Mazelton felt that the moment lacked a degree of mythic grandeur. They had seen incredible, impossible things. Survived a battlefield, fire, starvation, disease, Letok’s cooking. They should gallop into the camp (possibly jumping over something with a dramatic whinny,) and shout about the wonders and terrors they had seen. But neither he, nor the chev, had the energy for that, so they steadily walked on. A chev walks faster than an auroch pulls, even when they stop and eat every hundred yards or so. He had a hard time blaming the chev. If he could eat grass, he’d be doing the same thing.

It was quite a small breakfast. Letok truly didn’t need much.

The sobak were half dead, though they did manage to start snapping up insects and the very occasional rodent along the way. The pickings were fairly easy, as all the prey animals had to run somewhere, and here was as good a place as any.

There is a particular stink chev get when they are overworked. It’s not awful. Definitely not the worst smell you ever smelled, but it's penetrative. Clinging. It’s sweat, and dander, and dust, a warm smell from all the friction of a rider on their back. A rider with bloody sores on his legs, which burned from the sweat soaked through their pants. Mazelton felt the stink like a physical thing, but had stopped caring hours ago. It was hard to care about anything but his empty stomach and burning legs. He kept his mouth shut. So did Ffion. Neither had anything good to say. Wrapped in stink and misery, they reached the caravan.

As the sun set the sky into brilliant oranges and pinks, as the edges of the night creeped periwinkle shadows to set the frame of a brilliant picture, Mazelton had eyes only for Policlitus. He had two camp stools in front of him and two big bowls of stew in his hands. Mazelton had never seen a more beautiful man in his life.

Cookie, that beautiful bastard, had saved some potatoes and turnips, browning them in the pot before adding water and a generous slab of the dried soup. He served the soup with wonderfully fluffy bread. Mazelton could have cried. The sobak were fed, the chev taken by the teamsters to be cleaned and cared for, and Mazelton was finally able to dress his wounds. Not infected, or at least they didn’t look infected. Now that he had access to his cores again, he ran his wound purifiers over them generously. This time, he didn’t neglect to offer his services to Ffion. She was in better shape than he- a far better rider wearing far better clothes.

Mazelton couldn’t face the prospect of setting up his tent. He would just sleep under the wagon, blissfully wrapped in some borrowed blankets. He was about to find Duane for that exact purpose, when Policliltus asked what had happened while he was away. Artfully timed, Mazelton thought.

So he told him. Free of adornment and with as few adjectives as he could get away with- a spare recitation of five days of struggle and horror. Policlitus had a good poker face, but not that good.

“I was getting worried about whether we would safely make it to Vast Green Isle. Now I am getting worried about whether we can make it back again.”

“Maybe go by a more southern route?”

“It’s got its own problems. This is only dry country. We will pass through a few hot wastes on the way, but generally we are never too far from water. Not true if you go too far south. That’s a real desert, and it’s peppered with hot wastes too.” Policlitus shook his head.

“Worst case, we sell the wagons and book passage on a ship. It takes a year or three, depending on the state of things, but it does mean getting home alive. We’ll see.”

“Don’t you trade with the Sea Folk? I imagine they could get you home in… well not a couple of days, but no more than a few weeks, surely.”

“We don’t trade with them directly. We work through those… hybrids? Meat puppets? Bottom line is that the Sea Folk don’t want to deal with us land folk any, and go to great lengths to that end. They would no more let a caravan on one of their ships than they would marry out.”

Policlitus spat.

Mazelton thought through that for a moment. “Meat puppets?”

“Humans, physically. Well, the Sea Folk are also technically humans, as I understand it. But the meat puppets are kind of… they look a lot more biologically human than the Sea Folk, but their brains have been pretty thoroughly scrambled. You know how you can train a chev to open doors by pulling on a rope, or do tricks, that kind of thing?”

“Yes?”

“But it’s not like they understand the language, they just know that “If I hear THIS sound and do THAT I get a treat.” That’s the meat puppets. They turn up in the morning with their instructions, and if what you say to them fits into the instructions, they act on it, and if it doesn't, it might as well be birdsong.”

“Creepy.”

“You have no idea.” Policlitus brooded, staring into his tea.

“So… how did things go while I was away?”

“Is that supposed to be a joke?”

“No?”

“How does it fucking look, Mazelton?”

Mazelton looked around.

“I don’t know what I said wrong, Policlitus, but I apologize. I am too damn tired to see much beyond my nose.”

Policlitus bit off an expletive.

“The first couple of days went fine. A few extra deaths from disease, maybe, but we were due for that. Not too surprising. Then we start seeing smoke on the horizon. Upwind of us. We pick up speed. I know damn well there isn’t a good spot to shelter from a prairie fire within two hundred miles of there, so all we can do is get away from it. Try to get out of its path. So we go to the double march. Fastest we can go for any length of time, and it's not a long length. Not safely.”

