said before her attention was again directed to the top of the cliff. She shielded her eyes from the glare as she again watched the lad fall in muted silence.

When Jack made his dash she moved out of the way if it was required.


-
This message was last edited by the player at 07:48, Mon 03 Aug 2020.

Brigitte briefly got a look that was hot and flinty and dangerous, but then that awful scream cut the air and Jack had bolted towards the cliff. She steps back and lets them get on with it.

Jack  gets no more than three steps before the sergeant is close, yanking the back of his shirt to pull him into range for an arm thrown hard across the upper chest. Jack feels himself forced off balance but can do little more than brace for impact, held suddenly by this man who has killed men, pulling in air through his thumped lungs that is one awful miasma of sweat and scarlet dye, weapon oils and smoke. The sergeant leans on his shoulders, keeping leverage. Both of them are breathing hard; Jack gets a split instant of sheer fox terror from some instinctive backwater, convinced the farm dog's jaws will meet traplike in the soft of his throat and shake him dead.


[[That would be an opposed STR if Jack's going to put up a fight/try to wiggle out of being actively held.]]
This message was last edited by the player at 07:29, Mon 03 Aug 2020.

Ngamurudyin takes stock of what's going on back there, though not understanding any more about the antipathy than her compatriot. She looks up to Ngarungadurung.[Language unknown: "Tio ounleseve u adpa ore?"] she asks.

Ngarungadurung gives a glance—perhaps quizzical, perhaps disinterested—to the struggle of the white men below him. At any rate, it doesn’t much distract him from the business at hand. He calls down to the Compass Woman, [Language unknown: “Ekcepritur anmoit o ut om his, entlar'ntered ove our ingkorare n hat ousastess seiv.”]

[Language unknown: "K t etfoan arelarbut Cottonfella ma? A daync undhister er ess diul, weto k he nt str at a daystrthu...P onbeck arndtr anyev ti e urwite ol pre setionoerntibut analac, an thonotica eau p naecio ha nteion'ameeen ll virintthe mi ousenchersom."] The guide slap-flicks a gadfly before it can take a bite, glancing back.

[Language unknown: "...hoest chta io eche ounhouive korbe uroleter."]

"Jay-sus, Wilkins! I jus' wanta try an' save that poor lad is all. An' find Cotton inta th' bargain. Where am I gonna run to afoot in this wilderness? Don't be daft."

Despite his words he lies quiet, not resisting or struggling at all.

"Just calm down, everyone... we seem to have found some rip in time were the same action is repeated.... I don't know is it a warning or something else gone wrong."

She looks to the trackers and tries to catch their eye.



-

Wilkins' voice at Jack's neck is the closest he's ever heard to a growl from a human speaking words: "Then stop feeding it."

The sergeant swallows. "Cotton went up there to see, and 'e ain't come down," he says, almost reasonably if he were not making it hard to breathe with his pressure, the brutal beast smell of him not honest enough to be animal. "Them kids with the witches, Calder wrote that when they was watched the repeats got closer. Telling 'em something. I don't want to- I don't like watching that poor bastard die, an' I don't know what is talkin' to us but I do not want to listen."

He glances up at Brigitte as though wary of physical interference, but his breathing evens out. The pressure on Jack's shoulders shifts, not quite letting him up but at least letting the little Irishman draw breath without a twinge of pain. "Now, can I trust you to follow orders, my lad, or is it the collar again?"

Ngamurudyin's eye can be caught easily enough - though Brigitte is not used to reading the natives' more subtle expressions she can see the tracker's attention on her and some quizzical bent. "?"

Ngarungadurung pads about at the top of the rock face, attempting to trace Cotton's path.

Aside from vanishing into the undergrowth on the landward side there is little Ngarungadurung can tell of Cotton's direction. The sparseness of wildlife around here is distracting, with no small scuttling or hopping things leaving traces on this useful vantage. That there are slightly less cicadas than the extreme abundance lower down does not really explain it - perhaps this bit of country was unfamiliar with them, too.