“They took Lori!” A man screamed. More voices rose from the caravan, people stolen away by the retreating raiders. The veterans had stopped moving for a minute, but swung into motion again, spreading out and chasing after them. Mazelton grabbed a passing emigrant and shoved the pouch of light cores into his hand.

“Light cores! Take them to the soldiers!”

“Take them your damn self, I’ve got to-”

Mazelton slapped her hard.

“They will shoot me! Take. The. Damn. Cores. Save some lives! Go!”

He kicked her ass in the direction of the soldiers and got her running in their direction. He staggered backwards. The kick pushed him as much as it did her, and he really was too skinny these days. He wanted to let gravity finish the job and just collapse on the ground, but he had more urgent work to do.

“C’mon Duane. Let’s get you patched up. Got some wound purifiers and some needle and thread back at the tent.”

Mazelton paused and swore.

“And I have a body to haul out of my tent, which has probably voided its bowels by now. And I have to stitch up a hole in my tent, maybe patch it. Damn them! And my poor camp stool is all banged to hell, and I don’t know the state of my cot either.”

Mazelton looked out over the burning camp, the screams of the wounded and the wails of those who had lost loved ones. He knew, in a rational sort of way, that their suffering was greater than his. On an emotional level, he was much more concerned about his tent.

Policlitus found Mazelton stitching up Duane under a bright core light, the two of them sitting on Mazelton’s thankfully intact cot. The camp stool had died in its greatest moment, alas. It would be remembered as a hero.

“You got any more wound purifiers in stock?”

“Black chest with the Trifolium stenciled on it. Green box, then it’s in the box marked “Wounds.”” And has a pattern of bumps and dips carved into the surface so he could tell what box held what even if he was crippled and blinded, but Policlitus didn’t need to know that.

“Got it. Neat hand with the stitching there.”

“Practice.”

“I need you to stitch up some more people. Nimu people, mostly. More if they come to you.”

“Not a doctor. Best I can do is run the purifier and stitch up. If that’s enough, I can do that.”

“It’s enough. It’ll have to be.”

“Get someone to drag that body out?”

“Alright. But you are going to have to get the core yourself, later.”

Mazelton just nodded and finished up on Duane.

It was a very long night for Mazelton. Dawn came with the returning veterans and the volunteer settlers who had acted as scouts and flankers. The Voyageurs (Mazelton privately concluded they were Famil Ninivut, but didn’t see any point in asking) had retreated almost due west from the campsite. The shallow stream running along an ancient irrigation canal had terminated at a good sized river. The Voyageurs had staged a fighting retreat- leaving small clumps of raiders to launch surprise attacks out of the tall grass, then retreating immediately. Attack, fall back. Next buch up. And so on. It let most of the raiders break contact and massively slowed the soldiers.

Mendiluze had seen that trick before. He had the non-Collective volunteers run more or less straight ahead in a very wide line. Don’t fight, don’t stop until you reach the captives. It worked, more or less. Losses were taken. But one by one, captives were recovered. Many were recovered alive. Many dead. Sometimes the Voyageurs would kill the captives as a last act before being cut down. It never seemed to occur to them to use them as hostages. It never occurred to the emigrants to offer surrender either.

By the time the veterans reached the river, there were only abandoned canoes left. All the other raiders had fled. Not every captive had been recovered. There was talk of boarding the canoes and chasing after them, until one emigrant checked and found all the canoes had holes punched through their bottoms. It was the cruel caution of a predator.

Mazelton didn’t pay attention to the casualty count. It was an ugly truth, but the number of people whose survival actually mattered to him, in this caravan at least, could be counted on two hands. Possibly just one, depending on his mood. He used the trick he was taught back when he first started in the polishing halls. How many cores do you have to polish? One. The one in front of you. The ones you have done already don’t exist, the ones you have yet to polish don’t exist. Just find your cadence, figure out how to pace yourself, and focus on what’s in front of you.

Stitch, stitch, stitch. Clean, and stitch. He didn’t get much thanks, but then, he didn’t expect any. Everyone was too tired and in too much shock to mind the niceties. Policlitus ordered that breakfast be cooked and the exhausted caravaneers fell to it. Mazelton had never seen more people who “weren't hungry” eat so much food. Of course he was mostly focused on chowing down his own food.

“I know this is the last thing any of you want to hear, but I want to pack up and be ready to head out by noon.” He raised his hands to cut off the blizzard of expletives. “I know, and you ain’t wrong. But here’s the thing. Right now we are four hard days’ travel from Cold Garden. That’s if we were leaving right this minute. Realistically, right now, we are between five and six days. We are scheduled to spend two days in Cold Garden, and I can’t budge that- just too much to do there before the big push through the mountains. Not to mention we need to refit and resupply.” That met with irritated nods of agreement.

