Polyclitus had clearly decided that tired people would be less likely to make trouble. This was often the exact opposite of the truth, of course, but he wanted to give periodic exhaustion a shot at breaking down barriers. So he pushed. And pushed. They did twenty miles that day, beginning the big swing to the north. The scenery was more of the same- open forests, punctuated by little seasonal ponds collecting stagnant water and mosquitos in equal measure. Occasional patches of meadows, of conifers, of thick young forests filled with scrub and spindly trees fighting for light. Same damn thing they had been seeing since Fort Muddy Waters.

Setting up the camp was a little slice of misery, as everyone dragged their tired carcasses through the necessary routines. Tents were set up with moderate swearing, dinner was cooked in silence, auroch brushed and turned loose with only a few extra pats of affection. More habit than genuine emotion. Mazelton made a loop of the camp with a desultory “Purification? Anybody for purification?” and moving on. People that wanted it got their water tanks purified with a minimum of chat. Except for the Insect, who insisted on yammering.

“The old faith is like its name- dusty! They haven’t acknowledged the true revelations of the Revealed and Enlightened. The new Book that cannot be written, the Chant that can only be heard by the Blessed Children of the New Earth. You cannot imagine it, Polisher. You cannot even imagine how it feels to be born out of the darkness and into the light of the Revealed.”

What manner of heretical nonsense was this? Her rice sacks got an extra healthy dose of heat, and he “thoughtfully” left his purifier cores in the water barrels the whole time he worked. The original plan was to spend the next few months watching her get weaker and weaker, sicker and sicker, until eventually an accident or illness took her. A very “clean” murder, but long on the moral satisfaction that got a Ma through the day. It was a public service, really. She was bad for the caravan, bad for Mazelton’s friend, and most damningly, threatened his survival with her bullshit. A nice clean murder- a bit slow, but a polisher learns patience.

That plan may have to change.

“The Blessed Children are called to gather in the New Lands, that those new lands may be born free of the taint of mortal air. Impure air. Those who taint themselves with unclean foods, with unclean minds. The Blessed Children are called, Polisher. And you could be one of them. Shriven of your miserable past, washed clean in the light of the Enlightened. Even your sins, endlessly dark though they are, can be purified in the light of the New Book and the sounds of the Wordless Chant.”

Oh yes, let's just up the dosage a wee bit here. And maybe start looking for some of those mushroom’s cousins. They really can be hard to tell apart.

Mazelton staggered back to the Nimu chuckwagon, collected a bowl of something he wasn’t going to even try to taste, and wolfed it down. Then went back for seconds. He still had no idea what he was eating, but it was hot and filling and that was enough. He sat down bonelessly around the fire and drank cup after cup of water. Some time later, he looked over and saw Policlitus sitting on a camp stool. He looked the same as always, the bastard.

“Why?”

“Mmm?”

“Why haul yourself across the continent, over and over again? I get that it’s a job, but there are easier jobs. So… why?”

Policlitus chuckled at that.

“At this point I can’t imagine doing anything else. Oh, someday I will be too broken down and tired to keep moving wagons. I got myself a little place way, way down south, nice little house and bit of land that I lease when I’m on the road. I own a tiny piece of Nimu too, so that will give me a bit of income too. But right now? I push wagons and I like it.”

“Right, but… why? What got you into all this?”

“Oh.” Policlitus looked into the fire for a long moment. “Well, that is an interesting story…”

“I was a young man, not yet sixteen, but had spent the last four or five years behind a plow down in Ipanono. Now, the land there is a rich, deep loam, right in the floodplain between the Mud Dragon and the Waklo. Soft earth, as these things go, and aurochs are expensive. I was pushing the plow, is what I mean to say. So I was pretty done with my family and my farm. But I had seen the barges and boats running up and down the Mud Dragon. I knew there were people out there who weren’t dirt farmers, and I was quite curious to learn about them.”

His finger drew a line in the air, tracing the edge of the fire.

“Now, finest and fastest of the river boats was the Dolly Fair. You always knew she was coming by the plume of pure white steam rising out of her proud chimney, and by the way all the other boats had to shove over out of her way. Fast? Maybe a fast rider on a strong cheve could keep up, for a bit, but that cheve wouldn’t be carrying tens of tons of wheat and rice and sugar.”

“So one day Ma hit me and Pa said I had it coming, and I just walked out the door, down to the river and jumped in at the bend. I swum over to a barge, hauled my self on board, ignored the bargemen, who were pretty pissed off at having to shove over for the Dolly Fair…”

Policlitus grinned around the fire.

