Seth and the Crocodile (Completed)

[Jeremiah Maccabee]

Seth and the Crocodile The 15th of Summer 512 Northern Wildlands Continued from Looking for Leo. Day twenty-one of the journey from Ravok to Nyka found them in a swamp. They had been slogging through it for two days. Rill said it would be another day before they came out the other side. It was wet and dark and putrid-smelling. Unseen screeching birds raised a unending ruckus against the background of the mournful calls of deep-throated water birds. Evening would bring a cacophony of male frogs desperately trying to out-croak their competition for a chance to copulate with a female. There wasn't any trail to speak of but Rill pointed out the occasional slash on trees which marked the way. After a while Mac began to notice them himself, as though his eyes had become accustomed to spotting the often faded signs of previous passages through this gods-forsaken place. Toward evening they found a more-or-less dry knoll, dry being a relative term in this case. They pitched their tents with tarps under them to reduce the amount of water soaking through during the night. Mac set about getting a fire going. “First time I came through here,” Rill had told him. “I never did get a fire going in the swamps. Lesson learned: bring your own tinder and kindling.” Mac had brought a supply of dry bark. The first order of business was to prepare a fire circle. Mac scraped away the top layer of moss and other detritus. If they weren't in a swamp, he would be able to scrape down to relatively dry soil. But in a swamp there was no layer of dry soil. So he built a little platform of small branches laid criss-cross. He edged the circle with stones and built a small stone platform to one side. This was where he would put his wood to keep it off the ground. The second order of business was to collect fuel for the fire. Mac had discovered through trial and error that almost any wood he found on the ground would be damp but that dead tree branches were often dry. He wandered around the area chopping small dead branches off trees. He broke the smallest branches off and soon had a sizable pile of kindling, which he put on the stone platform. He continued breaking and chopping branches until he had a variety of sizes to choose from. The third order of business was to lay a bed of tinder and build a cone of kindling over it. He patiently cut bark into thin slivers until he had covered the wood fire platform. He continued flaking slivers of bark until he had a good sized pile of tinder in the center of the initial tinder layer. The he carefully build an upside-down cone of very small pieces of kindling. Over this he built another with slightly larger pieces of kindling. Now he began the always arduous task of using flint and steel to throw sparks into the tinder, although he was getting faster at it as he learned more about how to build the tinder pile and how to throw the sparks. He had discovered through trial and error that striking the flint with steel away from the body worked better than striking toward the body. It created a shower of spark with each strike, some of which landed in the tinder. Truly dry tinder might catch after a few strikes. But it was rarely truly dry, especially with the high humidity of the swamp. Still, he got a tiny fire going after only twenty chimes or so. He carefully pushed more tinder toward the wavering flame, which it consumed greedily. After a while the kindling caught and a short time later he had a successful fire that would maintain itself as long as someone kept feeding it.

[Jeremiah Maccabee]

Cooking was always a challenge in the wild, requiring a certain amount of creativity. Mac located three large branches lying on the ground, cleared the smaller branches off them and chopped each to a length of about one meter. He cut a meter of rope and tied one end of the three branches together. He positioned this over the campfire, giving him a tripod from which to hang a pot. Or in this case, a sizable piece of meat from a cougar they had bagged the previous day. Rill had brought a short length of wire, something Mac decided he was definitely going to have to get for himself next time he was in a city. He used the wire to hang the meat over the fire. He gave Margaret the job of occasionally turning the mean. He gave Seth the job of collecting a pot of water. He gave himself the job of brushing down his horse. He dumped some oats on the ground, which Shin'ta promptly began devouring. While she was eating he brushed her coat out. He started with her long mane, which regularly got tangled. Then he systematically brushed her coat, starting from her neck, working his way down her back, under her belly and finally her legs. Last, he brushed out her tail. She had long since finished her dinner and was turning her head around to nudge him as he worked. She liked being brushed. As a matter of course, Mac hardly ever tied her to anything. He just let her wander around wherever she wanted. They had been together a long time and he knew she wouldn't wander far. The reason he did not tie her to anything was that he wanted her to be able to escape if a predator were to show up. Shin'ta's head went up suddenly. She looked around with big, rolling eyes. It was pretty obvious she was spooked by something. “Heads up!” Mac yelled. “Could be trouble coming our way.”

[Jeremiah Maccabee]

The words had barely left his mouth when the ancient reptile emerged from the murky water some twenty feet from where Seth was standing with an iron pot in his hand. It was a crocodile some four meters long and weighing maybe a thousand kilos. It was fast. It swam ashore and ran at Seth about as fast as a man could run. Seth dropped the pot and ran toward the tent. He was fast but the croc was faster. A quick snap of its powerful jaws and it had him by the leg. It immediately dragged him off toward the water. He was screaming incoherently. Margaret shrieked and ran toward him, but Rill grabbed her by the arm and threw her to the ground. Mac ran for the tent and swept up his bow and an arrow. He nocked the arrow, pulled, aimed and fired. He missed. Seth had managed to get hold of a tree root, which stopped the croc's progress toward water. But it continued to tug on him. Blood was spurting from his leg. Mac nocked a second arrow and fired. This time he hit the croc but it seemed unaffected. He put another arrow into it but it still managed to pull Seth free from the root and continued dragging him kicking and screaming toward the water. Mac put another arrow in the monster. It stopped, shook its head, making Seth flop around like a limp rag, and was still. It still had Seth's leg in its jaws but it was dead. Rill ran to Seth, shouting at Leo to help. They dragged the now unconscious man away from the water and up to the tent. He leg was hanging by shreds, the bone having been crushed just above the knee. Blood was spurting from the gaping wound. Mac tore off his shirt and wrapped it around the leg. “Leo, hold this,” he said. “Apply as much pressure as you can to stop the bleeding.” Mac grabbed a branch from near the fire, whipped off his belt and wrapped it around the leg above the damaged area. He levered the stick under it and gave it a twist, and then another. “Let's see if that stopped it.” Leo carefully pulled the blood-soaked shirt away. The bleeding had stopped. But not because of the tourniquet Mac had applied. It had stopped because Seth was dead.

[Jeremiah Maccabee]

They buried Seth the next morning. Margaret was inconsolable. She refused to come out of the tent. Leo and Mac dug a grave as best they could and laid Seth's body to rest. They packed everything up, virtually dragging Margaret out of the tent by force. They put her on Shin'ta and continued their journey. Three days later they arrived at Nyka, city of mystics. Or of zealots, depending on how you looked at it. Mac didn't much like Nyka. He didn't much like Ravok either, but he found he preferred evil zealots over religious zealots. You could reason with evil zealots. There was no reasoning with the religious one. Mac stood beside Shin'ta, brushing her down, as Rill concluded his business with Leo. Mac watched the brother and sister as they walked away until they disappeared through the city gates. Rill paid him his share, which came to 30 gold mizas. He somehow felt guilty for taking it. Later that day he completed his map of the route between Ravok and Nyka.

[Paragon]

Jeremiah Maccabee

Experience

Skill	XP Earned
Land Navigation	1
Tracking	1
Wilderness Survival	1
Bow	1
Cartography	1
Horsemanship	1
Cooking	1
Medicine	1

Lores

•	Lore Earned
•	Building Fires in Wet Conditions
•	Route Between Ravok and Nyka
•	Swamp Environments
•	The Danger of Crocodiles
•	Death of a Companion

+ 1 Completed Map of Ravok - Nyka

Legend Becomes Reality

Nice work on the map. Interesting solo as ever. If you have any questions or concerns regarding your grade, please send me a PM and we can work from there.