The drum sounded out the call to assemble, and the caravan condensed around Polyclitus and a haggard, miserable looking Toko. Mazelton thought of those times when he knew he was about to get jumped, but nobody wanted to make the first move. He could see it in the eyes of most people in the caravan- the anticipation of getting hit, and a willingness to take it if they could hit back.

Polyclitus struck first.

“Who wants to go back to Muddy Waters? End their journey here? It’s not the worst place. Winters are brutal, but the land is good and the heat is moderate. People are people everywhere, but this lot are decent.”

The crowd muttered, confused.

“Understand that I am not talking about voting on ending the caravan. This caravan IS going to Vast Green Isle. But we all knew that not everyone was traveling the whole way. Now, none of you picked Muddy Waters as your destination, but you could stop here if you liked. I expect you can measure the good and bad of that yourself.”

Polyclitus looked across the crowd, his face serious but not cold.

“For some of you, I would recommend this choice. We have four wagons with no aurochs. Assuming nobody cut a deal on this and failed to tell Toko? Then the wagons would need to be abandoned, along with any goods we can’t cram into other wagons. And that’s a hell of a lot to just give up. Now, banding together and pulling the wagons yourselves isn’t really a good choice, or something you could do for more than a few days… but we are only a few days out of Muddy Waters, on pretty flat roads, and plenty of farm houses only a day or two back.”

This drew some bitter nods.

“Alright, take a moment, think it through, and then let's set to balancing the book as best we can. Tempers are running hot, I understand that very well, but anyone who starts violence will be removed from the meeting.”

Polyclitus sighed, and set to the miserable work.

In the end, ten wagons chose to stay. Mostly they were independents, though two belonged to Dusties. No aurochs, short rations? That was a slow death in miserable conditions. Might as well try your luck in something like civilization. The biggest delays were the people who claimed that their goods were stolen or lost, and somebody had to pay for them. A few even had receipts that they had, at one point, owned the things in question.

The woman Luanne had hit did make a fuss, first claiming that she was viciously ambushed by Luanne, then claiming Luanne’s brothers tried to get her alone, presumably to kill her, and ultimately breaking down in tears that the ten drams of valuable spices and six waters of salt that were to be her seed money had been stolen. By the Nefarious Pooles, who had cut Luanne and her family. She had proof! The receipt was in her hand! Ink only slightly smudged where her fingers were gripping it. Polyclitus nodded.

“All in favor of opening an investigation and appointing an investigating magistrate?”

A few shit stirrers put up their hands.

“Motion fails to reach a quorum. Shut it, and never try to pull a scam like that again. Or I swear I will banish you from this caravan. Test me on this.” Polyclitus gave her a hard look, and ignoring her squawks of outrage, got back to sorting out the caravan. And that, as far as the Nimu Caravan Company was concerned, was the end of that.

Mazelton just sat back and watched it all. It was the old city instincts kicking in. If you don’t look interested or involved, people didn’t notice you. With a bit of practice, you would fade out of memory entirely.

It still wound up taking the rest of the day to sort everything out, so the caravan didn’t bother to break camp. Mazelton had skipped his lunchtime rounds, but made up for it that evening.

When he reached the wagon of The Shit Eating Insect, she summoned him inside. She had already had her food and water purified that week, but she demanded that he do it a second time to make up for her abuse at the hands of the Nimu Caravan Company.

“I will be taking up my position soon. We aren’t all that far from Green Meadow, no we are not! My patron is a very powerful person. You would do well to keep that in mind.”

“Oh? Might I ask their honorable name?” Mazelton’s hands never stopped moving, though he moved a little slower than usual. The purification cores were shining steadily in his sight, though he imagined it just looked like a scuffed up silvery pebble to the Insect.

“You wouldn’t know them. Their identity is known to the Righteous, of course, those truly ready to shed the Red Dust of the world. It gives them immense wisdom. And power. Their adherents are spread far and wide, Polisher, we know our own. One word from me, and you would rise to heights no polisher could dream of.”

Food was short on beans or oil, but long on rice. A good few drams of flower tea. Quite a lot of mushrooms, most of them of the sort that gave visions. Hmm. Short on pickles too. A lean load. Some dry white flakes- fish jerky of some kind? Probably.

“Thank you very much for your kind intentions. My ambitions are quite small, and I prefer to stay out of complicated matters.” He stood and dusted himself off. “I wish you the best of luck in your new position. It is a joyful thing, traveling to something rather than away from it.” Mazelton smiled politely and directly left the wagon. She had nothing else to say that interested him.