“And when the Dolly came as close as she was going to come, I squelched my muddy feet against the deck, pushed hard and with a running LEAP!”

He flung his arms up and out.

“I completely missed the boat!”

He put his arms down.

“Must have been short by two meters. The barge captain thought it was about the funniest thing she had seen in weeks, and when she heard my story, she allowed as I could ride with them as far as Paco Bend, but I’d have to make my way from there.”

He looked around the circle with a little smile.

“Don’t know if have spent any time on a river. It’s an odd thing- time just… slips away from you. Not that it’s relaxing, necessarily, the captain had me spelling her men on the poles and it wearies even a young man, but.”

Policlitus flicked his fingers.

“Time slips away. You see the land move past, and it’s always moving past. It’s never the same, moment to moment, even if you are moving as slow as a barge down the Muddy Dragon. I saw things I had never seen before, even though we were barely two leagues from my home. I saw a sort of water auroch- you know what I’m talking about? No horns, smooth skin, big, big, mouth. Huge fangs in there, crush your head like a rotten melon, but they don’t eat meat. They eat river grass and the like.”

“Still will leave you without much of a corpse if they catch you not paying attention. Bad eyes, so they charge at near anything that moves.” Policlitus grinned.

“So we get to Paco Bend around evening, but it’s already too late for me. I got no shoes, shitty pants, a worse shirt, and a powerful need to see the world. Not a penny to my name, neither. Ah, they used pennies there, little wooden chips for pennies- sixteen pennies to the gomble, eight gomble to the tall. And it we had money bigger than tall, I never saw or heard of it.”

“So I stumble around the dock looking for a meal and a place to sleep. I didn’t find the meal, but the hayloft next to the inn looked warm and dry.”

“The next day I woke, starving, to the sound of some equally hungry aurochs demanding breakfast. Now, I had been poked and prodded and bit all night by the straw and everything living in it, so I was in no mood to sympathize with the trouble of others. But I reckoned this might be an opportunity, so I offered to clean ‘em and feed ‘em for the cost of breakfast. The Caravan Master agreed, thinking I was a local, and I turned out those aurochs sparkling. Brushed to a fine shine.”

This with a reproving look to the teamsters around the fire.

“Well, the Master allowed I had done a good job, and paid in full. I downed it in one breath and asked for employment in the next. He asked if I had driven aurochs, and I said no. He asked if I could read and write, and I said no. He asked if I had shoes, and I told him I did not!”

Policlitus smiled into the fire as he lost himself in the memories.

“But I can hitch. I can load and unload. I can count, and do sums in my head faster than most could on paper. I can learn. And as for shoes, why, my soles were three centimeters of calluses. And I proved it too! Drove a tack straight in and didn’t even flinch. Then he clobbered me over the head, explained about lockjaw and hired me on the spot.”

He closed his eyes.

“Even threw in a pair of boots. The caravan was on a run from Arrows’ Rest down to the Mouth of the Dragon, running parallel to the river until the swamps got too bad and the road shifted away some. Every day, I saw something a bit different. Watching things, people, shade into each other. I listened to the Preaching Tower on my sixteenth birthday, and I recon that has brought me luck all these years.”

“Preaching Tower?”

“Remnant tech out in the middle of nowhere. Nobody wants to build near it because the tower keeps bellowing out these sermons in a language nobody understands. But it kind of sounds like a preacher, so it’s called the Preaching Tower. Every now and then someone will try to tear it down or dig it up, but it never seems to work. At least one epoch old, and maybe older. Even on a foggy night you can hear it five miles off.”

Policlitus wagged his finger.

“You are distracting me. Point is, by the time we got through the lizards and flies and swamp folk, I was tired, hungry, itchy, muddy, and as scrawny as I had ever been. And I was hooked. Been caravanning ever since. I remember standing there in the courtyard of the caravansary, stinking, covered in mud and dust, with auroch shit piled everywhere, and one of the older teamsters shoves this ear of sweet corn that had been smoked and sprinkled with salt and lime juice right into my mouth. And damned if it wasn’t the best thing I ever ate.”

He mimed eating corn on the cob with a look of bliss.

“Been all over, now. From Vast Green Isle all the way up to Endless Pines, from the White Sea down to the Mouth of the Dragon and even the deserts west of there. Been over the Ramparts more times than I can easily count. I’ve seen how people live all over. Fought bandits, fought monsters, bargained with monsters, hauled for bandits that were also monsters, and generally never regretted my choice. Though I do sometimes wonder how things would have turned out if I had made that jump.”

“You would have been bored just chugging up and down the river.”

“You might be surprised. You ever go to the Mouth of the Dragon?”

