’Mia and ’Tok poured over the report, their heads nearly touching. The message was brief, but seemed to merit re-reading.

FORTY RAIDERS ATTACKED VGI FQ CRVS STOP FIRE ATK AUR STAMPEDE FATALITIES UNK STOP NIMU CRV KILLED MANY HELD LINE STOP VGI FQ PUB SEC REPULSED RAIDERS STOP RAIDER PRESUMED DEAD SURVIVED AUTO GENITAL MUTILATION BY HATCHET STOP DETAILED REPORT VIA SR STOP

They looked at each other. There was a particular phrase there that was hard to move past. “‘Mia, did you ever learn how to throw a hatchet? I never did.”

“It’s actually pretty fun. Not much use in serious combat, but a fun camp activity.” She grabbed a pen from the box and held it pointing straight up from her fist, like a hammer.

“So you hold it like this, edge forward, in your dominant hand. Non-dominant leg forward, back straight. Imagine there is an open top box. You upper arm is at ninety degrees to your forearm, which is at ninety degrees to the hatchet. Maintaining that same arrangement, you push your elbow forward and up until the hatchet is by your ear. Then you step forward and using the momentum your arm snaps forward and the hatchet flys. Your momentum and the ax’s weight should be doing most of the work. If you are muscling it, you probably messed up.”

She demonstrated the movement. It looked rather dainty with the pen.

“So, even if you massively screwed up and, say, failed to let go of the ax or let go of the ax at the wrong time…”

“You would probably be safe or you would hit your leg or foot or something. Hitting the people around you would be a much bigger worry.”

“So… how exactly…”

“I have absolutely no idea. I guess we need to wait on the Sky Runners.” ’Mia’s voice was bitter. Part of the reason the Sky Runners could last as a continent spanning tribe came down to its point to point relay system that let them send letters and pictures across the continent in a day or less. They always claimed it was remnant tech that wouldn’t work for outsiders, and for reasons that no one had adequately explained to ’Mia or ’Tok, word from on high was to work with the Runners and not try to steal their stuff.

Because they absolutely would if they could. Knowledge was power, but deploying that knowledge quickly was how power became useful work. Not that the Xia didn’t have their own high speed communications, ranging from couriers on foot, couriers changing cheves regularly at high speed, heliography, flag signals, and, for truly urgent long range communications, the Mysticism of Stone Unification. And they really could not afford to use that often.

It was hard to find mystics, and they died so quickly.

“Alright, it’s not that far to Vast Green Isle from here. If you ignore the mountains. Can’t be that many relays between here and there. ’Mia, make that visit to the Sky Runners Factor a bit earlier. Send a first year associate to the bakery up on Boxhall Lane. I know for a fact that the Factor likes their cheesecake.”

“That’s clear across the city! Won’t the cake have melted or shaken apart by the time it reaches the Sky Runner’s office?”

“Cheesecake isn’t that fragile. Send ‘em on foot. The cold will keep the cake in perfect condition. Tell ‘em it builds character and discipline, or something.”

’Mia laughed. “Alright. I’ll get moving. ’Te is gone for a hot minute and already I have to do his job.”

’Tok jolted to his feet. “Shit! ’Te!”

’Te moved south with relentless speed. The Landau provided more than adequate space for the whole party, but that would have been entirely inappropriate. Instead, his two client development officers sat in the servant’s compartment with his valet, Phrenlick. ’Te occupied the main portion of the carriage. ’Lu had outfitted it like a tiny, lavish, apartment. The bed slept three comfortably, six if none of them were ’Lu. The sofa was deeply plush, and the upholstery… explained quite clearly why very few were invited to share the President’s Landau. It was simply impossible for ’Tok to have seen the interior before he loaned the Landau, ’Te reflected. Not with his sense of aesthetics. Good desk, though. The longer you looked at all its intricate carvings and highly polished woodgrain, the louder the sound of jingling coins became.

The rest of the party, the two first year associates, the six guards, all rode cheves. The guards did so for the extra mobility and flexibility. The associates, because ’Te wanted them to. He enjoyed teaching, and planned to set his juniors up for success. Defined a certain way.

Their first meal on the road was instructive. The party had pulled over for a quick lunch- powdered soup, rehydrated and improved with a hearty portion of quickly chopped fresh vegetables, all cooked over a large heat stone. The party gathered around the soup pot, huddling together for warmth. Bowls were distributed. Phrenlick did the cooking, but it was ’Te who ladled out the portions. Xiachoram and Xiachoii were ready to dig in, but hesitated. Nobody else had picked up their spoons. ’Te served himself last, and dug straight in. He smiled and nodded at the rest of the group. They started eating.

The party made good time on the first day. The roads were still mostly clear and in good condition. They had just about managed forty miles, though the cheves were tired at the end of the day. ’Te was determined to push the pace on the flat lands. They would be in the mountains soon enough, and that would slow them to a crawl. They would spend the night camped near a nothing village of a dozen homes, without an inn to its name.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

The associates looked badly out of sorts. Painfully hungry, cold, sore, trying to set up their tent before they lost all the light. It was a struggle, and one they didn’t beat. One of the guards had to help them set up the tent in the end. They could feel ’Te witnessing their failure. The client development officers, their seniors barely one generation ahead, got their tents set up reasonably well. Though they didn’t offer to help. Dinner was a more hearty affair, beans, bread, and sweet fish flesh in an algae broth. The smell almost drove the associates mad with desire.

