Mazelton had noticed that this part of the continent was flat. It wasn’t a new observation, of course, because he had been noticing it for weeks now. However, upon mature reflection, this particular stretch of road may be the most flat and most boring stretch of road in the entire world. Just maybe, of course. But he liked his chances.

The aurochs plodded on, tails flicking away the flies, manuring the road as they went. The wagons rolled on behind them, unless someone had something break, at which point they would have to pull out of line and off the road, and hope they could fix whatever the problem was. Deaths had slowed to a small trickle compared to the early days. The terminally dumb had died first, followed by the unlucky during the fight with the slave machine, and now it was pure accident that was picking people off. The levels of privation, of the wearing away of the flesh, hadn’t reached the point of collapse. After a while of hard living and short rations, even a scratch could be fatal. Something that might have given you the runs would take your life instead.

After some quiet conversations with Policlitus, Mazelton understood that most people would hit that point somewhere between the dry planes and the Ramparts, or worse, in the Ramparts. And that it would be very wise indeed to keep the preserved lemons safe and uneaten for as long as possible, as they would be a sovereign preventative for all kinds of unpleasant disease down the road.

Mazelton looked up at the cornflower blue sky. Someone had been fooling around with a slug thrower and shot themselves in the head, just after lunch. But you couldn’t count on that kind of entertainment on a regular basis. Did that cloud kind of look like a rabbit? No, not really. Fanged rabbits were either mythical or extinct.

He took another stab at reading on the wagon, figuring that the road was so flat he must be able to read comfortably. This was another thing he learned he was wrong about. It was certainly better than it had been several times before… but he still felt like he was going to get a second viewing of lunch after ten minutes.

Would it really be so wrong to find someone for a little physical recreation? He had promised Dougal, but that was months of trail ago. He kind of liked coming to Danae shriven of his old Ma identity, or the parts of it he didn’t like at least. But when he got right down to it, the Ma stance on sexual relations just made more sense to him. As long as you weren’t hurting anyone… well as long as everything was consensual and no kids came of it, who cares who you played around with, or how?

The memory of learning why a particular archway was known as “Mapeina’s Lover” in honor of an old patriarch was always fresh in his mind. Mapeina was a pretty decent Clan Head, by all accounts, and one hell of a fine polisher. One of his hot weapons managed to melt the soft tissues right off an entire company of invaders, and boil the eyes of two more. But when he needed relief, it wasn’t his wife he turned to, oh no. No, it was the archway. He would kneel in front of it and stare fixedly at it as he fiddled about under his robe. Never any other door, archway, tunnel or vaulted roof. Just that one. For fifty years.

Always cleaned up after himself too. A model of diligence and consideration for the common good that youngsters would do well to remember.

And that really was the lesson they were taught. Nobody really gave a damn that the Clan Head had an extremely niche fetish, he had knocked out a dozen kids with his wife, and they all went on to be valuable members of the clan. They were taught he was diligent, he didn’t burden the Clan unnecessarily, and even if he needed a lover, nobody really cared. Fifty years of people just stepping around him, maybe giving a polite little bow as they went.

But here in the convoy, he had watched a serious fist fight break out because a boy and a girl had the unspeakable temerity to kiss, even though the boy was betrothed to another. And it only ended with a fistfight because it hand’t gone any farther. Still, the two were roundly condemned and shunned by the “right thinking” folk of the convoy.

Mazelton looked out across the flat, incredibly dull grassland. It had to be the boredom. Self righteousness was one hell of a high, and all the sweeter when the blandness of the road was wearing away your mind.

On the wall next to Mapeina’s Lover was something that nobody talked about. A poem, written entirely with heat, carefully traced and retraced so that it would be legible to polishers for millenia. It had gotten a little faint by this point, but Mazelton could read it plain within a month of his initiation. A love poem, written by Mapeina and etched by his wife. Her calligraphy was excellent, his poetry less so. It was painfully sweet, and shockingly vulnerable. Mazelton could understand why Mapelina’s wife wanted to commemorate that love, after his passing.

