The next day passed quietly. The land was actually rather pretty, in a tedious, bland sort of way. The bright explosion of spring flowers had settled down some, the leaves coming in full and rich and green. The flowers that did still show their colors were hardy, durable sorts. They lined the road in their faded blues and pale yellows, shaking off the dust of the passing caravan. The trees were getting more sparse, thinning out into scrubland. Still pockets of them here and there, forming long, twisting corridors around rivers and creeks. Fewer and fewer of them, though.

Come evening, or late afternoon as the days were notably longer, Policlitus called the halt in a bare stretch of nothing and ordered the camp to be set. Mazelton looked around from the seat of his wagon, next to Duane.

“No water.”

Duane nodded.

“We passed next to a river for a good piece of the day. Water barrels should be topped off.”

Duane nodded again, perhaps a touch more faintly.

“OUR water barrels are topped off, right?”

Short, sharp nod, indicating the obviousness of the question and its equally obvious answer. Mazelton sighed with relief. He knew dry camps were an inescapable reality on the trail. Mostly there was fresh water available, but not always and it got worse the farther west you went. The wagons had water barrels, of course, but…

Like most really unpleasant things, it came down to math. An adult, walking next to their wagon, needed about a half liter of water an hour, or about four-ish liters drinking water in a day’s hike. It was a bit more in practice, and that didn’t include water used for cooking, or soaking the everpresent beans, or any other purpose. Call it four and a half liters per adult sized person. That was at least nine, and possibly eighteen or more liters of just drinking water, per wagon, per day. Eighteen liters is a lot, but manageable in barrels hanging off the back of a wagon. Except…

What were the aurochs going to drink?

A bull auroch weighed in at almost one thousand one hundred kilos. Figure about eight liters for every hundred kilos, which meant that you needed to find one hundred thirty seven and a half liters of water per bull, per day. A cow was two thirds that weight, and needed proportionally less water, which helped explain why there were so many more cows than bulls in the caravan. That was still about ninety two liters of water per cow. So now let's fill in the variables.

Mazelton calculated on his fingertips. An ordinary family of six, with two adults, two teens and two younger children- call it twenty three liters of drinking water. They are poor and desperate, so they set out with a team of just two cows, with no spares in case of an accident. Another one hundred eighty four liters, bringing the total to two hundred and seven liters of drinking water, per day. This was near enough exactly two hundred and seven kilos of water weight that had to be pulled by those same oxen, displacing almost twenty one cubic meters of volume.

A single water barrel generally held two hundred liters. Now, given that the Aurochs had to carry that weight along with whatever else was in the wagon, including every calorie of food, every stitch of warm clothing, shelter from the elements, spare wagon parts and, ultimately, every worldly possession of the pioneers, carry it up mountains and across rivers, how many barrels of water could each wagon carry? How much water was “enough?”

The numbers were just average, of course. Mazelton and Duane’s wagon didn’t have aurochs, for one thing, nor did a few other wagons. Most people wanted at least three aurochs, for the sake of safety and redundancy. Families might be bigger or smaller, the weather might be hotter or colder, so on and so on. A bull could almost empty a barrel by themselves. But you could understand why the emigrants treated washing clothes as a somewhat special occasion. Being able to spare the water was a luxury. Never mind the soap.

Mazelton grinned mirthlessly. He had “enjoyed” filtering his water with cornmeal or charcoal and other fine grains to try and clean out the muck when the water was shallow or not very clean. Same as everyone else. He could guarantee that there was no microbial life in it, but the taste of dirt was sometimes inescapable. Now add in the “fun” of the people who weren’t being as cautious about keeping their water clean. One free purification a week seemed generous, but when you figure that the emmigrants would be going through more than a barrel a day, it was more like a sort of lottery- is this the day you wont get sick when you might have otherwise? Spit at the Polisher and find out!

