Mazelton woke the next morning to a rapping on his tent. Another case of the flux had broken out, and the family wanted him to run over and purify the wagon.
This time it was from the Leoinidas. The teamster minder was Duane, which was comforting, for all that he gave him a warning look before they set out for the wagon circle the Leoinidas favored. Why does everyone think I’m going to start something? Is there something going on I don’t know?
Probably.
Mazelton shook his head and waved at the young man standing in the gap between the wagons. The young man didn’t wave back.
“That’s far enough, Polisher.”
“Not if you want me to purify the wagon and food, it isn’t.”
“I want you gone.”
Mazelton took a hard look at the young man, and decided that he really didn’t feel like measuring pricks to save a prick’s life.
“Bye.”
And he turned around and left. He heard some noise behind him, but it wasn’t any language he was familiar with.
“Breakfast ready?” He asked Duane. Duane nodded firmly in reply.
“Nice. I’m going to take another crack at the hot sauce method. I think the secret is the proportions.” Duane considered this for a while, and finally shrugged.
“Hey, wait up!”
“Can’t dwadle, breakfast is on and you know the caravan waits for no one.”
An older man jogged up and fell in beside Mazelton.
“Ander Mendiluze.” He stuck out his right hand and waited. Mazelton looked at him blankly, then stuck out his own right hand. Ander grabbed his forearm and pumped it twice, then released him. Some sort of greeting ritual?
“Sorry about Iker, he’s young and trying a bit too hard.”
“I can understand that.” Mazelton kept his tone neutral. And kept walking.
“The thing is, he is wrong. The Etxeberri family really do need that wagon purified.”
“They are entitled to have their food and water purified once a week, free of charge. I am happy to do so.” Mazelton continued his monotone, and walked to breakfast.
Ander went quiet for a moment.
“What do you want, Polisher Mazelton?”
“I want to get to New Scandi, alive and in one piece, with all my goods. Any extra income will be welcome, but not strictly necessary. What do you want, Veteran Mendiluze?”
Mendiluze sighed.
“More or less the same, except that we are going to New Bilbao. I can promise you that none in our,” he made a fairly unpronounceable sound “will offer you violence or disrespect so long as you treat them the same way in return. You can understand why we struggle to tolerate witchcraft, even if we know it’s necessary.”
Mazelton stopped and turned to look at Mendiluze.
“I cannot. I don’t understand at all. It’s not blasted witchcraft, it’s the same methods humanity has used for epochs. Dusty World, the Holy Beacons for the Grand Renaissance were made by the Collective! What do you think they were powered by, good wishes?”
Mendiluze looked frustrated.
“It's complicated, and we don’t have time. Are you coming or not?”
Mazelton performed his most elegant bow.
“Naturally, I am coming. Keep your people calm and civil or I will sacrifice something upsetting and make their loins rot off.”
It was childish, but extremely satisfying. His brief moment of satisfaction quickly sank through his belly and into the ground. The Etxeberri was a family of six, all crammed in and around the same ten by four wagon that most of the emigrants had. The father was on his side, covered in sweat and vomiting weakly. One of his kids, a girl in her early teens, was next to him, no better off. The rest of the family swarmed around them, trying to mop their foreheads and keep them as clean and comfortable as they could. Bare hands and not much soap, Mazelton noticed. Which at this point would be like spitting on a wildfire, but strictly speaking it would be better than nothing.
Mendiluze called out to them in that same impenetrable language, and the mother nodded, slowly and with immense reluctance.
“I am Polisher Mazelton. I am here to purify the food and water. I may purify some other things along the way.” Mazelton projected from the belly. You can always spot the real performers- they spoke from the diaphragm. “May I begin?”
The Mother waved her kids over and pointed at the rear of the wagon. Mazelton went. It was a pretty standard interior- water barrels at the very back, with the food forming a solid layer of crates and sacks on the floor. Other goods were scattered around, lanterns hung, weapons neatly secured to racks. He didn’t poke his nose around. He got out his cores and got to work. Mendiluze was hovering around, supervising.