Mazelton did his job well. All the Insect’s food was thoroughly sterilized, as was her water. So well sterilized that it was good bit hotter than usual. It wouldn’t kill them quickly. They likely would make it all the way to Green Meadow. But the Insect and her wife would die. Tumors most likely, but too much heat in the body made fighting off sickness harder. Every meal, every drink of water, every sip of tea, their bodies would weaken and sicken. Given their thin rations and the rigors of the trail, even the most expert doctor would conclude it was natural causes, and their deaths the will of the world.

That night, he made a small but very sincere offering to the Ælfflæd and went to bed early. He dreamed of Danae. She shook her head at him.

“Didn’t help anyone.”

“I cleaned up the world a bit.”

“Did you? Could have just challenged them. Not like either of them could have taken you in a duel.”

“They wouldn’t have accepted.”

“Could have waited until dark and slit their throats too. You wanted satisfaction and no consequences. Power. Control.”

Mazelton just went quiet.

“You killed that machine. Luck had some part in it, but so did skill and being ready.”

“It nearly killed me, Love. I could hear the slugs tearing through the air around me. And the screaming. The screaming tore through me. I thought I was going to die.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“Didn’t though. Got up and fought, not hid and cried.”

“I just wanted the screaming to stop. I wanted to live and come home to you and be safe.”

Danae frowned.

“Dangerous everywhere. Don’t be too broken-hearted if you don’t find perfect safety here.”

“I just want the screaming to stop. Can’t we have that?”

Danae smiled one of her little smiles. Mazelton smiled back and closed his eyes.

“Sing for me?”

“Sure.”

Polyclitus got the wagons rolling the next morning and acted like nothing much had changed. He did pass the word that casually shooting trees would land the shooter in an immense amount of hot water, which met with universal approval. But beyond that, the only sign of change was a long consultation with Mazelton.

Mazelton made no rounds during lunch. When dinner rolled through, Mazelton quickly ate and returned to his tent. All as usual The next morning, ah, that was a bit of a different story. A few young and fit caravaneers looking to earn some extra rads… or rations… received special medallions. Each medallion was the size of a palm, with a square hole in the middle. In the hole was a slip of treated paper.

“Now watch carefully.” Mazelton said. “I have put a core in the little box on the wagon seat over there.” He waved at the seat some five paces distant. “Notice the paper is still white. That means no more rads than normal.” It looked like they were following him so far.

“Now I will get a bit closer to the box. About three paces away, blue splotches started to form on the paper. Mazelton quickly scooted away.

“When you see blue splotches, it means that the area is a good bit hotter than normal. Not necessarily dangerous, just a bit hotter than normal. You don’t want to hang around too long, and do let the Polyclitus or me know, but no reason to panic.” This was met with serious nods.

He slid out the used sheet and put in a new one. “Now, this is what happens when you get right up close, or there is a lot of heat coming from farther away.” Mazelton walked next to the box. The paper turned completely blue in seconds.

“Alright, see this? Totally blue, took no time at all. Totally blue, you come back to the wagons fast and tell Polyclitus AND me. DO NOT hang around. Clear?”

Murmurs of “Clear.”

“Alright, now, just in case it comes up, you may see the paper go from blue to black. Run back as fast as you can, and yell your report to Polyclitus. Don’t come back to the wagons until I have a chance to sort you out as best I can. For that same reason, you are all being loaned a heat sponge. Return the medallion and the sponge at the end of your shift. Any questions?

“Um. What if we do find one of those things?”

“It didn’t attack anyone until people started shooting it. Even then, it focused on the people with slug throwers. You see something like that, quickly but calmly come back and make your report quietly to Polyclitus. We don’t want panic. We do want to know if bad things are headed our way.”

“Got it.”

Mazelton tried to not be bothered by the fact that everyone collected their equipment at arm’s length, and checked the color of the paper when they did.

That was the sole bit of excitement in the day. Flat? Oh, they hadn’t yet come across the true meaning of the word. This, now, THIS was flat. And empty. Well, grass, scrub, the occasional tree, but over all, immensely, crushingly, empty. The wagons traveled in a perfectly straight line from morning to evening, making camp by the side of a river. The heat detectors came back without a speck of blue. The rice and lentils tasted extra bland that night, even with a healthy dollop of hot sauce.

He dreamed of Danae again. He took her by the hand into his little one room cottage, wrapped his arms around her and kissed her on the neck. He ran his hands over the rough homespun of her clothes, over her strong figures, traced the lines of her skull and with immense affection, nipped her ear. She leaned her back into his chest, looked up and hooked his head in for her own kiss. They were naked and in bed a bare second later.