Mazelton knew that he wouldn’t take a lover on this trip. Too many threads already tangled together, too many plans in motion. He could see himself seducing a tool, but even that just didn’t appeal. On the practical level, it wasn’t practical, and on the personal level, he just didn’t want to have a part of his journey that he needed to lie about. Like he would somehow tarnish the beautiful dream of his home in New Scandi if he had to keep a secret to keep the peace.

Maybe he could explain all of this to Danae? Make her understand that sex and love and marriage were three different concepts for a reason?

He remembered the girl’s father getting the boy down on the ground and stomping over and over on his gut with heavy, hobnailed boots. The boy puked up everything he had ever eaten and would likely have ruptured something if his dad hadn’t knocked the other man off of him.

Danae probably wouldn’t understand. Mazelton sighed and leaned his head against the side of the wagon, trying to slide into an erotic daydream.

It was the same damn scenery for a whole damn week, with only short hills to punctuate the landscape. Mazelon could feel the pressure building inside the caravan. Everyone knew it was going to be like this. Everyone was doing their best to cope. But boredom and exhaustion were starting to take their toll. The death rate started to tick up slightly. It was easy to see who was taking advantage of Mazelton’s services, and who wasn’t. The Collective was boiling their water, sure, but their food was spoiling faster and just because you boiled the water yesterday didn’t mean it was still safe to drink today. Not with all the flying dirt and animal dung coming off all the wagons ahead of you.

It weirded him out. He had done some rough math, and while it was totally possible to boil all the drinking water you wanted in a given day, it took up a huge amount of time. Multiplied over the entirety of the Collective’s group, he couldn’t even imagine how much time they had lost. Time that could be spent cooking other things, doing chores or maintenance, or just plain relaxing. Eventually he gave in and asked Madam Lettie what was all about. Her shrieking laughter was as piercing as ever.

“It’s you!”

“What do you mean it’s me? They hate the Ma that much?”

“That too, but no, they also just really dislike you personally. They also don’t like me much, but they like you much, much less.”

“Alright, they don’t like me. But to the point of making themselves miserable for weeks?”

“Oh you bet! This is nothing. You have to understand, the Collective exists because of two things- inherited memories of the peons under the Fourth Empire, and repeated exposure to elements of the clans.”

Lettie squatted down and started sketching a map of the continent in the dirt. Decent skull structure- had that long Pi Clan skull that they cultivated. He could practically see the Coronal Suture under her scalp, which wasn’t the best look. Still, the Piterions at either end possessed a degree of charm. Definitely one for those who liked collecting trophies of other clans, though it wouldn’t really be “table worthy.” Unless you were entertaining another aficionado, of course, but…

“Mazelton, I can feel you judging my skull.”

“It’s a pretty decent skull. A fine exemplar of Pi traits.”

“Oh thank you. I am so, so, happy that the scion of the most duel obsessed clan thinks I would make a fine trophy.”

“More a collectors skull, I was just thinking.”

Madam Lettie buried her face in her hands.

“You people.”

“You make it sound like the Pi clan doesn't take trophies.”

“I swear we learned it from the Ma. I think everyone learned it from the Ma. You are the only Clan that looks forward to the tribal development stage.”

“It is an honest, simple time. Ripe for honest, simple pleasures. And we are getting away from the point.”

“Not as much as you might think. Look, Fourth Swabian really turned the eugenics and greensmithing dial all the way up, even compared to the other empires. Worse, they were mediocre at it. The peons were kept down because they were hereditarily unfit, compared to the other castes. Strength, coordination, and more, were bread in the bones of everyone except them. The vast, unwashed masses.”

“All right.”

“So they are mostly based around here. A good bit south of the disputed territory, bordering the deserts and clustering around waterways and the coasts.”

Madam Lettie tapped on the map.

“So what do we know happened here on The Day of Red Hands?” She asked rhetorically.

“Peon revolt. As soon as most of the soldier details were recalled to the capital.”

“Right. All those peons who realized that improved lung performance matters to a soldier, but not as much as having numbers on your side. What’s really interesting is that the leaders of the revolt were basically boss tier peons. They figured they could move up and take over from their former masters. Didn’t work out that way.”