Policlitus looked grim as he stared at Mazelton.

“Accidents start straight away. Things that looked ok, broke. People got run over. A few hours later, people that were only a bit sick suddenly start puking and shitting their guts out. Or collapse with a fever. I had to have a team of aurochs and teamsters rush up and down the line, pulling wagons off the trail so the caravan could keep moving.”

Mazelton shook his head sadly.

“Then, of course, there’s the water. Takes time to stop and get everyone a drink. Auroch won’t even go a full day at that speed if we don’t let them drink. But you could see the smoke on the horizon. Getting bigger and blacker and closer every minute. So I let them suck down a few mouthfuls, counting every second, and the instant I couldn’t stand it any more, it’s back on the march we go. You know old Ludoviz?”

Mazelton shrugged. The name sounded familiar.

“He was the fella with the six legged “wagon."”

“Oh sure. “Was?””

“Wagon exploded with him and his son on it. Very tidy explosion, straight up and down. Didn’t even scratch the aurochs behind them. No idea why. The only people who knew anything about that wagon were Ludoviz and his son, and they're both dead.”

“My condolences. Did you know them well?”

“Some. He usually did some short haul work around Sky’s echo. This was his first big caravan.”

Mazelton made the gesture invoking mercy. He was too tired and emotionally shot to do anything else.

“So we press on and we cross this titchy little river, and now the Aurochs are getting lame, because we have been pushing them hard for sixteen hours. They’re bucking and fighting, demanding to stop. I look back and I see the fire sweeping across. I see it running just along the edge of the river gully, like it was tracing an edge. Black, black smoke everywhere, we’re all coughing, the aurochs are losing their damn minds, and all I want to do is lie on the ground and laugh because the fire missed us. It just went right on past. All that was worth it, because we didn’t all burn to death. And we have been camped here recuperating ever since.”

Mazelton considered the situation, and with profound conviction said-

“I’m going to sleep. If it needs me to fix something, I’ll fix it in the morning.” And so he did. He desperately wished he could stay asleep, but after the last few days, he wouldn’t miss Cookie’s breakfast for anything.

One filling breakfast later, Mazelton set about replacing his lost kit. A few wagons were lost, but more people were lost than wagons. That being so, it wasn’t too much trouble buying a new (well, new to him) blanket, pad and groundsheet. He had noticed that the supplies belonging to the people who died of sickness were the cheapest, or even free, so he made a point of snatching up a couple of spares of everything, as well as raiding their food supplies. The collective refused to sell to him, but for once it wasn’t personal. They didn’t sell to anyone. Everything was redistributed within themselves.

Mazelton didn’t care about the diseases, of course. That’s what purifying cores are for! And he was quite prepared to shove his new bedding into chests absolutely lousy with purifying cores.

The food likewise got a more than healthy dose. Screw it. He was going to be the one eating it, so who cared.

Policlitus got them moving after lunch. The forced march might have saved the caravan, but it still wound up costing them time. Mazelton sat up in the box next to Duane. His leg was mostly healed, if a touch weak. The same went for his arms. The sores were still fresh and raw, though, so he plonked his rear down on the bench with great satisfaction, and resolved not to stir until dinner.

Ffion cantered up. The caravan didn’t have any spare saddles, but she improvised with a blanket and a chinch. She had some supplies packed on one of her other ponies, and generally looked much fresher than Mazelton felt.

“Friend Mazelton. I wanted to say goodbye before I returned to the tribe.”

“I should have thought of that myself! Fare you well, Friend Ffion. Here, a gift for your journey.” He fished around in the back and pulled out two charged cores, one for food and one for wounds. He thought a moment longer, and added an insect barrier to a small pouch. He put them in a little metal box.

“Food and wound purifiers. Use them in good health.”

“Ah. Thank you. These are rare gifts on the plains.”

“You will enjoy this last one more- an insect barrier. Keep it in the pouch, don’t leave it against your skin.”

Ffion grinned.

“Well now I feel like my gifts aren’t excessive. I have left you two chev, in the care of the Nimu teamsters. Good young mares, steady. Not the most lively beasts, but then,” She gave him a little smirk, “You don’t want lively.”

“No I do not. Thank you, your gift is most generous.”

“Well, part gift, part payment for dragging you through all that. Before I went, I wanted to ask you if you thought of anything more about… all of that.”

“Nothing useful. But something did occur to me. Give me a second to get a bit of paper.” Mazelton hunted around for a notebook, and using the bench as his table, quickly wrote a list.

“Not my best handwriting, but legible. Here, this is a list of all the people and organizations that I think you should contact about all of this. Do please take care to only contact the Clans I have listed there. You do not want the attention of some branches of these Clans. The Lone Pine Xia are very different from the Soulfire Xia, and you don’t want to find out how. Believe me on this.”