Mazelton awoke to a mess, and no easy way to wash it. He sighed, wiped down as best he could, and made a pile of laundry. Perhaps he could wash them tonight… somehow. He didn’t even have a bucket.

It was going to be a lousy day. The river was five paces across and higher than the axle on most of the converted farm wagons the emigrants were driving. No, today was not going to be a good day at all.

It started with the ford. Tree limbs had stuck on the little raised patch of river bed and had now wedged in place. Mostly the branches were under water, so you had no way to spot them until your auroch started lowing angrily. Or until they snagged a wheel and jerked the wagon to the side as it suddenly lost the ability to move.

Trying to un-stick the wheel was a neat little exercise in applied misery. Imagine it- the water is moving, so you have to try and keep your balance as you stand in cold water up to your belly button. The branch is about the size of your wrist, and holding onto the wagon wheel and stomping does nothing. You can’t move your leg through the water fast enough to build up any kind of momentum. Use a hatchet or ax? Use your damn head. No, for the really miserable, stuck branches, carpenters saws were produced and used, slowly, painfully, frustratingly, to saw the branches off. Depending on the size of your saw and the length of your arms, you might have to hold your breath and duck underwater to do the actual sawing. Breathe, dunk, saw back and forth two or three times, using one hand to keep the saw in contact with the wood and the other to push and pull. Then back up again to breathe, then down again to reset (because of course the saw isn’t going to stay in place without you, and do it all over again.

Three wagons got stuck this way over the course of an hour, until some bright spark produced an ironwood pry bar tipped with actual steel. They snapped the branches loose with a little care and a minimum of effort, looking entirely too smug through the whole process.

Mazelton swore he could feel the despise of the caravan shift from himself to Captain Prybar, if only for a minute or two.

Lunch was a miserable affair. Nobody had died at this river crossing, but there were a lot of soaked, miserable people around their heat stones. Most of the emigrants only had three pairs of clothes with them, and limited soap. Hanging the clothes to dry on the side of the wagon was a bad idea, as the dust would clump and dirty the clothes. Hanging clothes to dry inside the wagon was a better idea, but letting water drip down onto your hard tack or beans was, likewise, a bad idea. Toasting your clothes over the heat stone? Great idea! Who’s got a stone that big? No one, that’s who.

Mazelton was right there with them. He was cold, chafing, and more than a little irritated that his most comfortable pair of underwear was currently a stiff, smelly, nigh glued together mess. He stuck a kettle on the stone and went off to borrow a bucket. This would not stand one moment longer.

Operation Clean Underwear and Socks was a success, but Operation Dry Clothes was still struggling to meet its objectives. He didn’t have a better drying solution than anyone else. He opted for the “Hot Stone” route- wringing out everything as best he could, then stringing them over the heat stone as they drip dried. It quickly proved pointless. Not enough surface area, meaning too little area got warmed up. He put a big pot over the stone, dry, as a way to spread out the heat. It sort of helped? Perhaps if there was more time it would be effective, but by the same logic, the clothes would simply have dried out on their own. He tried to think how they did it in the Clan, and was startled to realize that he had no idea. He vaguely remembered laundry yards existing, and given their size they probably hung up the laundry to dry… but if anywhere could have used heat to dry clothes, it was the Ma Clan House.

It was a depressing thought. For polishers in the Ma Clan, “Laundry” consisted of “Put your clan robes in the clan laundry basket and leave it outside the door on your designated laundry day. Non-clan clothes are to be laundered outside the clan and at your own expense.” In their apartment, the second day of the week was Laundry Day. He didn’t know what day of the week it was now. Did he use too much soap to clean the clothes? He tried to imitate what he had seen other people doing.

The drum sounded- time to pack up and get back on the road. Mazelton sighed. Then grinned. He hung the pot on a string hanging from the roof of the wagon. The pot was about half a foot above the heat stone. The wet laundry went into the pot. He figured that with how the wagon bounced around, the pot couldn’t get too hot, and the laundry would jostle around too. Help it dry more evenly. Also he would be close enough to smell it if things started to scorch, hopefully.

It didn’t work perfectly, but the clothes were only a bit damp by the time they stopped for the night, which was nice. He would hang them up in the tent to finish drying. Whatshername back in Fish Weir was right- wet is the enemy. Dry is good. It was not a good day, but at least tomorrow could start with clean, dry socks.