“Nope. Never left the Eastern Edge.”

“Most boring part of the land for sure! But the Mouth of the Dragon, that ain’t boring at all. Wine, women, men, others, if a pleasure of the flesh exists, it can be saited in the Mouth of the Dragon. Of course, sometimes… The Dragon bites.”

Policlitus’ grin turned unpleasant.

“I was about… twenty, I suppose. Had just brought a load of cotton from Gaston, west a ways from the Mouth. Short haul, and flies and mud aside, not a hard one. Gaston was run by a family clan, not a Clan, just a big extended family of about two hundred or so. Hired a bunch of bonded to do the picking and cleaning. Nasty work, dangerous. They say that every pound of cotton on the wagon leaves ten kilos of blood in the dirt, and I can testify it’s true.”

He shook his head.

“It’s why cotton is so damn expensive- lives are cheap down there, but not that cheap. Now, those bonded, most of them are swamp folk who hire out for a season or two, stock up on things they can't grow themselves, then haul back to their swamps. We were about a week from Gaston and one of their Bone Shakers turns up. Gnarly little stump of a person, I thought, until they decided to stand straight and I saw two meters of woman covered in rattling bones. Big bones, little bones, human, animal, little bits of colored string and paint here and there in some pattern I couldn’t figure. Every time she breathed, the bones shook. Like every word was echoed by a chorus of the dead.”

The listening teamsters shuddered.

“She wanted the cotton. Seems that those idiots in Gaston decided to stiff the Bonded on their pay. She had a right to the cotton as it was their blood spilled to pick and clean it. Caravan Master tried to explain that we had our own bond, and she would have to take it up with the folks in Gaston. We sympathized, of course, but we couldn’t just give it to her on her say-so.”

“Makes sense.”

“I’d say the same now.” Policlitus shook his head. “Damn fools the both of us.”

“Oh?”

“She looks at the Caravan Master for a long moment, and says “The people of Gaston can tell you themselves. Would that do?”

“That would be best, yes Mam.” And she just spins on her heel, crouches down some and walks down the road. LIke a twisting, rattling shadow, never sure how big it is or close, or even what shape it is.”

Policlitus took a long drink from his mug.

“We didn’t hang around, I can tell you. We pushed hard, made it to a well used campsite in a bend of the river. Built a big fire, ate a big meal, and laughed a lot. Tried to make like we weren't shook. Aurochs could tell something wasn’t right, tossing their head and stamping their feet. Peaceable beasts, aurochs, until they aint. And that night, they weren't. Nobody got hurt too bad, but they did get hurt.”

Another long drink.

“Sometime after moonset we hear noises from the river. Rattling sound, clacking bones, groans. Watched people come up out of the water, covered in muck and weeds. Green fire burned in their eyes, their bellies bloated or burst, pieces of hands and arms missing. The lizards had taken their share, but most of them came up. Walked until they were knee deep, a yard from the shore. Then one what still had something like a tongue begged us to make it right. To pay their debt and set them free. To not be accomplices. Then they all started in. Four hundred voices begging to be set free.”

Policlitus stared around the fire, daring anyone to call him a liar.

“We dumped the cotton by the side of the road. Made our way back to the Mouth. Reported everything and paid the fine. People were pretty pissed off- the teamsters, the Company, the merchants that had ordered the cotton, warehouses, porters. Because we didn’t deliver, hundreds and hundreds of people lost out. And yet.”

Policlitus shook his head.

“When the Factor sent a messenger to Gaston to report what happened, you know what they found? Every single adult in Gaston hung up like a scarecrow in their fields, long dead and picked over by the birds. No sign of the kids. No sign of the Swamp Folk.”

The circle was quiet after that.

“Bet they didn’t refund the fine.” Madam Lettie’s voice came from the dark outside the circle. Policlitus snorted with laughter.

“Course not! We did drop the cargo, after all. It would be wrong not to enforce the rules.” The teamsters laughed at that.

“May I join you?”

“Fine with me. Mazelton was asking me what brought me to the caravan life. What brings you to the road?”

“Oh, a bad business, and not a fun story at that, but my Clan have always been traveling folk. This is a long stretch of the legs, I admit. But I am more or less used to it.”

“Ah, another charmed by the life of the open road!”

“Afraid not. Actually, give me a good library and plenty of light, and paper I suppose, and I will be happy for a decade or two. Just, well, what do you know about the Pi Clan?”

“Mmm… not much. Accountants, right?”

Mazelton nearly had a seizure at that, but had composed himself by the time people looked over.

“More like we are really good at math. Good at machinery, good at logic problems, but it all comes down to math.”

