Ffion found him some time later. She wasn’t looking for him, but her bond with the spirit beast pulled her over and she figured it was worth saving the person who patched up her kin. She threw him onto a chev and they rode south west. He could barely stay on the horse. She poured some water down his throat, and that helped. He could smell the smoke rising around them. With immense effort he looked around. The prairie was starting to burn. It was smoldering right now. Too early in the season for the flash fires that could cover hundreds of miles in minutes. But it would burn. Sooner or later, everything did.

Mazelton forcefully shook his head, trying to clear his mind. He took stock. He was battered, bruised, a few scrapes, and utterly exhausted in every way. He had ridden through a battle of machines and gods, with hardly a scratch. He tilted his head back and laughed.

Ffion looked over at him like he had brain damage.

“Can’t see much funny right now, Polisher.”

“I’m alive. Of all the absurd things that happened today, I lived.” How could he explain? He decided he didn’t want to.

“Did all your bonded make it out?”

“My what?”

“The spirit beasts you look after. The…” He racked his brains. “The Sobak?”

Ffion looked grim and shook her head. Mazelton bowed his head and made the gesture invoking mercy.

“I don’t know your customs. May I offer a prayer for them?”

“Please don’t.”

“As you wish.”

They rode quietly for a while. Ffion would sooth the wounded Sobak tied to the back of one of the Chev. Mazelton emptied his canteen. There wasn’t any more. Shame. He didn’t have any food on him either. He tried circulating the heat in his body. He had apparently picked up a healthy dose, and was inhaling even more. Painfully slowly, he started to rebuild his reserves. Didn’t stop him from being hungry or thirsty, but it made him feel better.

“Is there a lake this way? Or a river or something?”

“We will reach a stream in an hour. The wagons will be camped next to a pond a bit further along the road. There are a couple of lakes along the way.” Ffion was curt, her accent stronger than it was before.”

Mazelton nodded. He knew how it was. It was… surreal to be alive. To have been in the presence of not one but two alien minds, to have been judged by them and deemed… irrelevant. He had a sudden feeling of kinship with an ant. Like being caught between an earthquake and a hurricane. And people kept asking him to do something about them. Mazelton felt another laugh bubbling up his throat. What could he do? What on this Great Dusty World could he do? Chat with them, maybe? He did get on well with the Ælfflæd.

He just didn’t want the Sobak to die. Mazelton felt the need to explain to someone, so he explained to the Cheve, in his head. There wasn’t some great theory behind it, no well thought out reason, he just really, really didn’t want the Sobak to die, and it was… not ok, but acceptable if saving the Sobak cost his life.

“I don’t want to die. I don’t. Survival, right? That’s the name of the game, survival. And if you do go down, take as many of the bastards with you as you can. “One’s enough, two’s a profit, and if any of you bastards receive my teachings and go down without at least three bodies to your name, I will personally feed your souls to the earth demons!” That’s what old West Guardian used to say. And I wasn’t a great student of his, right? I wasn’t. But I tried hard. I always tried hard. It felt so good when they said “Good Job!” I loved that. I loved that. But they didn’t say it much. And they never said it about my polishing. “Adequate.” That’s what they said, just “Adequate, but room for improvement. You won’t amount to much with just this.” That’s what they said in the polishing halls.”

The chev flicked its mane. It was tired, scared, thirsty, and the smell of smoldering grass was not enhancing its calm. Mazelton chose to interpret the flick as the chev equivalent of “I hear you. Yeah, I get it.”

“So, you know, I got one. I didn’t know for sure I would get them, but I figured, hey, I know I can set them on fire from the inside, so this should work. And I did it. I DID IT. I ran in, and BAM! Palm Strike! Dead! Mostly you just fuck up your wrist when you go for the palm strike, by the way. Not advisable.” Mazelton acknowledged that he might be rambling, but felt that it was all important information so he kept on with it.

“Not me, though. I received the teachings of West Guardian! Bang! Dead. Then I saved the Sobak! Who, I admit, didn’t seem like they wanted to be saved, but I don’t care. Felt good.” Mazelton had a dopey smile on his face that rapidly ran off into remembered horror.

“And there it was. A true God. It was so big. High up and big. Just the immensity of it, the mass of it. You can’t stick numbers on it and understand- five meters, seven meters, what does that mean? It means something big enough to make you feel small, heavy enough to make you feel weak. It means that you are helpless. Just helpless. You can’t decide how this ends. All you can decide is how you go.”

Mazelton could feel himself choking up, though he wasn’t speaking aloud.

“And I chose to go out like a Ma should. I claimed the Flower’s Honor and raised our standard high. The Black Parade marches eternally, on a road of bones. Honor to our banners. We march on, and on, and on, and when we fall down, the next person walks on our corpse and carries on marching. And I chose. I chose, nobody chose for me, I CHOSE! Who would walk on my belly. It would be the Sobak. I would live and die a Ma, but on my own terms.”

He sniffled.

“I will choose what to live and die for. That’s enough. Doesn't have to be a big thing. I have heard from experts that I am not cut out for big things.”

The stream was a reedy little thing, and mucky. Mazelton had never found spitting sand out of his teeth so pleasurable. The world was instantly a better place with a belly full of water.

His piss was a shockingly bright orange, like some sort of venomous snake. That was probably fine. And he was almost faint with hunger. Also fine. There was food at the wagons. He was going to be fine. The Spirit Beasts started barking urgently. The prairie had finally caught fire.

The cheve were still sucking down water in enormous slurps, and were not amused to be suddenly kicked in the gut and screamed at to run. They got their heads straight once they spotted the fire. Advantage of eyes on the side of your head, right there. Lots and lots of opportunities to see what was going to kill you.

