It was Mazelton’s old nemesis, mathematics. The Two Souled covered a very large range, their Sobak and cheve giving them a mobility that most couldn’t even conceive of. The trade off was that they had to migrate across a huge range, as the ability of a given meter of prairie to support cheve, Sobak and humans was… limited. It wasn’t a question of soil richness, or even whether there was food, it was a question of density. The large game animals that the tribe hunted and which made up the majority of their food, ate the same things as their cheve. That is, grass. So too much cheve would lead to not enough grass for bison or gazelle or deer.

This would be a localized problem at worst, of course, as the animals would just push on to better grazing. There was an awful lot of grassland. Still, for the sake of the prey and the hunters, it was better to rotate widely. Fish from the vast lakes, visited by few humans but many delectable birds. Pick wild vegetables and herbs along the rivers and marshes. Nuts and berries, in their seasons, were real treasures. And honey. Oh heavens! Pressed into cakes, honey was a hard currency amongst the tribes.

The machines disrupted that rhythm. Anywhere there used to be a significant human settlement, there was the risk of machines doing… something. And they would kill anyone that came close. And humans had settled nearly everywhere, but by no coincidence whatsoever, the same land that people today found appealing, was appealing to their ancient ancestors. So you might think that you were migrating to a nice, safe stretch of river with good grazing and foraging, and what you got instead was finger tip sized slugs of metal flying at you faster than you could comprehend.

And then the math started kicking in. Just how many calories, and what kind of calories, did your band need to survive? How much did you have preserved? Would it be enough to stretch through winter. But the machines weren’t ranging too far west, at the moment. So the tribes favored shifting west. Of course, there were other tribes out there, but the Two Souled were really not afraid of a fight.

Really. They downright welcomed it. They could attack and retreat at will. Their pursuit was legendary and endless. They had superb coordination, hunted constantly, and practiced archery and shooting from horseback as a form of sport. Anything short of a walled city was easy meat.

Mazelton started to really understand, and sympathize, with the Laginalopo- he would want to be on the other side of the Ramparts from the Two souled too. Nice, defensible, inhospitable to cheve, mountains and their nice, defensible passes.

The wagons rolled on, and the Two Souled trotted alongside. Dinner came and went, a sprinkle of now dwindling sumac livening bland lentils. The biscuits were good. They were lighter. Not as light and fluffy as the bread you got in cities, but still good. They might be even better with some herbs mixed in. Maybe Danae would try that for him. He wasn’t going to experiment himself. The hard lesson from the Bread Incident was etched in his bones.

Mazelton drifted uneasily through his sleep. Clawing, skittering machines spiriting him away, popping out of trees or clawing their way out of the earth. The stony faced stares of the Elders, convinced he was mocking them. Hiding the secrets of his magic, leaving them at the mercy of an enemy they could not possibly defeat. They were too impassive to reveal their hate, but they must hate him. How could they not?

Eventually he clawed his way to the garden, the eternal apple blossoms waiving gently and sprinkling their fragrance. The machines flowed past the front gate in a clicking, chittering stream. They would get around to this little garden eventually. Just… not yet.

Danae stood in front of her house, an axe resting on her shoulder and a mulish look on her face.

“You can’t fight them, love. You can’t even reach them with that.”

“Can. They’re right there. And what should I do? Wait for them to start attacking? Run away?”

Mazelton shook his head desperately.

“They aren’t people. These aren’t even the hands or fingers of the being using them. They are a resource, generating more resources. This isn’t something you can fight!”

“So? I should run?”

“Nothing wrong with running. Sometimes you have to run.”

The axe swung down and lodged in the dirt.

“And when you can’t run, Mazelton? When does protecting what’s behind you matter more than… you?”

Mazelton searched for words.

“Will you stand in front of me, Mazelton? Or will you run when they come for me?”

Mazelton woke up crying and knew exactly why.

Ianto was his usual cheerful self, the bastard. He rocketed up to the chuck wagon like an illustration from a riding manual on Correct Posture and was sitting on a camp chair with a fresh mug of tea before anyone really understood what was going on.

Apparently, his particular band had to go. It had been nice meeting everyone, good trades done and all that, but, time for pastures greener. Literally. But another couple of bands would be meeting the caravan a few days from now, and they might want to have a big, big stock of polished cores ready. Just an idea. And the dehydrated veggies, those were also great.

Policlitus gave Mazelton a look. He would have a busy few days.

