“This has gone on long enough. Too long.” Mendiluze spoke powerfully, his voice carried over the camp. He came with a squad of veterans armed with rifles. The rest of the Collective was back in their wagon fort, but Mazelton could see an awful lot of weapons being held.

“This entire expedition has been mismanaged and misled. The whole concept of each group being its own little expedition, each wagon its own little kingdom, is stupid, and it’s killing people. This caravan is to be brought under a unified command, with pooled food and supplies to ensure that we all make it to wherever we are going.”

“Oh? Great. So when are you handing out the rifles?” Policlitus snapped back. “In fact, I seem to recall that it was the Collective that pulled away from the rest of the Caravan, not the other way around. “We don’t need some peddler telling us how to march,” were your exact words.”

“You are trying to blame us for your failures?! How much crucial information have you withheld, how many people have died because of your reckless leadership? And every time, the Collective gets the worst of it. Go on, deny it’s a conspiracy. Go on, we are all ears!” His knuckles whitened as his grip on the rifle tightened.

“Oh, secret information? Everything you need to know to cross the continent in relative safety? Here. I got a copy of it right here. I keep it handy for conversations just like this.” Policlitus pulled out the handbook that Nimu had issued to everyone in the caravan when they joined. “Remember this? It’s got the Constitution of the Caravan written down in it. You know, the thing you agreed to in writing the night before we left Sky’s Echo? Including how to resolve big disputes in the Caravan? That handbook? The one that said how much rope to bring, its thickness, how much your wagons should weigh, how much food to pack, recommended spares, health and sanitation guides, THAT HANDBOOK!?” Policlitus was shouting at the end.

“Don’t you try to hide behind-”

“I WROTE THE FUCKING HANDBOOK!” Policlitus bellowed. “I wrote it because this keeps fucking happening! Every. Gods. Damned. Time. Some chucklefuck thinks they know better than the person who does it for a living, and is shocked, outraged! That somehow they fucked themselves up. Because that couldn’t happen, and clearly it’s my fault!”

Policlitus glared murderously at Mendiluze and his squad. Something was tickling at the back of Mazelton’s mind. This… didn’t feel right. This was a little too on the nose for both sides. The teamsters had all gotten under cover in their wagons. They must be up to something if Policlitus was willing to go this hard. But at the same time, would Mendiluze really just hang himself out as a target, isolated from the rest of the Collective? No way.

Mazelton, who was doing his considerable best to be invisible, started looking around outside the camp. There were all kinds of shrubs dotting the mountainside. Lots of big rocks one could rest a rifle on. He let his eyes soften, sweeping side to side, trying to pick up flashes of light or movement with the corners of his eyes.

He thought he saw a glint. Whelp. Time to get under cover himself. He slowly eased towards his wagon.

“Say what you like, but our casualties have been out of proportion compared to the rest of the Caravan. More sickness. More injuries. More death. Do you have the faintest idea who died on that damn slope?”

“Yes. My sworn brother, a mentor, and a lover. Not all on the same trip, mind you. Some others too. Which is why I kept warning people. And you told me to fuck off.”

“A hero, a true hero of the Collective, a man worth ten thousand of you slaves, died because of your incompetence. And you are trying to hide behind a book?”

“A slave am I? Who’s trying to get me to labor by force? Is it you, Free Man Mendiluze? I’m sorry you lost someone. I truly am. But this wasn’t because I hid something or did something wrong. I told you every step of the way what you needed to do, and I even showed you how with my own people. Say what you like, but I lead from the front.”

“Eate’s death cannot pass without a reckoning, merchant. A price must be paid.”

“Not by me and mine. We fulfilled every duty to you and yours. But we can’t save you from yourselves.”

“You will provide us with a total inventory of all goods, weapons, maps, guides, personnel…”

“We will do no such thing.”

Mazelton hastily stuffed his polishing tools and every bit of core dust he could lay hands on into various pockets and pouches around his person. He strapped on his machete, and put the sling in a pouch with some bullets. A canteen and some dried snacks. What else could he grab? He couldn’t run with a pack, damn it all. They would spot him in no time and cut him down. If this was back in Old Radler, he would slip away, observe and report. Out here? All he could do was slip away.

And if they tried to stop him, well. He could die like a Ma.

Mazelton got low, slipping out of the wagon and trying to keep as much cover as he could between him and the mountainside. It was too soon to think about retaliation. The argument in the middle of the caravan had heated up, fingers were pointed, and pointed threats were made. He didn’t feel like sticking around to find out if hanging him was one of the terms of any pact they reached, but on the other hand, his odds of survival were pretty lousy without the caravan. Hmm.