’Te portioned out the food. The associates grabbed their spoons and looked ready to dig in. And hesitated. ’Te was apparently ignoring them. But they were Xia. They could feel the others watching from the corners of their eyes. ’Ram and ’Ii hung on to their spoons and waited. An epoch later, ’Te drank the first mouthful of soup. Their spoons made an aborted lunge for their bowls. No one else had moved. ’Te scooped a piece of fish into his mouth, and chewed. A little moan of satisfaction slipped out with the steam from the hot fish. His eyes half closed in satisfaction. ’Te swallowed.

“Good job, Phrenlick. Those classes are paying off.” ’Te looked around the group. And nodded.

’Te slept very comfortably that night. Credit ’Lu, his choice of mattress was impeccable. The Landau had wonderful insulation and heating. Not too hot, not too stuffy, just right. No proper bath, alas, but the chamber pot had its own well secured, smell proof, receptacle. He found it under the bed when he was stowing the Dreadful Mrs. Crump.

The Landau glided along the road with an unnatural quiet. There were no wheels, of course, but there was also an upsetting absence of anything else. No wavy, shimmering air under the flat bottom of the vehicle. No strange lines, tracings, runes, etched circuitry. No hissing balls of exotic matter lifting the enormously heavy carriage. Just flat metal painted white and gold by the Xia. It did, in fact, look like a covered barge and one could safely call it a floating barge, were it not for the Postilion.

The Landau did not drive itself. Instructions were given to the Postilion, who directed the vehicle along its way. The Postilion was, one sincerely hoped, dead. It would be too horrible to imagine they were still alive. Xiatokte had once referred to the Postilion as a coachman in Xiatoktok’s earshot and got an earful in return. It was not a coachman. A coachman, or coach person, whose gender was both difficult to determine and irrelevant at this point, sat on the coach and drove the animals pulling the coach. A postilion rides on the left lead cheve in a pair or team that is pulling a coach.

’Te pointed out that, in fact, the Landau had no cheves and was, in fact, self powered, and the horrible thing was, in fact, sitting on an open bench at the front. ’Tok firmly invited him to shut up. The Postillion sat on the left of the thing moving the landau. The… corpse based interface mechanism? Sat exclusively on the left side of the bench. It was, therefore, unquestionably and indisputably, a Postilion. Or ’Te could walk to Red Mountain. Either way, he was going.

Postilion is a fun word, ’Te decided. And dropped it.

They were still in the bubble of land that notionally fell under the control of Cold Garden. It was difficult to say exactly what the borders of Cold Garden were. Certainly anything within the range of the City’s artillery. Call it forty… ish… miles from the city walls. After that it got considerably more iffy. Farms had to be built outside the city, naturally. A lot of acreage had to be cultivated too. There weren’t that many food crops that grew well this far north. Most of the ones that did were cereals. Combined with soil that was never very good to begin with, farming around Cold Garden was an honorable, and miserable, job.

But it had to be done, or there would be no Joyful Throng and no Cold Garden either. So they farmed. They carefully collected every scrap of compostable material they could. Every animal dropping was carefully swept up and added to the manure pile. They cut down huge swaths of trees and chipped them, turning them into mulch, then life giving hummus. Painfully slowly, they transformed the desperate, meager subsistence farms into engines of bounty. It was exhausting labor and it took centuries of fanatical devotion, but they did it. The farms of Cold Garden could proudly stand against any in the north. And protecting them was a nightmare.

A bit more than a day out of Cold Garden, they relied on watch towers that could light a smoke signal or hang lanterns at night, warning of raids. In theory, the towers would relay the signal all the way back to Cold Garden, who would then deploy a swarm of cavalry. It was hoped that, when combined with aggressive patrolling by yet more cavalry, raiders would be deterred.

In practice, what actually worked was making sure the local Langpopo tribes were doing well. Cold Garden was surrounded by Langpopo tribal lands. So long as the local tribes prospered, they would viciously attack any bandits intruding into their territory. If they weren’t? They might be the bandits. In any case, they were migratory and simply might not be around for months at a time. It was a delicate situation.

Day two on the road saw them racing through even more perfectly flat farmland, with the occasional watch tower or small lake to break the monotony. The foothills were always on the horizon… and then suddenly they were towering over the party, reminding them that however high they might rise in the bank, they were very very small indeed. Lunch followed the usual pattern, with a new twist- ’Te started quizzing the associates and the CDOs on their briefing packets.

“Xiachoram, list the major industries of Red Mountain in decreasing order of importance. Top ten.”

“Algae plastics, aquaculture, tourism and hospitality, finance…”

“Xiachoii, what is the order of operations for Escape Plan C?”

“Break contact using the crowd, then move east. Find an empty home, or make it empty, and go to ground for four hours…”

’Te’s questions came rapid fire, demanding instant answers. When there were errors, as there increasingly were, he would look sternly disappointed and correct them. The associates quickly learned that he had the entire four centimeter thick briefing packed memorized, and he knew a great deal more about Red Mountain besides. It was… impressive. And humbling. Even the CDO’s plainly knew the material far better than the Associates. Which should be expected, but still. The CDO’s weren’t of the main line. They were middle management fodder at the very, very best. Being shown up by inferiors, even if they were currently their superiors, felt bad.

“Alright, we still have a week or so before we reach Red Mountain. I will quiz you again tomorrow. I don’t expect perfection, but I do demand serious improvement. That’s all. Phrenlick, you have twenty minutes to clean and pack. Everyone else, stretch, go to the bathroom, do what you need to do to get ready for the afternoon push. We make Chain Lake in good time, or you get to set up your tents in the dark.”