Polishing was a meditative experience by necessity. You had to carefully regulate your breathing so that the flow of energy would be smooth. Likewise, you had to be aware of your thoughts, so that you could remain focused on the polishing. It wasn’t so much about blocking intrusive thoughts, that was next to impossible. It was about acknowledging their presence without pursuing them. Like watching birds fly past a window. “Oh, a sparrow.” Or, “A catbird. Huh” You would not rush to the window, eager to see more of the catbird, wondering where it came from, where it was going, and what it was doing right this minute.

So Mazelton watched “There sure are a lot of armed slave machines popping up.” sail past without comment. And “I wonder if they try and abduct me, make me work and fight for them.” And even, “I don’t know if I am capable of fighting for someone else’s life,” also went past. He just carved.

Insect barrier cores were painfully simple. They were just pumping out heat of a sort that was more or less safe for humans (assuming you didn’t do something silly like eat it or hold it directly against your skin) but was lethal to insects. Simple, but a bugger to carve too, as you always used titchy, crappy cores for the work. No point in using anything better, but the tolerances were so fine that it felt punitive. Mazelton had ruined more insect barrier cores than he cared to think about simply because he forgot to time his own heartbeats, and they threw off his lines.

The purifier cores were actually quite similar, you just used bigger cores and broader spectrums of heat. Best to keep them safely stowed in a box when not in use. Lined with lead, if possible. Light cores were quite a bit more complicated, but again, it was a relative degree of “complicated.” He remembered… which Auntie was it… anyway she told him that you could take a big core, and with a bit of very careful tuning, and with the right supporting devices, actually see through a person. All the flesh just faded away and only the bones and tumors were left. This could also, with care, be turned into a horrifying short range weapon, but that was really Father’s department. Not that he ran the Armaments Hall. He wasn’t even a shift supervisor.

He put down his tools. If his thoughts had flown all the way to Old Radler, he was in no fit state to polish. Time to take a little walk and get some fresh air.

The moon was that difficult to define phase of “Bigger than half full but less than full,” which meant that you could barely make out the shine of one of the massive mega-ruins a bit to one side of the center of the moon. He kept an eye on it, ruminating, and trying to ignore the Sobek that were eying him in much the same way.

Those ruins were once something huge. A city, one that was beyond his capability to comprehend in both size and sophistication. Its name was long since lost, of course. He had some vague recollection of someone last epoch making a big push to return to the moon, but if anything came of it, the news never reached Mazelton, nor the authors of the histories he read. Madam Lettie might know, but she was still avoiding him.

He genuinely couldn’t understand why. She didn’t have to do anything except sit there and tell him when he was overdoing it.

His feet brought him over towards Humble Bissette’s wagon. Her sons were not any less hostile than before, but Loranne was always good company. He didn’t want to see Bissette. Mazelton wasn’t afraid to admit that anamnesis creeped him out. Sure, they said that it was only memories, but personality is just habits and memories acting out, right? So what impact would a thousand years of memories, all jumbled from different people, have on a person?

You could look at an anamnesis, but you could never know who was looking back. Or what.

He got lucky. Bissette had apparently turned in, and Loranne was still warming her feet by the fire, idly bickering with her brothers.

“I couldn’t focus, so I thought I’d take a walk. Care to join me?”

She hove to her feet, teetering a bit.

“How you can want to walk after a day of walking, I don’t know. But sure, I’m not growing any new brain cells talking to this bunch.”

“Don’t come crying to me when he steals your blood, Lor.”

“How would that even work?” She shook her head. “Head over to the stream?”

“I don’t have a better idea.”

The stream was a fickle little thing. Clearly seasonal, with big spring floods drying out to a trickle, or a full stop, before the autumn rains. It still had a good bit of water running through it at the moment, but it was barely deeper than his wrist and less than a meter across. The banks weren’t a smooth “v” shape, it was more of a bow, like someone had run a curved scarification knife over the skin of the plains.

Mazelton mentioned that to Loranne, and she gave him one of her “You weirdo” looks.

“You see a pretty stream in the moonlight and you think of someone carving skin away with a curved blade? Danae is going to struggle to get romance out of you, I think.”

“Eh? What’s wrong with scarification? I know people who got it done at a concert, specifically to improve the experience and make it more meaningful.”

“Wait, what? How is that even… what?”

“Well, as you can imagine, it really hurts.”

“No Shit!”

“But once something starts hurting like that, and you know you aren't in any real physical danger, you can sort of- not ignore it exactly, but change how you understand it from “aarrgh!” to “Oooh.” It still hurts, but in a kind of cathartic way, make yourself feel alive kind of way. And they really liked the same band, so they booked a box at the theater and had the work done in time to the concert. Apparently it was great.”

“Did you get any scarification?”