“So I have to ask… where exactly did those cores come from? I’m not judging- Dio knows I have seen some terrible things in my time, but we must know.”
“Must you? Why?” Mazelton kept his tone bland. “It is certainly not from anyone you know.”
Mendiluze went quiet at that, and the fine hairs on the back of Mazelton’s neck rose.
“Polisher, I know we called you here. But this is not something to joke about.”
“Or what, exactly? You will kill me?” Mazelton didn’t look up from his steady passes over the food sacks. There was a trick to it, you couldn’t be too fast or too slow. “I think you know the odds as well as I do. One in ten on a very good run, one in five is normal.” He finished the sack and looked at Mendiluze, knowing that their words would carry straight through the cloth to anyone listening outside.
“Disease being far and away the greatest cause of death on the trail, and purification the best, fastest and most reliable preventative.” Mazelton looked calmly at Mendiluze, letting all the exhaustion and despair shine through his eyes. “I don’t look for my own death, Veteran Mendiluze. How about you?”
The wagon was quiet for a while, and Mazelton got back to work. After a minute or two, Mendiluze spoke up.
“So we can pray for the dead. So we can honor their sacrifice without consenting to necromancy and consorting with evil spirits.”
“Finally something I can understand!” Mazelton said spiritedly. “You want to know the source? Hard to say for certain, as these were purchased from a general goods store, but based on extensive experience with similar cores- pine trees. These cores most likely come from Polisher’s Pine, in excess of two hundred years old, given size and heat density.”
“You really expect me to believe cores come from trees?” Mendiluze looked at him like he was an idiot in need of high speed dentistry.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“How do you not believe it? Have you never cut down a tree before? EVERYTHING has a core in it. Kelp has a core in it!” Mazelton flicked his cores into the water barrels.
“But the largest and best cores come from the living.”
“Quite right. Like a formerly living tree, for example. That had centuries to accumulate heat, as opposed to a few years for an animal.” Mazelton went back to the food bags. They always took a bit longer than expected, and it hurt his back trying to wrestle the twenty five kilo sacks around.
“Polisher. I have seen your kind harvesting cores on the battlefield. Spare me your lies.”
“Of course they did. It’s a valuable war resource and always has been. If you found a box of ammunition on the ground, wouldn’t you take it?” Mazelton was about finished with the food. “Doesn't mean they are good cores, though. I bet you anything you like they were titchy little things, with little heat in them.”
He looked arounds the wagon and from what he could tell, he had purified everything that needed purifying. He pulled the cores out of the water barrels, their little floaters bobbing merrily on the surface. “It’s not in the contract with Nimu, but I am willing to do a pass over the interior of the wagon and the bedding. Provided, of course, that I am welcome to do so.”
Mazelton dried his hands with a rag, dusted his clothes, and looked over at Mendiluze. And waited. Mendiluze looked like he needed a minute to process things. In the distance, Mazelton could hear the drum to assemble beat out it’s rhythm on the steel drumhead. The sharp “Tang, Tang, Ting, TING TANG,” always seemed to jab at the “go faster” nerve in him. It seemed to have the same effect on Mendiluze.
“How fast can you do it?”
“The bedding? Half a minute, as I assume the family will be standing around them. The wagon? Five minutes if you are in here with me. Forty seconds if you are standing well back and ideally behind something solid.” Mendiluze nodded heavily and jumped out of the back of the wagon. He shouted something, and there were some sounds of people moving away. Mazelton cleared his throat. This was always so damn embarrassing.
“Clear for heat! Clear for heat! Clear for heat!” Ælfflæd hide his shame, here we go- “WooooooooAAAAAAAAAAAAAwoooooooooooAAAAAAAAAAwoooooooooooooAAAAAAA!”
