The night before departure a Grand Congress of the wagon train to New Scandi was called by the Nimu Caravan Company. The fancy title was justified, Mazelton learned- every family group, individual wagon and individual traveler sent a representative or came in person. There were almost a hundred people crowding around the big square in front of the caravansary, muttering and murmuring to each other, taking a look at just who they would be staking their lives with for the next few months. Polyclitus stood on the auction platform, put two fingers in his mouth and whistled loud enough to wake the birds over Fish Weir.

“Alright! Now I do hope we have everyone here, because if we don’t, anyone not here won’t be going with us tomorrow! I am the Man Polyclitus, and on behalf of the Nimu Caravan Company, I will be leading this year’s caravan to Vast Green Isle. Some of you are going all the way, most of you are splitting off as we go through the Disputed Territory. That means that while this caravan is organized under the rules and regulations of the Nimu Caravan Company, the overwhelming majority of you are Dusties and those trading with Dusties. Anybody with a problem with either of those things should find me after the meeting and quit the caravan. Your deposit will be refunded.”

Some murmurs broke out. Apparently the makeup of the caravan came as news to some people.

“Now as we are traveling under the rules and regulations of the Nimu Caravan Company, that means adopting those rules for this trip. Think of it as a code of laws or constitution. Most small matters will be handled by negotiation and compromise. Big matters, that is, serious crimes like murder, rape or theft of livestock, will call the Caravan to investigate and be the jury, with punishments ranging from fines, banishment, corporal punishment and death. Is there anyone who hasn’t read the rules or had the rules read to them?”

More murmuring, but nobody called attention to themselves.

“Good. At the end of the meeting, if you haven’t done it already, line up at the office and put your chop in the book saying you understand the rules and agree to be bound by them, both on your own behalf and on behalf of whoever you represent.”

Mazelton did that three days ago. He started looking around, trying to think where he could get a last really good meal before setting out.

“Now, it is entirely too late to start talking about the dangers of the trail, but you may be happy to learn that some comforts and late addition safety measures are available. Specifically, as far as New Scandi in the Disputed Territory, we will have the service of a polisher. He will be in the Nimu wagon with the Heat Flag flying over it. Once a week, each wagon can ask to have their water and food purified. Likewise, wound purification is available, though it’s first come first served for that. No saying when the core or the polisher might run out of heat. Cores can be charged for a fee, and if you manage to fully charge a heat sponge, you might be the one getting paid. Alternatively, we will be selling insect barrier cores, light cores, food and wound purifier cores, heat sponges and extra purification services. This is on top of the services we already provide.”

This did trigger some serious murmuring. Polyclitus continued in a dry voice.

“Not to rain on your parade, but you do know prices will be higher than they would be in town, right? Still, one hell of a bonus from the one and only Nimu Caravan Company. Now, for our Dusty members, or anyone who doesn't feel too strongly on the religious front, we will be having a Humble in the Caravan, at least as far as Shale Snake Ridge. They won’t be flying a flag, but I expect you will find them easy enough. Lastly, while the Nimu Caravan Company does provide some guards, it is every person’s responsibility to protect themselves and the caravan as a whole. Most folk you meet will be peaceful and just looking to earn off of you. But for everyone, and everything else, you got to be ready to fight, one way or the other.”

Polyclitus looked severely around the crowd.

“With luck and diligence, this trip will take four months. Five, if we have the normal delays and inconveniences, and if it goes six months any survivors should break for the nearest settlement or just plain turn around and try to make it home. And on that note, go enjoy a good meal and a real bed!”

A muted cheer rose at that, as the crowd split up. Mazelton broke for the exit to the square as fast as he could manage without running. He had spent the entire winter salivating at the smells coming out of the Green Hand Tavern, and by all the Ælfflæd and their little demons he was going to stuff himself there tonight!

It was exquisite. It was everything he had hoped for. Potatoes roasted to a golden brown perfection, crusted with salt and herbs. The first carrots of the year, grown in a greenhouse at great expense, gently poached and tossed with sweet tree sap and chillies. Bread, slightly sour, chewy, with spiced oil for dipping and shockingly delicious. Lentils cooked with onions and a brilliant salty bite of preserved lemon. The lemon was extra, but so, so worth it. A vivid explosion of sunshine brightening up the entire night. Mazelton started to hate himself a little bit for not preparing jars and jars of preserved lemons for the long journey.

Then he got the bill, and remembered that he couldn't afford a whole lemon, let alone jars of them. They had to be shipped from the southern archipelago, up the Mud Dragon river, and finally across a bit of the Blackwater sea. Most people around here had never tasted citrus.

Well, dried sumac was pretty good too, and he did stock up on plenty of that. And hot sauce. The old timers were very clear- you can get through an awful lot if you have mustard and hot sauce, and salt. Mazelton was entirely prepared to take their word for it.

He spent the money for a private room, booked a month ago, jammed the chair under the door handle, and slept snug and warm in a real bed. It was heavenly.