The journey to the Disputed Territory was a gamble. The odds were good when you were starting out- well fed, healthy, and surrounded by clean water. Now though, the dealer’s grin was looking predatory as they pointed out that the odds had never changed. You had just forgotten them for a while. You thought they only applied to someone else.

Mazelton hopped off the wagon and went to find Policlitus. He reckoned that business was going to start picking up. As it happened, Policlitus agreed, but had some more pressing matters to mind.

“Water is always going to be an issue, no getting around it, but… in the next few days, no more than a week, I expect we will run into the Two Souls Tribe. Now, they are pretty friendly, and easy to trade with. Some even speak a few languages, as they run into so many travelers. What worries me is… Mazelton, do you remember what was in the guidance Nimu provided about this trip? Particularly as it applied to the Two Souls Tribe?”

Mazelton thought about the almost two hundred densely printed pages.

“Not… really? They consider their livestock sacred?”

“And you were one of the few that actually read that thing cover to cover. This is why I am worried.”

“What's the matter?”

“The Two Souls Tribe travel with basically two other animals- their cheve and their Spirit Beasts. The cheve are damn hilarious- scrubby little ponies you could probably clear with a decent running jump. You have these tall-ass tribesfolk trotting around on these little dwarf cheve. They get a lot less funny when you realize those ponies can go all day and on a fraction of the water a bigger cheve or auroch needs.”

“Sounds like they would be really useful, actually.”

“They absolutely are- except they are lousy at pulling weight and prone to injury. Not practical farm animals. But they aren’t the problem, the problem is the “spirit beasts.””

Mazelton looked curious.

“I don’t know the whole story. Apparently, at their initiation ritual, a youth bonds with a mating pair of these beasts and spends the rest of their life looking after the “clan” of beasts. I don’t really understand it, but… the way I heard it explained is that they are the spiritual protectors of the spirit beasts, and the “Two Souls” are each spirit animal leaving a piece of their soul with their protector, and the protector’s soul guards them. In exchange, the spirit beasts have a sort of symbiotic relationship with the tribesfolk, helping them hunt, guarding them, providing warmth and companionship, even pulling sleds or small carts if they need to.”

“I want six of them.”

“Aaaand that’s the problem. Everyone does. There is something about the spirit beasts that just calls to people. I mean powerfully. They are mammals, a little shorter at the shoulder than your waist, pointy ears, long tail, four legged. They are omnivores, but they mostly eat meat. And they are just the cuddliest, most affectionate, funniest animals I have ever seen.”

“I am raising my order to twelve, with an option for another eight, resources permitting.”

“Yeah, notice I said “seen?” and you haven’t seen me playing with MY spirit beast every evening?”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Mazelton considered this for a while.

“Some kind of profound moral defect on your part?”

“Ho ho. No, the Tribe will beat up anyone who tries to touch their wards, and flat out kill anyone who hurts or steals one. I am talking about tens of thousands of SUPREMELY pissed off tribesfolk with their hundreds of thousands of spirit beasts, who could famously track a fart through a tornado, on their tiny ponies riding all day without rest to run you down and kill you. It’s happened before, several times. No one has ever successfully run off with a spirit beast, and on a lot of occasions, the beasts escape and make it back on their own.”

“Ah. Yes, that would be a problem. They won’t sell pups, or the pack that belonged to a dead person?”

“No and no. The Two Souls Tribe have this party trick they like to do, where they put an arrow through a hard tack biscuit while riding at a full gallop. And I hear they have been trading for rifles. Yeah, I’m going to call a meeting tomorrow morning and remind everyone. This is going to be a mess.”

The morning went, the caravan duly chastised by the vehement Polyclitus. Polyclitus waved a hard tack biscuit around for emphasis, as though there was anyone in the caravan who was not painfully familiar with the palm sized, twice baked slabs of misery. He then ordered a breakfast for the Nimu Caravan Company people of hard tack- crumbled into pieces, reconstituted with salt, water, and some dried fruit. It was not the actual, literal worst thing Mazelton had ever eaten. Top ten, easy, but not the actual worst.