Mazelton pulled off his shirt and showed Loranne his upper arm.

“Not sure if you can really see it in this light. It’s the heat coronae around the black sun- a bit of Ma clan lore. Got a clan sister to carve it for me.” He smiled at the moon in reminicance. “That was a great night.”

“I always feel like I am taking advantage of you when we go on walks like this. Your life sounds like some dark fairytale, but all my stories are boring. Just farming. Small town life. Somebody’s auroch is sick, let's all talk about it for a week or two, and then mention it again every time someone else’s auroch gets sick.”

Mazelton half grinned at her.

“It’s all just life. The best party in the world is painfully dull if you’re working it.”

Loranne plopped down on the bank, her aching feet not willing to take even one more step. She hauled off her heavy boots, frowning.

“The soles are about worn through, and the heel is worn down almost to nothing. Think I can trade for shoes with the Two Souled?”

“I am sure you can. I’ve seen them offering. Which is why I really suggest you don’t.”

“Why? No good?”

“I have no idea. I see shoes made out of flayed skin, I lose interest in the shoes.” Mazelton said, vehemently. Then, more softly, “It’s a shame, really, because some of them have some great beadwork and embroidery.”

“I have to ask, you really, really have a thing about eating meat. Which, OK, I get that raising livestock for food is horrible, but… if the animal is dead anyway, or was hunted, is it really such a big deal?”

“Yes.”

An awkward pause stretched out. Mazelton sighed.

“It’s another one of those Ma clan legends. One that the whole clan really, really emphasizes. It kind of messes you up, emotionally, but to a good end.”

Loranne made an interested noise.

“The Sin of Cass, Toa and Xioliani.” He paused. The sky didn’t crack with thunder. It never had, but he always felt that it should, when he said that.

“They were three Ma, some unknown number of epochs ago. At least one back, maybe more like two. It is doctrine that the three of them actually existed, but their sin was so vile, they were stricken from the clan records. Their very names became a curse, their souls consigned to the earth demons, their flesh refused by the world.”

Loranne looked wide eyed.

“Did you know that, of the great clans, the Ma tend to repopulate after an apocalypse faster than the other great clans? Faster than almost anyone, really. Simple reason for it- we can tolerate much higher amounts of heat, and the main line are all polishers. Put another way, we can live on and thrive in lands that kill other people.”

Loranne nodded.

“This story takes place at the end of an ice age. This cluster of Ma, which thought they might be the last Ma in the whole world, were starving. They were in a little pocket of heat, enough that they could irrigate some with melt water and just about manage a bit of farming. And they had livestock, which helped, but the livestock needed a lot more fodder than they produced food, if you follow me. And the harvests couldn’t support them. So they killed the aurochs, and ate them. Then the chickens, and the goats, and the cheve. All through this were their companions. The Oldest Ally. We don’t know who they were.”

Mazelton stared into the stream.

“We don’t deserve to remember them. We have exterminated them from our collective memory. We don’t deserve even the memory of their kindness. Their eternal loyalty.”

Loranne jolted.

“What we know is that they were some kind of animal. One domesticated and bred by the Ma, and maybe others, for so long that we simply cannot find a period where they didn’t exist alongside people. And we know they were kind. Loyal to a fault. Greedy for food, warm to sleep next to. Better than us. Basically sentient, but not able to speak, really. Still. Our first and oldest ally in the world.”

Mazelton hunched in on himself.

“We ate them. We lured them, counting on their trust. And we killed them and ate them. We decided that our survival was more important than our oldest allies. The one group of people who would never, ever, betray us. We killed them and ate them. It worked. Cass, Toa and Xioliani survived, long enough to reproduce. Long enough for the clan to grow. But we don’t eat meat. And we don’t care for people who do.”

A different sort of silence stretched out.

“It’s sort of funny. You always go on about how the clan emphasizes survival above all, and now you won’t eat meat because of, well, sentimentality. Like, if you were starving, you would just die rather than eat a bit of auroch?”

Mazelton couldn’t bring himself to speak for a moment.

“In times of prosperity, eat fruit and vegetables. When there is just enough, eat grains. In bad times, eat carrion.”

“Mmm?”

“The Ma Clan still eats meat. We just feel like shit about it.” He finally raised his face, looking up at the moon, and the ancient, dead city. “I think it’s where the cannibalism story comes from. I’ve never eaten human flesh, but after thinking about it a lot, I think I would really rather eat human flesh than chicken. I think my Clan siblings would agree. I would feel… cleaner.”

The silence stretched out again.

“Maybe farm life has its charms after all.” Loranne said.