“I don’t care how traditional the warning is, I don’t. It sounds like a demonic baby wailing for the teat.” Mazelton thought. He fished out a somewhat larger purification core and visualized the heat cycle. It rose out of his core, through his heart and through his body, sweeping up all the accumulated heat from purifying the food, then pumping it out again through the purification core. This, of course, meant that a lot of the heat came straight back into his flesh, but it was no matter. He started quickly working through the wagon, trying to ensure that every surface got a not-too-healthy dose. When it was done, the circuit was broken and he focused on scavenging the heat from his flesh back into his core.
The bedding was a little more tricky. The Etxeberri family was clustered together, their bedding laid out in front of them. The father and the daughter were next to each other on the ground. Mazelton winced and moved quickly. He ran the cores over as fast and carefully as he could.
“I have purified what I could, but it won’t remove the disease from within infected people, and it is possible to reinfect things if you don’t wash your hands and body often.” He rattled off his usual spiel. “That means soap, and soaping your hands as long as it takes to sing The Kingfisher and the Pike.” He looked over at the very confused Etxeberri family. “I don’t know how long that is in your language, sorry.” He looked at Mendiluze. “About half a minute.”
“Same as always.”
“Yep.”
The drum rattled out it’s command once more.
“Anyone else wants purification, you can find me when I do my rounds. Or any other cores, recharging, all that.” Mazelton nodded over at Duane, and they walked back towards their wagon. He sort of hoped someone would call out to him before he left the Leoinida’s circle, that they would thank him, something. They didn’t. He walked back to the wagon with Duane without a word spoken. They had missed breakfast.
The charming river bend they had spent the night at turned out to be a rare geographical distraction. The land here was flat. Very flat. There were still the occasional small rivers, but mostly flat dirt. Trees popped up, little clusters of them where water would gather, but mostly it was the edges of the planes. Flat, grassy, gorsey, and boring.
So boring. So boring, Mazelton had to find new words to replace boring. He tried to meditate. There was room on the box next to Duane, and the remnant tech of their wagon made it much smoother than most. Theoretically, he could meditate and polish his core.
Yes, well, many things are possible in theory. The wagon shared an unfortunate trait with the boats of his acquaintance- it tended to move in three dimensions. Once you had started relaxing into one rhythm, the wagon would hit a rock or a small divot in the trail, and you would slam into the wooden seat, or lurch sideways into the driver… or fall out of the wagon. Mazelton briefly imagined some sort of restraint system that would keep him attached to the bench, and just as quickly discarded the idea. Sounded like an excellent way to shatter every bone in your body.
It was almost comically dangerous to try and polish a core under those circumstances. Mazelton took real pride in his internal heat control, but there was a damn limit, and it involved his tailbone trying to escape via his left ear while running invisible flames through his spinal column. He took another stab at trying to read, and while it went a little better than before, it didn’t go better enough. Boredom. Crushing, endless boredom.
The few trees foolish enough to exist by the side of the road were almost cut down in a blizzard of bullets from slings and firearms. Mazelton was really improving.
It was at this point that one of the trees started shooting back.
The bark burst open, a creature of three metallic segments and six legs arranging itself into a pyramid shape and clearing for action. Long barrels telescoped out from the topmost segment, thick round tubes dropping partway out of the bottom of the barrels. A short whining noise, then CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK! The slugs snapped out, making a bloody ruin of the sporting emigrants. The creature seemed to only target the slug throwers, it ignored the slingers. The bullets from the slings bounced off harmlessly. The firearms did a little better, but not much better.
Mazelton had the great good sense to dive off the wagon and try to find cover. Cover was hard to come by in the nearly perfectly flat plain, but rainwater had carved a shallow ditch by the side of the road and he was prepared to treasure it. He couldn’t get a clear view of the creature, which he devoutly hoped meant that it couldn’t get a clear view of him.