The swelling had gone down on his arm, mostly, but he knew that now was the most crucial time- the rebuilding time. The arm healing well came down to this. So he kept it in its sling and in its splint, babying it save for the brief stretches he remembered the healers teaching him. Sometimes “babying it” meant sitting in the wagon, other times, when the road got bumpy, it meant walking alongside.

Around lunch, the caravan stopped by a river that kissed up next to the trail. Lots of buckets being filled. Lots of people drinking straight out of the river. Some were even smart enough to get their water upstream from the camp. Mazelton shook his head, and did his best to help refill their barrels with one hand. Duane wasn’t having it, and sent him away with a glare and a firmly pointing finger.

The river was pretty. The shocking, deep green of the grass rolling steeply down the bank into the cold water running swift but shallow over the sandy bottom. The river looked green from a distance, reflecting all the grass around it, and was bright blue up close when it reflected the sky. Mazelton looked up from the river and into that endless blue heaven and lost himself for a while.

There was just so much sky. He tried to describe it- “vast immensity,” “expanse,” “towering heavens,” that were “prairie flower blue” with “white cotton clouds.” They all felt phony. It was too big for cliche, too all encompassing. There was so much sky. It filled the whole world, from one edge of the horizon to the other and all the way around. Mazelton was an impossibly tiny speck of dust trapped on a dusty plate, covered by the inverted bowl of the sky. It wasn’t any kind of blue but itself. It was the blue other blues needed to compare themselves to. The clouds piled up on top of themselves, demonstrating just how big the sky was, but at the same time, so big and so far away that perspective muddled their size. They were floating mountains that could fit in the palm of his hand.

He stared up for five minutes, until he couldn’t take it any more. Mazelton closed his eyes, and looked back to the wagons. Hundreds of them, hundreds of people scurrying around them, hundreds of aurochs mooing and stomping and sucking down river water. Things on a human scale. He took a few deep breaths, and made his way back to the wagon.

Evening’s camp was set by a bend in the same river they had been next to all day. A slightly longer haul than average, but Policlitus still looked impatient. Too many delays. Too many slow days. Plus the ford had been washed out. The river was an old one- it’s banks near three smoots high, or put another way, around 2.75ish Mazelton’s tall. The trail had led to a ford, a spot on the trail where there was a natural slope down to the water and the water ran fairly shallow. Well, there had been some sort of landslide since the caravan had last come through, and the slope was now just a steep mess of rubble. Making life even more “fun,” the teamster sent to check the depth of the river said that the water came almost chest high.

Policlitus’ curses weren’t merely sulfurous, they were more like lithium- exploding AND burning upon contact with water. He quickly set people out scouting for a better crossing point but there was no real success. The only shallow point had banks near twenty feet high, and a damn near vertical drop. Nothing for it but to clear out as much of the slope as they could, lower the wagons on ropes, then float them across the river. Mercifully, the river was only two wagon lengths wide. Unmercifully… Well, not all the wagons were well caulked, or caulked at all.

It was a short dinner followed by a busy evening. Some of the wagons had buckets of tar hanging off their sides, parents checking for any thin spots in the caulk or spots where it had worn away. The kids got the dirty job of spreading the tar with a flat stick, of course. Duane checked their wagon with a surgeon’s eye, and found only two spots that needed fixing. The same floating orb that kept their wagon from jolting too much also helped keep the wagon out of the water. But Duane wasn’t about to let an accident happen to HIS wagon. So it was caulked.

The weather was heating up. Mazelton privately swore to make some kind of fan to keep Duane cool. The man was just too precious to let suffer.