They went back and forth a few times. He noticed that Mendiluze waved at his wagon a few times, which got Policlitus right back up in his face. He was drifting around the outside of the camp. The simple fact was that if snipers from the collective had already secured the high ground in the valley, he was screwed. The sun had just risen, and this far north, the summer light lasted a long time. The escape and evasion techniques he studied had all been tailored to the unique environment of Old Radler. Sure, some of the principals applied everywhere but he wasn’t going to beat veteran soldiers in the field. He needed to create more urgent problems for them to solve.

Mazelton kept an eye on where the wind was blowing from. Ah, up the valley from the west. Nice. He could work with that. He kept edging around the camp, desperately trying to remember and apply his lessons. The mnemonic for concealment was… Shape, Shine, Silhouette and Contour? No, Color. Shape, Shine, Silhouette and Color. Shine and color were not really fixable at this point, so he would have to really lean into shape and silhouette. And use any cover to keep himself out of sight of the snipers.

Wait, did those pricks have optical sights? He didn’t remember seeing any, but it wouldn’t be a hard development for this stage in the epoch. The Collective was pretty damn sophisticated too. It couldn’t be ruled out. Damn, damn, damn. He paused, crouched behind an auroch. Did that really impact the plan? No, but his risk of failure was higher. Nothing for it but to be even more careful with every move.

As he made his way around, he started looking for kindling. All those tall golden reeds would be a good start. The dry, fallen thatch blown up against downed pine trees. Those would take a bit to get started, but would be a hell of a job to put out once they caught. How to set the biggest fire in the least time, leaving him an escape route west. And if possible, how to stampede the aurochs in the process.

The plan was still in its infancy when the shouting match just… broke up. Both sides went back to their respective wagons, and the situation appeared to settle down. He wouldn’t have believed it, but Mendiluze casually wiped the back of his neck with a handkerchief, and some of those mountain shrubs started moving. The sharpshooters broke cover, making their way back towards the Collective’s wagons. Mazelton hadn’t spotted a single one. The spot where he thought he had seen a reflection? Just a white bit of rock getting hit by the sun just right. He focused on the rifles. No scopes, thank Mother Moon. Mazelton stayed hidden until the wagons started packing up, and slipped in behind Duane when no one was looking. Duane, bless him, had struck his tent and packed it away.

“Do you like preserved lemons? I have some. I think you really deserve some with lunch, don’t you?” He whispered in Duane’s ear. The big man jolted in his seat, looking shocked for the first time Mazelton could remember. He composed himself, considered it, and nodded firmly.

“Are they out to kill me?”

“Collective? Sort of. Policlitus fought for you.”

“I’ll do something nice for him too. Am I kill on sight?”

“No.”

“Do I need to start killing people?”

Duane considered that for a minute. And shrugged.

Mazelton spent his time making a few little fire starters and caltrops. They wouldn’t do much, but he really wanted options at the moment. He kept to the shadows inside the wagon. It wasn’t comfortable, but he felt safer. When they stopped for lunch, he declined to make an appearance. But he did notice something growing just behind the wagon. One of the few plants that he made sure he could identify on sight. While some types of oak had nuts you could eat, others could give you horrible skin rashes, tons of tiny blisters itching for days.

You should never burn it, he was told. The oils that caused the irritation would go airborne and get into the lungs. Turning something very unpleasant into something potentially fatal. Mazelton smiled, and tried to figure out how to harvest the nasty stuff.

Evening rolled around, and Mazelton decided to “drop in” on Policlitus. Who jumped a lot higher than Duane did, and swore a lot harder too.

“Where the hell have you been?! I thought they might’ve scragged you, but I figured there was no way a Ma would go quietly.”

“I was hiding in the wagon, thinking very peaceful thoughts about non-confrontational conflict resolution through honest communication and mutual respect.”

“How many innocent bystanders were you going to take with you?”

“How many whatnow?”

Policlitus buried his face in his hands and groaned.

“How much do you understand about what happened this morning?”

“Not as much as I thought I did. I thought they were setting up for an armed takeover.”

“Nah, it was more… a performance?”

“Policlitus. A performance doesn’t have sharpshooters set up on the mountain.”

Policlitus looked surprised at that, then shook his head.

“A very convincing performance. Look, that old man? Eate? I asked around. Apparently he was a famous general, then became an equally famous member of their Central Planning Committee, which he retired from so he could help establish the “New Territory.” He wasn’t just an old man, he was one of the best known, best loved, people in the Collective. Most of the veterans here served under him at some point.”

Mazelton sighed, feeling like he could see where this was going.

“The Collective demands action! His death cannot be in vain!”

