The trees shift the dappled patterns across the forest floor, illuminating spots and dazzling the details out of the shade. The movement Ngarungadurung had perhaps glimpsed seems to be heading towards the other whitefellas and their riding-beasts with a stealthy caution.

Brigitte hears that whistling again, perhaps closer, but the person(?) in the forest does not respond. The sergeant is tense, for a moment uncertain.

Readying a spear in one hand, Ngarungadurung creeps forward, low to the ground and on a path to intercept the shadowy stalker before it reaches the whitefellas and their beasts.

Murphy looks over at his companion's stalking retreat into the bush with some anxiety, but mounts up and calls back to the others: "The Darug fella's gone stalkin'...d'you have orders, sergeant?"

[[Ngarungadurung, please hie over onto the thread shortly to be visible to yourself.]]

"...come back," the sergeant orders, though he speaks like it's physically hard to push the words into the hot air. "Never mind about anything else."

He scowls and looks up to Brigitte a moment, the tension still clenching his body like a fist. "Feel like I was supposed to send 'im off after Duggan, but that'd just get us split up an' I need 'im back 'ere...you feel that?" He nods at her, up on horseback with him holding the bridle, maybe holding her back. "-like some devil's tellin us we ought to split up?"

"I. I don't feel anything though if it wanted to pick us off that would be the course of action. I thought they got him ?" She stood in the saddle a little higher, the slight pain in her leg warning her not to rush off again.



-

"If the man Bowen can hear the Sleeper - the one in the Dream the traveller talked to us about - or its mate, or both of them, maybe they make him understand where we are, when we go alone," Garangwaari ventures. "It would be easy for Bowenfella to kill one person if the Ones Below were confusing that one, even if he is not so good at murder as a devil."

"Hmph," the sergeant responds, troubled. As yet there's no more forest whistling. "Murphy, you getting 'ere?"

"I'm gettin there, sure," comes the response. His horse's hooves can be heard making their way towards the group, causing the other beasts to prick their ears.

Giselle shifts a little, but seems more confident with a rider aboard. Leaning up lets Brigitte see Murphy's approach between branches - his sense of direction seems to be holding true, at least. He swerves only to pick a clearer path around to them and comes up with a bright and slightly sheepish smile, having remembered that whatever else, he'd fought some kind of foreign haunted thing - and won.

"We got him," he confirms to those present, then looks about with concern.


[[may I have a Spot Hidden, please?]]

With a wave Brigitte tried to give Murphy a point of reference as he made his way back to them. She listened to Garangwaari before she asked "Will there be more of them ?"

Brigitte d'Anjou rolled 43 using 1d100.  Spot Hidden =50%.



-

"If the smooth rocks hatch, there would be more of the Sleeper's kind, more ones strange to our dreaming... I don't know if they would do better or worse to the mind of someone near, being only babies. I...even talking about them, it is strange: I feel I want to hold them, to give them my breast like to my child, but I have an imagining that their mouths would be like vines, like something that cuts, and they would eat all of me." She pauses, frowning deeply. "I say it, and I know it would be bad to be eaten, but I think of the stranger-children and I still feel this."

"I've been dreamin various of you've been trying to 'urt my girls," the sergeant volunteers, finally grasping it might be relevant. "Sometimes they're 'ere in the bush an' I start looking for other children once I've killed you all to save 'em - you make a pretty cannibal, Madame d'Anjou - but then I always 'ave the notion it's a dream, so I start to waken."

Murphy looks a little disturbed at all this. Daniels volunteers nothing, seeming preoccupied with the surrounding forest.

From about the area she'd seen movement, Brigitte hears a far-off cry that sounds like Jack's voice: "He's here!"

Murphy instantly sits up, alarmed.

Brigitte also stands higher in her saddle to again try and get a better view of what was going on. She had her hand on the hilt of her sword, but at this point she stayed where she was unsure if the shout was a warning or not.


-

"...but if we got th' Speared Man an' it wasn't Duggan went past...these tings can mimic whole people, right? If they've died..." Murphy mutters, kicking on a little way back in that direction. The cicadas shrill around them.

"Duggan! Who's 'he' and can y'keep callin out?"

He listens to the vast bush for any hint of response over the sound of insects calling. The forest layers itself over any clear line of sight as though there were nothing else, ever, in the world.

There's a distant "Here, Murphy! This way!"

Murphy frowns at the lack of specifics, wary of mimicry, remembering screams. "Who's the man with you, Duggan?" he calls out, and listens. The cicadas chant and chant and chant.

"...I'm goin' t'fetch him back," he decides, glancing back at the sergeant.

"Alone?" the sergeant's tone says Murphy's proposal is a high if measured risk.

"Y'need Daniels for th' horses, an' I'll not take the wives away from the baby," Murphy reasons, though he does take a glance at Brigitte and the hand on her swordhilt, not quite a question.

"Sure, it's th' tracker! Gahrungahdong!" 'Jack' calls out, distant over the cicadas like someone on a drifting boat hailing the shore across high winds. "He found me! He's talkin' to a tree!

Murphy looks confused, then again at the others. The sergeant is equally torn between loosing him to fetch Duggan and the prospect of losing him to the unknown forces of the bush.

"C'mon, Murph!" the voice calls again, and Murphy swings his horse's head about and touches his heels to her sides to ask some hurrying.

"Headin' for yeh," he responds.