“What do you mean “logic problems?” a teamster asked.”

“Oh.” Madam Lettie looked stumped for a moment. “Like, let's say that you have to get three things done, but if you do it in the wrong order it doesn't work. We are really good at figuring out the right order, really fast.”

The teamster shrugged and accepted the explanation.

“Though that does point at the problem the Pi clan has early in an epoch or after a technology collapse. No work. See, I guarantee that there is someone at Nimu that checks the books and keeps an accounting. There are probably a dozen people with that job. But unless they want someone outside the firm to do an audit, they aren’t likely to hire the Pi clan.”

Policlitus nodded.

“We get hired when businesses are small, or if they are large we come in as consultants. Generally the technology base needs to be considerably high for us to really show our stuff. In the meantime, the Clan scatters and drifts, picking up work where we can.”

“So how are you still a Clan?”

Lettie smiled. “Because everything the Pi are is right here.” She tapped her head. “All the most important teachings, our traditions and rules, the achievements of our ancestors, all stored right here. Every year or two, big clusters of us get together, share what we have learned, make sure nothing was lost, then scatter again. We’ve been doing it for Epochs, and it’s worked so far.”

People boggled at that.

“Epochs?”

“Epochs. The Ma claim to be the oldest continuous Clan, but the Pi know better. We have impeccable oral records that establish our seniority.”

“Superior skin kites, more like.” Mazelton muttered.

Lettie pointed over at Mazelton. “Just so you know, the other Clans think the Ma are creepy too. It’s not just you.”

“Oi!”

“Though, if we are telling ghost stories, I do have a good one.”

Policlitus grinned. “Let’s hear it.”

“This happened… hmm. You know the big city on the southeast corner of the Blackwater Sea?”

“The Big Onion? Course I know it.”

“Yes, I think they prefer to be called Stripe Cat. Which, yes, dumb name but they very foolishly didn’t ask me for my opinion. Anyhow. Someone there, a woman of serious wealth and resolve, had a mechanical problem. Namely an old war machine had exploded up out of the ground in her number ten warehouse and was tearing up all the grain sacks.”

Everyone winced.

“So as the local experts on antique machines, my father and I get called in to sort it out. A dry mind can be brilliant, but once you figure out why it’s doing what it’s doing, they are extremely predictable. Unless, of course, something has gone wrong with it in the endless years it has lain dormant.”

She scooped up a cup of tea, not bothering to see who it belonged to, and freshened her voice.

“Horrible thing. It was roughly the shape of a human but, well, human knees don’t bend backwards, and our hands generally don’t have two thumbs each. And can make a fist curling up or down. We had expected that, more or less. It was just trashing the place. Flinging twenty five kilo sacks of wheat across the warehouse hard enough to make them explode when they hit the walls.”

She shook her head.

“Not safe, but not too bad. What they didn’t mention was that it was screaming. The slave machine was screaming. No words, just a long, long wail.” Madam Lettie winced and took another draw of someone else's' tea. “Well, Father had his tools, and I had mine. Father picked up his shattering beam and trained it on the slave machine. It’s called a shattering beam because it shatters the machine’s ability to think and act, not because it breaks things, by the way. That matters, because, well, it didn’t really work. The slave machine kept moving. Just, slower. Less frantic. It turned towards us, walked towards Father slow. I pulled my shattering beam and, cost be damned, let it run full blast. It just stopped. Not broken, just… stopped. Eventually it gave a little sigh, and collapsed.”

Everyone gave her a bit of a weird look.

“Not much of a ghost story.”

“Five more just like it popped up out of the ground. All screaming, rolling around, smashing things. Except when we had our beams on them. That calmed them down. Eventually, by flipping between them, they stayed calm enough to be put down without damaging things even more.”

“Still waiting on the ghosts.”

Lettie smiled unpleasantly. “We got them into the shop. We got the corpses as a big part of our fee. We dissected them, tried to figure out what had gone wrong with them. All the wiring and machinery looked perfect, so it had to be a problem with the mind. We eventually tracked down the brain- sealed in a little box in the chest cavity. Perfectly preserved little sheets of brain tissue, stretched across mechanical processors. The machine parts of the slave machine was fine. But someone had decided that the way to keep a machine obedient was to make it more human. Just human enough to feel pain, feel fear. It was lashing out because it was in pain, and didn’t know how to deal with it. Had no conception of pain. The mind just knew it was hurting and wanted it to stop.”

The camp fire went silent.

“Dry minds aren’t eternal, no matter what you hear. But they can last in hibernation for a very, very long time. And I always wondered, how long were they trapped in the dark, alone with their pain?”