Policlitus drew in a deep breath, and pushed on. “We have been extremely lucky, this trip. I know it sure don’t seem like it, but think about it for a minute- no rivers so flooded we couldn’t cross them. No rockslides. Biggest of all, for our Nimu Caravan, almost no disease. Rest of the wagons, well, they ain’t so careful, and they had their losses, but we have only lost five. Five people, out of two hundred. That’s unreal. Do you want to know how many it was by this point last crossing? Out of two hundred, it was eighteen. And we lost another five crossing the mountains. I won’t even talk about the wagons we haven’t lost due to broken wheels, axels and the like. We have been lucky.”

The sounds of sobbing and moans from the injured could be heard across the camp. Policlitus’s face was still as a well. “Even with the raid, and looking at the whole caravan and not just Nimu, we are still solidly north of the one in ten losses I would have considered reasonable for this trip. Given how many emigrants we are pulling along with us, one in five wouldn’t shock me. Sadden me. Burden me for life. But not shock me.”

He looked around the quiet circle of teamsters, guards and merchants. He smiled sadly at them. “My duty is to bring as many as I can, alive and with their cargo, to Vast Green Isle. The point where most die is the mountains. Everyone is worn down by the journey. Supplies are low, money is gone, things break every day and accidents and diseases are more common than not. It’s where the most people go mad. So I got to get you all over the mountains as fast as I can, or all that will happen and we will be caught in the snow. And if you haven’t seen snow twenty feet deep, well, I envy you.”

He looked hard at the crowd. “So eat hearty, check over your wagons, and get ready to head out at noon, because we can’t spend another hour here.”

And off he stomped. The grumbling didn’t stop, but it got quieter. Mazelton looked at his damaged tent, and sighed. At the very least, he could patch it. The stool could be replaced. Nothing else was too badly damaged.

“Polisher.” It was Mendiluze.

“If you need wound purifiers, Policlitus has my entire stock. Except the one I am using right now, I suppose.” Mazelton was struggling to keep his eyes open, knowing that if he went to sleep without at least patching and packing his tent, he would dearly regret it a few hours from now.

“We have plenty, though they could use charging. Nor do we need you to stitch anyone up. There is something you should see.”

“Bring me the cores. I’ll charge while I look. Also if you have any full heat sponges, now would be an excellent time to trade them in.”

Mendiluze just grunted and led the way. The camp was an exploded mess. The Collective’s wagon forts were an excellent defense against assault, but because they were so close the fire spread easily. Mazelton could see people shoveling dirt onto the canvas wagon covers. He imagined no few of them had to be hastily cut off the ribs they were tacked onto. A waste. He had stopped seeing the corpses still lying where they fell. He would have nightmares about that later, he was sure. But for right now, he could push them into a little box marked “Not my problem,” and carry on.

“I smell burnt pine?”

“The oil was mixed with some kind of pine tar and something else. It didn’t drip off, and water couldn’t put it out.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah. Speaking of-”

Mendiluze pointed at the corpse of the lone female in the raid. He couldn’t make out much of her face. It seems that quite a few people had wanted to make sure that she really was dead, and would stay that way. Someone had even hacked the head off. From how rough the stump was, it looked like they used a shovel.

The rest of the body was a bit more interesting. Absolutely covered in harsh, geometric tattoos, with odd striations and lines running in a crude cage over her body. Said body was lean and muscular, though he supposed that she was curvy enough, if you cared about that sort of thing. Which he didn’t, at the moment. Her blood was flecked with light.

Mazelton waved over a passing Dusty.

“My compliments to Madam Lettie, and I ask that she join me in examining the Witches’ corpse.”

The Dusty looked perplexed.

“Go get Madam Lettie, who is in the green wagon with no aurochs, and tell her that Polisher Mazelton wants her to look at a dead body, only I said it politely. Now.”

The Dusty went.

“Madam Lettie?” Mendiluze asked.

“A very good background in biology. You may remember that she was the representative of the Independants when we examined the seed cache.”

Mendiluze just nodded. Mazelton was prepared to bet a hundred rad that he had completely forgotten.

The tattoos were very interesting. Every now and then someone had the bright idea that you could tattoo a body like the carvings on a core, allowing even a non-polisher to directly control heat. This was one of a number of strategies that the Ma, and other polisher clans, actively encouraged. It never really worked, but it always looked like it just needed a bit more research, and it WOULD work. A nice little money pit for their enemies. At first glance, it looked like the witch tried the same thing. Tattoos that complicated, they must have been developed over generations. Fascinating.

Mazelton took out his belt knife and started cutting away the clothes.

“Other than the glowing blood, is there something in particular that you want me to find out about?”

“What the hell is she, for a start. And the glowing blood, and the hallucinations. And anything else you find.”