Brigitte also turns her horse to follow Murphy to Duggen. As they move she looks behind from where have left and then forward trying to pick out their destination in the foliage.


-

Giselle doesn't need to do much pulling to turn away - the sergeant lets her bridle go, seemingly trusting Murphy better than his own men or the natives in the matter of accompanying Brigitte. The horse jerks her head a bit with the freedom, flicking a little drop of red from the man's cut fingers to her face.

The sound of swift-stepping hooves is more felt than heard under the dry sussurus of leaves and the constant sizzling of cicada sound. Giselle doesn't much like not being in the lead, but for all her hurry and drawing close on Murphy's horse there's rarely room to think about coming alongside even if Brigitte asked her to, the undergrowth providing a thick tangle of vision-blocking hoof-tangling leaves and viny cables.

The clearest thing behind them is the sergeant's coat, and even that is a suggestion swallowed by the foliage with another two jogging strides. Even knowing the others are right there behind her there is a sensation of being very far from anyone save for Charles Murphy and his dustish horse.


[[may I have a mystery roll and then a Spot Hidden, please.]]

If it helps Brigitte will try to get lower in the saddle as they make their way to Duggen. All the while she is keeping an eye out for the man, somewhat trusting Murphy to head them in the right direction.


Brigitte d'Anjou rolled 57 using 1d100.  Mystery.
Brigitte d'Anjou rolled 1 using 1d100.  Spot Hidden =50%. I see you....




-
This message was last edited by the player at 01:23, Mon 09 Nov 2020.

"Can y'speak up, Duggan?" Murphy asks the ringing bush. He shifts a trailing cascade of gum leaves out of his way and listens.

The horses are on alert, heads often brought high, ears flicking. Brigitte thinks she catches distant movement just barely left of dead ahead, another flicker of uncertain shirt-white. All sound is muted under the constant cicada chant.

[[apparently both Brigitte and Murphy have an ironclad sense of direction...]]

"Murphy, look over there ?" She points out the figure she can see to the man as soon as she spots it. That it turns and heads in the other direction is a relief in itself.

Then she turns back to the search for Jack.



-

Murphy looks, and sees what Brigitte does moments before the big shape is gone. His hand drifts up almost unheeded but he doesn't quite cross himself, his understanding lagging on what he has seen.

"Well then, they were right about the woollymen," he murmurs, then speaks more to Brigitte, scanning the trees around. "Just keep aware o' the horses, Countess...they're said t'eat emus caught barehanded but I don't believe a woollyman would go for anytin the size of us. If he looks t'have friends about or be stalkin' in a hunting wise I'll fire a charge at him, that'll surely scare him off."

Jack and the Aboriginal man seem to have wandered off leftwards up the currently gentle slope, providing the movement was indeed them. It's unclear why they're on the move if they wish to be found, and suddenly the difficulty in hearing gentle sounds like an unshod footfall (and wasn't Bowen going barefoot? The trackers seemed to think so) seems a source of tension.

Brigitte gives a nod at Murphy, but she does not say anything else. Riding along her head is still on a swivel for more "wollymen" or anything else that wants to have a go at them or the horses.



-

"Here, Murphy!" Jack at last shouts back, with something like desperation creeping into his voice. "I'm here!"

Murphy sits up in his saddle, letting his horse pick her way towards the sound. He sounds concerned himself. "Aright - are y'tryin t'come this way? You're goin away from us. Far's I can tell."

He pauses, then takes a deep breath to call further: "We think we just saw a woollyman, too, so keep lookout - don't make it angry if y'see it, just look too much trouble t'fight. I'll be there directly, honest t'God."

He lapses quiet, wincing at a sting of sweat that hits the corner of his eye. As she watches for small movements in the forest that might indicate their companions or a roving band of woollymen, Brigitte notes that Murphy seems to be doing particularly badly with the heat at present, though it's cooler than lower down. As he rides and occasionally adds suggestions to his horse's course Brigitte can see small twitches of the head and his right hand left idle by his side, like someone struggling to focus, his colour high and shirt sticking to his shoulders with sweat.

""Jack we are taking a break for a moment you need to come to us." Brigitte rides up beside Murphy and hands over her canteen. "Here take a drink, we can stop for a minute."



-

Murphy starts a little at the sudden sweep of foliage forced aside by Brigitte's horse and does rein up a second. He reaches over for the water with gratitude, and Brigitte notes the slight tremor his hand, sweat standing on his brow. "Tanks...just come over a bit dizzy a moment, I'll not k-"

A desperate cry cuts the cicadas' song. "MUUR--PHYYY!!"

"...follow close, ma'am." Murphy lets his hand fall without taking the canteen and in the same motion has faced forward and kicked on, walk to trot to dangerous canter with scarcely enough pause to hear Brigitte doing likewise.


[[a relatively low-stakes Ride roll, please, just for timing]]

Securing the canteen Brigitte follows, close as she can.

Brigitte d'Anjou rolled 86 using 1d100.  Ride = 55%.


-

There's an alarming moment when Brigitte falls far enough behind that Murphy is lost from view: Giselle herself is pushed beyond her wariness of the shrubbery at the threat of being without the 'herd' and speeds up. Brigitte has to duck low to her hourse's neck more than once and gets a few swipes from shrubs in passing, not feeling entirely in control of where they're going, but by the time Giselle slows down she can hear Murphy talking over the constant pulse of cicadas and smell smoke.


[[Right. You may trot over to the thread you'll be able to see in a moment.]]