At dawn, he rose and made his way to the Caravansary. It couldn’t help but be noisy- the aurochs stomping about, remnant machines humming or whirring or clanking for the rare few who could afford them, kids sullenly shuffling around and getting hauled back by their collar, back to loading and squaring away the family wagon. The smell was shocking, a wall of animal piss and dung and sweat all trapped at street level by the freezing morning air. The steam rising from hundreds of mouths and bodies rose and fell again, and for a horrible moment Mazelton was back in Old Radler. He shook it off- he had somewhere to be and a job to do.

Most of the wagons didn’t sport flags. The lead wagon did (in safe territory) as did a few crucial others belonging to the Nimu Caravan Company. The company paid “transit fees” to a number of minor local powers, and the flags kept little accidents from happening. Under the Blue Auroch of Nimu, on a wagon only a little back from the head of the column, flew a yellow flag with a black trillium on it. The symbol was so ancient, it was practically synonymous with “Core Polisher.” It too, was a sort of protection. After all, when something went wrong with heat, it went really wrong. Epoch endingly wrong, on too many occasions to count. You gave that flag some room.

The Ma clan would often have the black trillium tattooed on their chests, right above their core. Generally just after they survived the rite of passage. Mazelton never bothered- he enjoyed changing his war paint far too much and too often to accept that. Mother’s was superimposed on a heart. So was Father’s.

Mazelton hauled himself into the wagon. To show just how much they valued him, Nimu put him in a wagon propelled by remnant tech. There was no animal at the front, nor a machine. Instead, under the wagon was a sealed black orb which would forcefully move in any direction it’s controller pointed. The orb was built right into the frame of the wagon, and the wheels were controlled independently of it. It was quiet, smooth, much less dusty, fewer flies and as far as these things went in a caravan, less smelly too. He really, really liked this wagon, and the fact that he was “renting” a third of it with his services suited him right down to the ground. He was only getting a tiny fraction of the sales, but how many settlers got to earn on these trips?

The driver was a hard young man with the ancient name of Duane. Duane did not care to talk much. Duane did not care about anything much except being an exceptional teamster. Duane had a punch that could stagger an auroch, which he demonstrated that very morning when one tried to step on his foot. These were all traits that endeared Duane to Mazelton, who privately resolved to make Duane’s journey as pleasant and comfortable as he could manage.

One hour after dawn, the wagon train set out. At the edge of the city, the Coven had gathered, giving the passing wagons a cheer and shouts of encouragement. Father Dougal led them in a hymn, a song of partings and promised reunions. Everyone knew that these journeys were one way trips for the settlers. Not everyone would make it. Between one in ten and one in twenty would die from disease, accident, drowning, animal attack, heat poisoning, wandering off, and hostile humans who decided that banditry would be more profitable than trade.

Polyclitus had told Mazelton of a man who managed to get struck by lightning, standing out by himself on the plains. His clothes caught fire as a result, which saw the prairie grass around him light up like they were soaked in oil. The fire spread faster than a person could run, sweeping out until it spread to the horizon. The only reason Polyclitus survived, he claimed, was that the man in question had dysentery, and had the decency to do his business well downwind of the Caravan.

There were so many ways to die on the trail, one was really spoiled for choice.

The hymns faded out behind them. The muddy trail opened up ahead. Through the dense forests around Sky’s Echo, the Caravan set out.

The first day on the trail was more about shaking things out than making real distance. They traveled in a mostly straight line due west from Sky’s echo, watching the houses turn into scattered farms divided by thick stands of trees/. Sky’s Echo didn’t have a wall, or at least, it didn’t at this point in the epoch, so large suburban gardens blurred into real farms with deceptive speed. They were still in farm country when they pulled into the campsite at the edge of their first river, the Two Islands River that ran from the enormous Sky Wolf Lake up north down around the titular two islands and into the Blackwater Sea.

The good news was that there had been a crossing here for as close to forever as anyone felt comfortable contemplating. The bad news was that there had been a crossing here, but what kind of crossing changed. For example, a bridge. A bridge is great, better than a shallow ford in every way… except if you lose the ability to make bridges. Then the bridge falls into the river crossing, and now you can’t run boats through it or ford it. This happens again, and again, and again, and again…

The crossing just above the falls was almost a parody of this phenomenon, as at several points in the past, the river had been damned. The riverbanks were comically uneven. Mercifully, this close to Sky’s Echo, a sturdy log bridge had been built, each section chained together with small gaps for flexibility.

The caravan pulled into a well established camp site. Locals had set up small shops around the periphery, selling hot food and all those little items people realized they hadn’t packed but really should have. There was also a thriving, if cutthroat, buying operation by the merchants. Not only did people realize they had forgotten things, they realized that they packed too much.

The wagons were generally small. They did vary wildly, but on the whole? Quite small. Ten feet long and four across was pretty standard, about three feet of wooden sideboard, then flexible bamboo frames holding up cloth roofs some seven feet above the wagon bed. Since chances to resupply would be few to non-existent, some seventy to eighty percent of the cargo space was filled with food. Because of the volume and weight of water, most wagons would have a single water barrel, size varying, with the expectation that they would be able to refill it along the way.

Mazelton could more or less imagine how that one went. He could practically smell the cholera now. The disease would have easy pickings, of course, as the limited diet and exhaustion of walking alongside the packed, violently shaking wagons.