The auroch had long gotten used to the noise of guns and slings, but the screams of men and women spooked them. First they bellowed and stamped their feet. They tossed their great horned heads. And then they began to panic. Three thousand pounds of corded muscle and long horns, panicking, wooden yokes and thick ropes binding them to suddenly fragile wagons. They slammed into each other, into other wagons, they ran off the road, the wagons rolling over and twisting them horribly as the emigrants screamed and scattered- when they were not crushed or gored.
The veterans of the Leoinida Collective had hit the ditch almost as fast as Mazelton did, their families a bare step behind them. They called out to each other in short bursts of their strange language, disciplined shots cracking out and slamming into the creature. It didn’t seem to do much good, but at least they were organized about it. Some bright sparks figured to take it in melee, since it seemed to prioritize slug throwers. It was unlikely they survived long enough to understand the creature also prioritized things that got too close to it. The machine was starting to scuttle around, shifting to get better angles of fire.
Mazelton couldn’t think. He knew that the ditch was SAFE. But the creature was moving, and soon the ditch would be NOT SAFE. It would be a TRAP. He would be TRAPPED and there would be NOWHERE TO RUN. His sling was worthless. He had never fired a slug thrower, and they looked worthless too. But as a polisher, he did have another option.
He ran, crouched down as low as he could go. The ditch was shallow, he had broken cover, but the wagons and auroch were still mostly between him and the creature. He made his way back up the caravan to his wagon. Duane wasn’t burdened with auroch, so he just drove the thing clean off the road and settled it down well out of the way. Mazelton ran up to the back of the wagon, rolled inside, and dove for the chest with the large black trifolium painted on it. The weapon was disassembled, of course. An accident was guaranteed if you left it ready to fire. But it wasn’t hard. Slot this into that and turn, engaging the catch. Attach the stock. Flick up the aiming reticule, and try to remember that it wasn’t as worthless as it looked. Drop in the sack of core dust and close the breech.
It was basically just a long tube with a very, very, smooth interior, a stock, a flip up sight, and a detachable breech chamber. No trigger, no other moving parts. The whole thing weighed barely a kilo, and most of that was the stock and the core dust. Mazelton took the weapon and dropped back into the ditch. The creature had moved to try and flank the veterans, but they were moving too, using the wagons as cover. The sheer weight of fire was having some effect, the creature was thoroughly dented and no longer moving smoothly. Still, every second or so, another CRACK would snap through the air, and another emigrant would drop.
Mazelton got as low in the ditch as he could, his barrel half hidden in the grass and his head barely peeking up over it. He reached out with his other senses, the heat sensitivity that defined a polisher and let them work their trade. The Humble’s wagon still lit up like a bonfire. So did his own, and a few others scattered about caught his attention. The creature’s heat was mostly hidden behind it’s metal plating. Mostly.
Mazelton lined up his shot for what he figured was the core of the creature, letting heat call to heat. It was a crude, rough job of aiming, but since he was literally a stone’s throw from the target, it should do. He swirled the heat running through him into a storm, then slammed it into the weapon. It ran through near invisible channels into the breech chamber, and excited the core dust into a final splendor. All the invisible flames started slamming around, bouncing off the interior walls until they finally funneled through the hair thin hole at the front of the chamber. Down the thin, brightly polished barrel they went, a thin needle of searing heat. They crossed the distance fast as anything, and most of the heat splashed away harmlessly on the metal skin of the creature. The most potent of the energies, the most dangerous of the invisible flames, slipped through the armor and ignited the cores within.
The creature's weapons went silent. The barrage from the caravan didn’t stop. A minute later, thin flames shuddered out of the joints of the creature. It collapsed in on itself, like a spider killed by a wasp. A cheer went up from the caravan, firearms waved in the air, rounds fired off. It almost covered up the noise of the wounded aurochs and emigrants. Not every round from the creature killed, and so many more were wounded when their wagons went out of control. For a beautiful, brief moment, the caravan rejoiced in a team victory.