“The Collective.”

“Yep. A few palace coups and some really endless conferences later, we get the Collective. Communal anarchists driven by consensus decision making and a philosophy of “Equality for All.””

“There are worse slogans.”

“Yeah, but they enforce theirs with beatings and social violence. Everyone gets the same everything, or as close as is practical. Soldiers and laborers are going to have higher food requirements, bigger families need bigger houses or more apartments, that kind of thing.”

“Ah. And being told by genetically enhanced aristocrats that, no, actually, you can't have our fancy weapons, you can’t make them either, and even if you could you couldn’t use them…”

“Yup. Coupled with the fact that their current weapons do next to nothing to the machines and they have to rely on you for their comfort and safety means they really, really don’t like you.”

“Such fun. I guess I shouldn't call them peasants then?”

“I wouldn’t. I mean, I’m not going all the way to the Disputed Territory, you know? Not a whole lot for me there. I’m stopping off at Cold Garden- the Joyful Throng are weirdos but not bad to live with. In other words, I am a short term problem and one they generally don’t have to deal with. But they see you every day as you make your rounds. Always rubbing in the fact that there are things you can do that they cannot.”

“They must have polishers though. The Collective is one of the more technically advanced societies on the continent right now.”

“Sure. Bonded ones, usually independents or small families. Their core devices are trash. And by no coincidence at all, they are moving fast at building up an electricity based tech base.”

Mazelton smiled without humor.

“Mostly cartridge rounds in their guns. Which must be rifles, now that I think about it. Doable without a full blown industrial base, but…”

“Yeah, they are building up fast. But they are hemmed in by the Sea Folk on the coasts and the various tribal confederations to the east. The south is a nightmare of conflicting powers, and sane people don’t want to stick their noses into it. Just leaves almost due north.”

“And we come full circle.”

Lettie’s piercing laugh jangled the air.

“And here you are- they have to rely on you… and every time they buy something and use your services, they enrich the militant, notoriously death welcoming, armed, religious settlers who are emigrating to spite the Collective. Who will now have access to an entire technological branch that they, functionally, don’t.”

Mazelton looked blankly west, calculating on his fingers.

“Trying to figure how far you can push them before they kill you?”

“Mmm. Among other things. Any deductions about the dry mind that set up around here?”

“Nothing you don’t already know or suspect.”

“Oh. Shame.”

They looked west together in amiable silence, each with their own calculations.

“Mazelton. One of our scouts just came back. The detector is solid blue.”

“Oh? How far off?”

“One mile. Bring your gun.”

There was a town here, once. Maybe village would be a better term. You could see the tidy little ridges that suggested buried foundations, the bright orange lily’s in their rows and sudden depressions where an old basement had slowly filled in. Not that many of them. A few hundred houses, perhaps. A few larger ones where the richer farmers might have lived, or had shops. Hard to tell without excavation. And in a podunk nothing flyspeck place like this, who could be bothered?

Mazelton, that’s who. Because in this justly forgotten hamlet, monsters appeared.

Mazelton kept his body flat on the ground, behind one of those little ridges of foundation. The creature was moving on four legs, though it seemed pretty comfortable on two. Big thing, up to about Mazelton’s waist, with long claws on each paw. Big triangular head, with teeth that seemed to snap through whatever the critter was investigating. Fur suggested it was a mammal. Probably weighed in at forty kilos.

There were five of them that he had seen so far. The animals were so completely psychotically aggressive, Mazelton saw one tear a rock into chunks once it smelled another animal’s pee on it. Then it peed on the rubble, and the urine practically glowed in his senses. These shambling, murderous tumor farms had so much heat in them that it was almost comical. Not actually funny, when you realized that they could take out all that pain on you, but it would probably be funny later.

It was a territory marking the scout had picked up. Mazelton discovered the hamlet when he was investigating the source of the heat. He was still investigating, with immense reluctance and misgivings.

Because at one end of a village that probably housed less people than a small block in Old Radler, a giant hole had been cut into the ground. The edges were fused earth. Sintered. And still glowing with heat.