Oh yes, Humble Dougal had undersold the wagons. They weren’t uncomfortable to ride, they were painful. Small, heavy, and with lousy springs. Mazelton could see almost everyone on foot, save the drivers and those with particularly good remnant tech.

“Cobblers would make a fortune selling along the trail.”

“Happens.” Duane said. Mazelton parsed that out for a moment.

“There are cobblers in the wagon train?”

“Tribes, settlements.”

“Huh. Smart. I bet they sell food too.”

Duane just nodded, exhausted by the endless chatter.

Mazelton didn’t have a lot of spare rads, but on the theory that rads could be earned but not eaten, he zoomed off to a food stand for ground, fried balls of some sort of bean covered in some equally unidentifiable sauce and held together in a flatbread. No idea what they were, but they were well spiced with something smoky and the pickles they came with were great. Some sort of pickled chillies. Bit of shredded cabbage on top. Yum.

His cooking dictionary was still pretty limited. Still, with the patient help of some cooking apprentices and almost every host who offered him dinner, he now was modestly confident that he could put premade soup mix and dried ingredients in a pot of boiling water without ruining everything. Beans and lentils were still a bit of a work in progress, but he believed he could do it. When he asked if he should bring flour for bread, he was quickly dissuaded and pointed towards rice. And advised to eat what the Nimu cook made whenever possible. Which should be always, it was strongly hinted.

The Bread Experiment did not go well.

The generously spooned on sauce got all over his hands, some sort of tangy, sweet and sour sauce that was a rich brown color and tasted of vinegar, mushrooms and the way the dried fish smelled by the pier. It was really good, so Mazelton elected to lick the sauce off his hands rather than wipe them on a handkerchief.

“Boy, are you crazy? You want to get dysentery this soon in the trip? Guess it’s better you do it now then later!”

A short stout elder shouted at him from a campfire. Their gray hair matched the undyed homespun hassock they wore, held in place by a length of rope. They had the Heavenly Quartet symbol as a heavy pendant, hanging around their neck. Their family was with them, studiously pretending to be deaf and blind.

“My hands are clean, elder.” Mazelton held up a purifying core in it’s little, heavy box. The elder frowned.

“I am the Man Mazelton, the Polisher hired by the Nimu Caravan Company for this journey.” Mazelton made the symbol of the Great Dusty World with his hands and bowed politely.

The elder snorted and shook their head. “I am the Woman Bisette, Humble of the West Topeki Coven. This is my husband, the Man Joaquim. My sons Thomase and Pierre. My daughter Loranne.”

They all made clumsy spheres with their hands and nodded at him.

“What brings a polisher out west? It can’t be for better opportunities.” Joaquim asked.

“You would be surprised. I was at loose ends and New Scandi was suggested to me. It seemed crazy, but with the madness rolling down the Eastern Edge, a tiny village in the middle of nowhere sounded kind of appealing. So off I go.”

“How are you going to get cores to polish?” Loranne asked. The “kids” were all about his age or a bit older, Mazelton figured, with the lean, rangy look of people who work outdoors with not a lot of spare calories. Mazelton couldn’t help comparing Loranne and the picture he had of Danae. Loranne hadn’t done her hair up, but even so, the skull structure was just a mite finer than Danae’s. On the other hand, Danae looked to have the reach advantage on her and he would bet on a better developed back. Yep. His fiancée could take her head as a trophy and mount it for display. With that bone structure, it would be a great trophy too.

He shook his head lightly. They probably didn’t do things that way in the sticks. Must be some other way for people to show off. They were all a bit old for it anyhow.

“Same way as I would in the city- buy them or grow them myself. Plenty of people are willing to swap two unpolished cores for a polished one. It all works out in the end.”

“Wait, grow them?” Pierre frowned.

“Trees have cores too. They can be huge, depending on the species and age. It’s part of why the timbering trade is so rich.”

“But mostly they come from animals, right?” Thomase asked, with an edge to his voice.

Mazelton laughed.

“I don’t know why people think that. I mean, where would we get all the animals? Even if someone was harvesting from dead livestock and hunted or fished game… I mean, as the technology in the epoch progressed, we would need farms with millions of animals. Just impossible, we would have another Grand Collapse in no time. Nah, fast growing trees. The one I know best is a type of pine you find up on the north east coast that is literally called Polisher’s Pine. Big cores in thirty years or so. Every Epoch people plant millions of them.”

“Really.”

“Oh leave off Thom!” Loranne said. The siblings dove straight into what was clearly a well established argument. Mazelton just shook his head and looked over at the Humble.

“So what brings you all out west? To Shale Snake Ridge, right?”

Humble Bissette smiled at her husband. “We wanted our kids to grow up somewhere with plenty of land, and not a lot of conflict to go with it. We are running out ahead of the same madness you are. There is a pretty sizable community out by Shale Snake Ridge, big enough to absorb three unmarried adults, assuming we can’t find them someone along the way.” Joaquim answered.

Mazelton just smiled and nodded, then made his polite goodbyes. He could feel the heat coming off their wagon. If they were homesteaders then he was nine ducks in a robe.