“Ok. Has she been searched?”

“No. Nobody wants to touch someone so cursed.”

Mazelton sighed, looking up into the sky. It was going to be a scorcher. Just a couple of long, wispy clouds, way up high. He thought about saying something, but he just couldn’t be bothered. He cut away the clothes, and started checking them over. Nothing really stood out. Lots of bits of this and that. Pieces of bone, colored glass, beads, bits of copper. An obsidian knife knapped to an impressively sharp edge, and a long steel blade that fairly screamed her status in the clan. Beautiful thing, long as his hand, straight and double edged. A knife for fighting and killing, not for utility. The hilt was wrapped with silver wire. Where she found such a thing, he didn’t know. Perhaps they stole it, or bought it.

The corpse was a bit odd. Once he got her naked, he could see that the witch was another modified human being. The proportions of her limbs were subtly wrong- her arms were longer than they ought to have been, as were her thighs. He couldn’t imagine what particular advantage they would give her. The fingers were likewise long, and rather thick. The nails looked like they could tear open a person with minimum difficulty. Out of sheer mischief, he tried to poke a hole through her hide shirt with her finger. He almost fell over when the fingernail cut a hole without much resistance.

Safe to say, Mazelton wasn’t feeling sleepy anymore.

He knelt down on her hides, to protect his knees. This body warranted close examination. Mazelton carefully traced the tattoo with his fingers. The logic of the shapes was unfamiliar to him. He could see that they were not merely ink, but bits of ground metal as well. That would generally aid in guiding and reforming some types of heat, but it was of less use than one might initially think. Some of the required variations were much too large to fit on a human, or too small to be effectively tattooed. Skin moved. Stretched, shrunk, lost elasticity, got scarred, all sorts of things, any one of which would ruin the intended effect.

But this was clearly something her tribe had developed over generations. It would have cost a lot of resources. They wouldn't keep doing it for no reason. He puzzled over it, tracing the lines and trying to memorize the forms.

“Mazelton, you wanted- Mazelton, what the fuck are you doing?”

“Examining a corpse? Come and join me, this is fascinating.”

“Mazelton. Could I have a quick word with you, please?”

He looked up, confused. Lettie pulled him to one side and whispered ferociously.

“Do you have any idea how creepy you look right now?”

“What? No I don’t!”

“You are crouched over a naked headless female corpse, leering and running your hands over it. All skeletal, with everyone able to rate your skull very precisely thanks to the lack of subcutaneous fat on your face. And I’m not sure how many people have noticed that the hides you are kneeling on are human skin, but I guarantee some people suspect.”

“I was asked to investigate the body. And I was not leering.”

“You were one hundred percent leering. It was creepy. You are being creepy. Stop being creepy.”

Mazelton threw his hands in the air, suddenly very fed up.

“You know what? Fuck it. I’m going to fix my tent, pack up, and try to find a place to sleep in my wagon. My professional conclusion is that she was an evil witch doing magic, a good job well done by the heroes that killed her. Bye.”

Nobody tried to stop him as he stalked off.

He hadn’t even started to figure out why the blood was flecked with little glimmers of light. The thought nagged at him, as he vindictively stitched closed the tear in his tent, then stitched a patch over that, then rubbed wax into the whole patched area in a desperate attempt to keep the damp out. It took roughly an age to get everything packed away. He was staggering towards a well deserved nap when he was intercepted by Madam Lettie!

“Mazelton, it’s fascinating! Just fascinating!”

“You don’t say.”

“Some sort of underlying genetic base for the gross physical changes, clearly triggered by long term exposure to environmental stimuli. No evidence of surgical intervention, though there is some indication of the tattoos being a vehicle for implantation of pharmaceutical agents. I don’t have a coherent theory of the work yet, but in any case, it’s a truly remarkable physical and cultural adaptation!”

“Mmm.”

“Oh come on! If you can’t get excited for this, what can you get excited for?”

“Nothing. I am told I look like a creepy pervert when I am investigating. Third rate skulls are fine, apparently, but subject matter expertise is creepy. I am going to bed.”

“Hey! Also, sorry. I guess I could have said that better.”

“Really? Good night.”

“It’s mid morning. Look, don’t sulk. I need to ask you about those tattoos, and some of the information coming out of the blood is really neat.”

“I can, and will, sulk all I like. Also, I don’t know what you did last night, but MY day started with someone trying to murder me in my sleep, and has arguably gone down hill from there. I am so done with everything. Find me tonight, and we can talk. Hang on to the body if you can, and at the very least, keep the core and the blood.”

At which point he spun on his heel and stalked off to the wagon. He slept through lunch, but Duane thoughtfully set aside a bowl for him. When he woke, the wagons were rolling North West. He was sweating. The day was, indeed, a scorcher.