It was nice for Mazelton to be able to amuse himself. For most families, there wasn’t anything at all to smile about. The steep slope meant that everything in the wagon needed to be lashed down, otherwise it would go flying around and probably wind up in the river. That was the best outcome- they could kill someone or an auroch. Even the best case scenario could be a death sentence a month from now, as food or medicine ran out.

That was just the cargo- what if a wheel broke? Or an axle? The thrice damned tongue of the wagon? How exactly were the aurochs going to cross? They could swim… kind of. But not while they were pulling a wagon. The wagons would need to be pulled across the river with pulleys, and some of the aurochs would probably need to be ferried over on a wagon. Mazelton could completely understand why Policlitus was so pissed. It would probably take the whole day to go less than half a kilometer.

It was cruelly ironic- the recently filled water barrels would have to be emptied again, making the wagons as light as possible for the crossing. They would be filled again afterward, of course, but… how much fun could it be to fill a two hundred liter water barrel one bucket at a time? Especially if you have spent the day lowering your wagon down fifteen feet, hauling it across a river that was moving at a more than decent clip, then up another steep slope for, yes, another fifteen feet. And that was assuming you had the simple job of hauling on the ropes. Getting the aurochs across the river was neither simple, nor safe.

No, most of the families in the wagon train didn’t have anything to smile about at all.

Morning came, and a gimpy Mazelton was firmly told that his one and only job was to sit on the wagon and don’t get in the way. Do not, under any circumstances, try to help. Don’t even offer to hold something. Just sit down, stay quiet, and let the professionals work.

He could do that.

To pass the time, Mazelton started sketching the crossing. Policlitus being a firm “lead from the front” type thinker, moved his wagon to the head of the line. Mazelton sketched the Blue Auroch flag fluttering bravely over the covered wagon. Policlitus stood to one side with the Aurochs. The Aurochs weren’t yoked together, but they stood so close they might as well have been. Policlitus marched them over to the slope and then drove them down it. They didn’t much want to go, but he chivvied them along and, by strong dint of habit, they obeyed him. It was a bit chancy, and when one of six aurochs started sliding, everyone had a problem. Still, Policlitus got them to the river and moving across. He had ordered ropes stretched across the river, and he held on to one as he guided the aurochs to the other shore. The aurochs kicked up a big fuss, their heads barely above water as they thrashed their way across.”

Then it was up the slope, stomping angrily, violently shivering the water off their coats. He quickly brushed them, calmed them, let them dry a bit and yoked them. Because now it was the wagon’s turn. One team of aurochs were lashed to the back of the wagon, slowly lowering it down to the river. One of the teamsters grabbed a rope and ran it over to the other shore, then up to Policlitus. The wagon would be pulled across and up by the aurochs on the far side of the river. Dangerous, but safer than some alternatives. And only feasible because Policlitus had a lot of aurochs and teamsters at his disposal. A two auroch wagon with mostly kids? Oh… you might try something similar. No guarantee as to the results though.

Mazelton (and he was not alone in this) had his attention focused on the ropes. The ropes that Nimu used were thick, heavy sisal and hemp. They knew they would be hauling the wagons up mountain slopes, so they planned accordingly. There were even (say it softly) metal chains here and there, though even Nimu couldn’t afford the hideous expense of chains for all their wagons. The emigrants didn't even have a sniff of iron, of course- it was all hemp and grass rope for them. The bigger issue was that it was more of a mixed bag in terms of quality and diameter of rope. If a chain was only as strong as its weakest link, then a rope is only as strong as its shittiest splice. And some of that rope was home made.

Nimu got their wagons across without too many accidents and minimal losses. Nobody, human or auroch died, and that was an achievement. The Dusties came next and there were accidents there. Broken arms and legs, lost cargo, lost aurochs. Lost wagons. No deaths so far, but… it was early yet. Humble Bissett's monstrously heavy wagon rumbled to the lip of the banks, tilted over… and its rope snapped like rotten string. The wagon shot down the slope and slammed into the river, the spray reaching the top of the banks.