“I do.”

Mazelton hesitated.

“I am going up over the Ramparts. A new settlement- New Scandi. Don’t hesitate to pass word through the Sky Runners. I don’t intend to ever go back out and take a look at those things in person, but I am happy to answer what I can by letter.”

“Fair.” Ffion nodded. “Safe journeys to you Mazelton. I don’t know why our sobak make you sad, but whatever it is, this bunch here thinks you are alright.” And with a jaunty wave, she was off. The sobak ranged out widely, sniffing, listening. Ffion would make her way to the usual haunts of her tribe, and the sobak would take it from there. None could escape the pursuit of the Two Souled, especially not when it was a mom who really, really needed to hug all twenty five of her kids.

Duane looked over curiously. Mazelton gave a wry shrug.

“I now own a couple of ponies. What the hell do I do with a couple of ponies?”

Duane thought it over.

“Ride them.”

“Not without a saddle I won’t.”

Duane shrugged.

“Look tomorrow.” And having used up his words for the day, he fell back into silence.

Mazelton set up his tent that night with quiet pleasure. It was tiring, at the end of the day, but not tedious. The pegs and posts went in just so- the sides unrolled, the vestibule clipped into place, the folding cot stretching along one wall. The light core hung with care, his little travel desk standing tidy and ready for whatever work he might be called to. He put an extra blanket on the bed. It would be too warm for that tonight, but at least to start with, he craved the warmth.

He gently put his roll of carving tools on the desk. The thick green loden cloth was stained now, with dirt, ash and blood. He had cleaned it as best he could, but some things just weren’t going to wash away. That was alright. He found he rather liked it this way. A polisher out in the world, not cloistered away in one of the Clan halls. A polisher who had seen some things and lived to tell of it. He felt that his ancestors would approve.

Hypothetically. The Clan really took the “Dead stay dead forever,” principle very seriously. Still, they had gotten out into the muck. They killed their own food, both planted and cut the trees that made the best cores. They warred. And they would never be willingly parted from their tools either. Funny to think that in the middle of a battle, the only thing he couldn’t imagine fleeing without was water and his tools.

Mazelton reached into a storage chest for a large core, and started carving. He had lost his dumb, half functional energy “musket” somewhere out in God country, so it was time for a replacement, and an upgrade. He decided to challenge himself. He would make more or less the same design, but would have a “primer” of sorts built in. A core who’s only job was to fire a beam of heavy heat from the back of the chamber out the aperture and down the barrel, hopefully pulling the heat from the powder along with it. He only half remembered how to make the carving, but he had an artist’s eye for detail, and the stone God had given him a lot of inspiration. He paused his carving barely a few strokes in.

The stone God. The war nest. Maybe there was a better way… Mazelton sketched and sketched until his eyes shut without his say so.

The next day started cool but got brutally hot by mid morning. It was going to be a long haul today, but Policlitus promised frequent water breaks. He wanted to get to Colmbe today, if at all possible. Not a large settlement, perhaps, but an old one. And the fact it was there at all was a minor miracle.

Duane didn’t agree. He spat on the ground from his perch on the wagon bench.

“Voyageurs.” He muttered darkly.

Mazelton didn’t try to read, or draw, or talk, as the wagon rumbled and shook along the trail. He just closed his eyes and meditated. He tried to remember every swirl and loop of the nest. The picture was maddeningly incomplete, and he discovered that terror had blurred his eyes when he thought back to how the God actually used the carvings.

It was obviously about much more than changing the angle of attack- if that was all, the God would simply have moved itself. The carvings had to be doing something else, something that could be done on such a large scale that the God could do it in dirt. His mind raced, his eyelids twitching as his eyes shot from side to side, blindly sorting through memories.

He was watching a demonstration in the Armaments Hall, the big wooden core models displayed and explained by a none too patient supervisor. Why the loop or whorl had to go here and nowhere else. Why the ridges had to be exactly this width and no other. A much more patient teacher explains that the light they see is not so different than the heat running through their hearts. Different… but not so different. And the great truth that the Ma Clan has carefully preserved for epochs- that it’s all just energy. Everything. It’s all just energy, sorted in different ways. A string plucked in two different places may produce two different sounds, after all.

Mazelton smiled.

“Did I ever tell you that I got top marks on a monthly test? It was only once, but I did it. Generally in the top quarter of my classes too.”

Duane shook his head disinterestedly.

“Energy and Power aren’t quite synonyms, but now that I think about it… I wonder if the Ma Clan internal dictionary agrees with me.”

Duane looked a little more interested.

“I figured out what the carvings are for. No idea how the God made it work with dirt, but… next time I shoot at something, Father Sun and I shall see it dead.”