Dead Man's Gambit
Nineteenth Day of Olweje-eza (Olweje Ascendant), 1349 A. L. (After Landfall)
"These Ten Thousand, who were they?" you ask gripped by sudden suspicion. "Were they man who fought with weapons alike each to the other? Did they call themselves Romans... er... Latinus? Are you talking about the fateless who..."
"Enough games!" The thief pulls the child close and in a flash the sword strikes towards her neck just as he raises her feet off the ground and throws all her weight into his wrist as you had asked her to. Alas he seemed to have been waiting for something of the sort. Even as her flesh begins to shift it is severed and with a cry of agony she is hurled to the ground, dead or dying even as from the thief's other hand falls a something white and polished that explodes with a sound like thunder.
The Marcella's tendrils recoil from the sound letting him free to dive forward, bloodied sword still in hand he dives under your reach, his armorlick like eel's skin under the glancing hit of the blade. Ige again rushes to offer what healing she can and even Esha'c spell of terror has no power over the butcher's heart.
As you turn, sword bright in he dark you see him not and curse, thinking that he had vanished, until Zaia calls a warming: "He's running to the steps under a glamor!"
With a toss of one of his concoctions the hungry flames race up his legs and there at last you see him, illuminated by his torment. shouting a challenge, you know not which you charge after him and for the first time in your life feel wholly at peace with stabbing a man in the back... or at least what you think is the back among the flames, but wounded and burning he manages to make it to the deck, scrambling up the steps.
Over your head a crossbow bolt flies, but it finds no purchase, but Wanderer certainly does as he charges into the man as a mountain of solid muscles and armor, fearsome club in hand. You hear the bone braking, but slippery as a snake the foe manages to scramble up the steps up to the deck... The deck filled with sailors, some of who have readied their bows.
An arrow springs forth, then another. You hear Tom shout a charge and sink his spear into the intruder's leg just above the knew, but it is still not enough. You and Wanderer are not, even as the flames die down the two of you now know where the son of a bitch is, at least near enough to swing and so swing you do. It's not worth trying to cut off his head and so you hack into the body again and again and again.
"Go! Save them!" you hear with gargling breath as the man falls, his spell faded and from his mouth springs the most unlikely of creatures, a grey and orange feathered
bird, with a tiny bag in its claws, perhaps bearing a message back to his confederates.
It vanishes almost instantly in the swirling grey dust.
***
Later, once you had been assured that both Ooloa and Runs in Rain are restored in full Esha confirms that the bird likely had carried off the bones. She calls if a
pouch of safe-keeping, though it is rare indeed, most often found in the keeping of priests of Nikure who use them to pass tribute to the Goddess though lands that do no favor her.
It seems you had lost one of your treasures to another thief and this time there would be no easy recovery of them, though perhaps someone will be able to recognize the dead fanatic by his markings or the accountants he bears....
"The sword is Ibanoran by forging," Mog claims, literally pocking a small blue head into the meeting. "Look here the way the guard is curved back to fit the hand and even lock in battle."
"Many bear blades of that city," you reply, dubious that you can identify a man by a fine blade, a bad one maybe if he is poor and can only afford the work of those smiths nearest to hand, but a fine blade will cross half the world and be passed though many hands.
Esha on the other hand was looking down at the corpse's feet, the sandals like his legs had been badly burned, but something was gleaming there. She plucks up a bronze bead. "No one but an Ibanoran and a wealthy one at that would wear bronze on his feet I would wager."
"I figured it out first," Mog argues his tone threatening a quarrel, but you pay him no mind.
"Do you think we should pay a visit to the city?" Antonio asks softly. "There is still a war between them and Orinilu which might see us pestered by the local authorities, but flattery and silver both will be a balm to that rash and we may find who has robbed us and mayhap why."
"If it was a foreigner they must have paid a princely sum indeed to the Anwa raiders to sail, more than the bone is worth," Zaia musses.
"More than it's worth on the open market, I think that it is fair to say the thief had something in mind for that."
What do you do?
[] Detour to Ibanora
[] Stay the course
OOC: You guys did not have a lot of luck this update, from initiative to damage rolls to the Marcella being stunned into letting go. Still the one place you were lucky was the kid making her fort save not to die so there is that, you lost stuff, not people. 