The wind was not quite dead behind them, blowing more south than south west. Still, the fire was spreading out sideways as well as being driven by the wind. The grass still had some green in it, so the fire was going slowly. But it was going, and neither Mazelton of Ffion cared to find out just how fast.

They burst away from the river, shifting fast from a walk to a trot, then a few steps later into the canter, then a galop. The stubby little chev were built for endurance, so they could take the grind. Still, Ffion quickly dropped them back into a canter. The fire was still spreading and rolling towards them, but if they exhausted the chev now, they would only die later. To Mazelton’s horror, she shifted their course to due south, running straight before the wind. He wanted to scream at her and demand an explanation, but he just didn’t have the ability to both hang on the chev and yell at the same time.

They ate up the miles. They stopped at every water source to change horses and let them suck down a few mouthfuls of water. The fire was getting closer. The smoke had already turned the skys a pale yellow, and it was darkening by the moment. It was a choking, cloying, filthy smoke, the damp grass pitching creosote by the bucket full. Mazelton hoped the chev could breathe it alright. They rode on.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t. This wasn’t a problem he could solve. There shouldn’t be a third implacable, fatal danger in one day. It just wasn’t fair. The thoughts jumbled around in Mazelton’s head. He really wanted to find someone and complain. He told his chev. They didn’t care.

He could hear the fire now, which meant that it was entirely too close. No more breaks for water. No more water to break for. Dry prairie grass as far as he could see. Ffion kept them running dead straight south. Like there was a future there that only she could see, and Mazelton could keep up or not be in it. He tried to work with the chev, match their rhythm. He wanted to see that future too.

The fire was getting closer. The flames were louder. Less than a mile distant, and coming on strong. He couldn’t see anything through the smoke. The late afternoon sun was a tiny red disk hanging in a dingy brown sky. It was hard to breathe. Like you could never really get a full breath, because you choked and coughed when you tried. A slow suffocation. An amuse bouche, before it throttled you with the full course meal. Ffion was riding low in the saddle, hunched over her laboring chev. Her eyes locked forward. Mazelton couldn’t imagine what she was seeing.

From the ground, a flock of cranes exploded upward. Shocking whites and blacks and flashes of bloody red heads. Tens of them, perhaps even a hundred seemed to emerge from the earth and claw their way through the sky. There was a little ridge before him. When he cleared it, he saw a lake. Not a very big lake, maybe five miles across and two wide, but he was prepared to cherish it. Did they have time to run around the edge of it, put it between themselves and the fire?

Ffion didn’t care to find out. She rode straight into the lake. Mazelton didn’t think, and followed behind her. The chev slammed into the water, in steps it was neck high. Mazelton was soaked. Ffion kept on her perfectly south line. Before Mazelton could find out if a burdened pony could swim, they chev rose out of the water. Two steps, and they were only ankle deep in the water.

“Safe!” Ffion slid out of the saddle and sat in the water, holding her knees. Shivering. Mazleton looked around. He was standing on a drowned road.

It was called Crane lake, apparently. Because cranes liked to nest and fish here. The Two Souled were in firm agreement with the cranes. It was an awesome fishing lake. At some point in the past, people thought that what the lake really needed was a causeway that ran from the southern shore around the western edge of the lake and right up near the northern shore. At its most interior point, it was about a mile from shore. They made their way over. Further you got from the fire, the less smoke there was.

Still no food, but plenty of water and they weren’t burning to death. Pure win. Mazelton made a wheezing gasp that was intended to be a laugh.

“You are a humorous man, Friend Mazelton. Again, I see nothing to laugh at.”

“The woman who taught me how to camp. She said over and over again, “Cold is the enemy.” And the best way to stay warm was to stay dry. And look- she was right again. I am wet, and not warm one bit.” The fire was burning around the lake now, a thick smog choking them. They sat low in the water, tried with mixed success to get the chev to do the same. Luckily they were short ponies. If their heads were too much higher, they probably would have already died.

He shuddered in the water. It was all a bit too much. He wasn’t trying to be precious, or anything. But the sobak kind of stank when they got wet, and he was surrounded by them. And the chev weren’t exactly sweet smelling either. And it really seemed like everything was out to kill him today.

“Smart woman.”

“I think she probably is. Funny, at the time I thought she was brain damaged. She seemed to have no grasp on reality, as I understood that word.”

Ffion finally broke a smile.

“She knew enough to stay warm.”

“She did. She did keep going on about negotiating a contract for a spouse though.”

“A what for a what?”

“Basically treating getting married as a business deal.”

“That’s idiotic. Marriage is not something to be dickered over.” Ffion was firm on this.

“Right? How do the Two Souled do it?”

Ffion sniffed authoritatively.

“The only sensible way. We let the Sobak choose.”

Mazelton wiggled his finger in his ear.

“I am pretty sure I didn’t hear that right.”

“We let the Sobak choose. Between three and six bands will make a camp in late autumn. There is a big fire, lots of food, drinks, dancing, a really good time. Then the Sobak are turned loose in the crowd. They run around and sniff everyone. When a good match is found they herd the couple together. If multiple packs agree that a cluster of people make one good marriage, there is a big cluster marriage. It works out amazingly well.”

Ah, smoke inhalation of the ear. Not a common problem, but a serious one.

“Right and… kids?”

“Who would marry off kids? They are too young to even have their own Sobak.”

“No, I mean, how do you manage kids? Like… if two women are married, or there is a cluster, how do you ensure the right bloodlines get passed down?”

“Oh that. Well, as long as they are a member of the band, they are all our kids, you know? I have…” She started counting on her fingers “As of this spring, I have twenty five kids. I only gave birth to two of them, but they are all my kids.”

Mazelton nodded understandingly. It seemed he was fated to be saved by degenerate women wherever he went. He looked out across the burning landscape. There were worse fates.