“Exactly. But. How exactly? Quite literally, nobody did anything to him. This was one hundred percent on them. But they had to find something, so they decided to blame mismanagement and conspiracy. They can’t really kick off a fight, they would take too many losses even if they won. But Mendiluze had to put on a show and look like he was doing something.”

“What did he “win?””

“I will consult them and alert them, in detail, to any upcoming hazards of which I am aware. The fact that they had all this information, in writing, months ago, was apparently not good enough.”

Mazelton stared at the fire.

“If I were to go missing, my cargo still gets to Danae, right?”

“Yes. That’s your contract. Think they are going to try something?”

“Certain of it.”

“Paranoia is famously part of the Ma makeup.”

Mazelton just watched the fire for a while.

“You don’t have to have a fight to take over, you know. You just have to get enough people separated from their weapons, and then take the weapons. Repeat until you have all the weapons, and everyone is convinced that resistance isn’t just hopeless, it’s impossible. For example, take hostages. Then use your victims to trick more people into becoming captives, or break their weapons, or poison the food, or whatever. There are all kinds of ways a unified, armed, block of people can take over a numerically superior force.”

Policlitus looked at Mazelton with growing horror.

“Well aren’t you a ray of sunshine.”

“Only if pressed. Which is why I am sure they are going to do something.”

“How do you figure?”

“I’m the random chance. Everyone knows that polishers never die alone, and they don’t know what kind of nasty surprises I have for anyone who tries to kill me. And if they don’t get me in the main assault, I could hunt them and do all kinds of evil polisher sorcery to damage their beautiful, perfect Collective. So they are going to play to their advantages. They will attack from ambush, and likely from very long range.”

Mazelton stood.

“I’m not going to do my rounds. Kindly let everyone know that if they need cores charged or water purified, they will have to bring it to me. Tell ‘em why too. That the Collective is out to kill me, and you would rather not come down with the bloody flux when the sickness gets into the food and drink.”

Policlitus thought that one over a bit.

“Reconciliation isn’t part of the Ma makeup, is it?”

“We have a book of vengeance. You have a grudge that you care about, you go through a fifteen step process to get your grudge added to the book. It’s a complete pain in the ass to do. But it’s permanent. The grudge stays in the book until someone from the Clan takes revenge. It might take generations, but someone at some point will do something, and the grudge gets crossed out.”

“That seems… impractical?”

Mazelton turned and started fading into the shadows.

“Not at all. We are the Ma. We have nothing but time.”

Mazelton spent a long time carving in the wagon. He did his best to block out any leaking light that might silhouette him. No need to make a sharp-shooter’s job easy. He needed the new weapon urgently. Even as he carved, he raged over an inescapable truth- even if the weapon turned out exactly as he hoped, the rifles would have one hell of a range advantage. Heat just didn’t carry that far. Easier to use. Devastating when it hit. But the range was not the best. And even if he stole a rifle, he didn’t know how to use it well. He went around and around in his head, never coming to a satisfactory answer. He stopped polishing before his hands started to shake. Tomorrow he would see about incendiaries and making simple poisons. He could do a lot of that while the wagon was rolling.

They had managed ten miles that day. When the ancients who first built this road picked the route, they picked a route that was surprisingly flat over most of its length. It helped that it ran parallel to a river, going between the mountains rather than over them. Whenever possible. Of course, in the countless millennia since they first cut a road here, conditions had repeatedly changed. The current “road” was really just a trail, and a soggy, muddy one at that. The river had widened out slightly. Just enough to make the road heavy going. Enough to make the mud cling to boots, with every step feeling like you were wrestling free of the earth. Nobody was having a good day.

Duane had his preserved lemon, though. Mazelton made sure of it. And a generous ounce of his numbing spice. The man more than earned it.

Mazelton didn’t know how he would run, if it came to open violence. He had been taught some things by she of the rattling wooden rings, and he had picked up more on the trail. He now knew enough to say with certainty that he would die in the wilds if he had to fend for himself. He didn’t know how to forage for food. Every region had different edible plants, he knew that much, but he didn’t know what was edible locally. He didn’t know how to hunt. Or fish. He could set a tent, but didn’t know how to make a shelter without one. And he had an, at best, iffy grasp of the geography. He knew the route the trail was taking, but if he got separated and forced away from the trail? Totally lost, and no guarantee of finding his way back to the trail. He needed the caravan. He needed that support system. Which meant that the Collective would have to go.

He sighed. He had been sowing the seeds for a while now, building resentment against the Collective and building some trust with the rest of the Caravan. Maybe he could work with that to limit the damage afterward. When all the bodies had to be shoved off the trail.

He paused at that thought, then quietly started laughing. Yes, if he was hunted by the Collective, there was one type of food he knew exactly how to get.