It was another silent evening. He didn’t dare try to build another long fire with freshly broken ribs, so he tried the other tricks he had learned- bigger mattress, more insulation. No big secret to it, he just piled up a foot of dead leaves, tucked his ground sheet over it as best he could, and draped his pad over that. The leaves crushed right down, of course, but they did add a surprising amount of insulation between him and the ground. Comfy. He also was a little pickier about where he built his shelter, finding a spot well sheltered by some bushes. It wasn’t fancy, but it was more than good enough.

He hurt. His ribs hurt. His legs hurt from the riding. Arms hurt too, most everything was sore, in fact. He ate as much as he could stand, tried to meditate or draw, gave it up as hopeless, and slept deeply and long. It was enough.

The next morning saw him groaning to life. He wouldn’t catch the wagons today, but so long as he kept a good pace going, he should catch them up sometime tomorrow.

Bastard the Cheve tried to step on Mazelton’s foot as he was brushing him. Just… shifted over and very deliberately went for the toes. Mazelton got his foot out of the way in the nick of time, and punched Bastard in the side. Bastard gave him a look that said he’d had worse, and that Mazelton wasn’t shit. This more or less set the tone for the day.

The trail was very rocky for half a mile, meaning that Mazelton had to go even slower and pick his way through. There was a stretch with approximately eight billion black flies swarming, which didn’t manage to bite Mazelton, but Bastard was actively unhappy and spread the misery. Some bit of Mazlelton’s underwear decided that now was the time to cinch up on his left testicle. And so on and so on. Oh such fun they had.

Lunch was cold and eaten by the riverside, because Mazelton would be fucked before he would devote a single scrap of energy to something other than collapsing and wolfing down some food. The last of the questionable seed snacks were poured down his throat. Jerky was chewed fiercely and rehydrated with river water (carefully purified). After twenty minutes, Mazelton was starting to feel human again. He gently twisted his shoulders and walked a little to stretch his legs. Just to shake out the stiffness, and the river was really very pretty.

It was at this point the mountain lion attacked.

It lept out some seven meters ahead of Mazelton, snarling and hissing. It bounced up onto its hind legs, waving its paws like it was trying to swat Mazelton. The look of feline rage on it’s face was horrible, like it couldn’t wait to deliver a brutal death, and it would enjoy watching you die.

Mazelton backed up slowly, digging in his pouch for his sling and some bullets. Cats don’t like to attack from the front, he remembered. If they see your face, you have a chance. But never, ever turn your back.

He slipped a bullet into the sling. Stepped back and planted his foot. The cat hissed, yowled and leapt forward, closing some of the distance. Mazelton whipped the sling around his head and slashed down with it. The stone bullet shot out in a flat line. Mazelton wasn’t a great shot, but at less than six paces? There was a horrible thud, with a hint of bone snapping. The mountain lion died with its eyes open.

Mazelton panted. He was sweating. Shivering like he had been running for hours. What the fuck was that? Where did that come from? Why did it attack? It was incomprehensible. He backed away from the riverside, back to where he had tethered Bastard the Cheve. Surely the mountain lion would have gone for the easy prey first.

But no. There was Bastard, looking completely unbothered by the world.

What the fuck was that? Predators don’t do that. Predators are all about risk/reward/cost. How much injury will they risk, how much food will it get them, and how much energy with the attempt cost. That’s a predator. Not whatever that was. His brain couldn’t process it. He sat and got his breathing under control. Predators don’t do that.

Unless they are trying to scare you away. Unless they are protecting territory. Or their young.

Oh. He just killed a good mom.

That’s. Not great. That doesn't feel good. He focused on calming his breathing. It was a big cat, a predator. It would eat humans, if it got the chance. It would eat him, if it got the chance. It was kill or be killed. Or even if it wasn’t, it was a threat. It would have come for him sooner or later, probably. From ambush.

It took him another twenty minutes or so to pull himself together. He forced himself to eat some dried fruit left in his bag by the monks. The sugar helped a bit. He saddled up and hit the trail. He felt like he was escaping the scene of a crime.

It was hard to appreciate the beauty of the day, though it was truly lovely. Hot in the sun, but with a nicely cool breeze, and the trees kept things from getting too toasty.

There were a few real stunners of birds here and there, including some sort with wings so large he had a hard time believing it was real. He stopped Bastard for a moment and just watched the great bird wheel in the sky. It was probably three to four meters across, wingtip to wingtip. It didn’t need to flap, it just locked its wings and cruised the endless thermals above the mountains. Now and then it would wheel over some part of the forest, looking down at something only a god could see.

The forests were getting a little weird as it was. They were shrinking. The trees were still pretty tall, but they were getting thinner around. More densely packed together, with thick underbrush. Very thick, compared to the forests so far. No obvious reason for it that he could see. It was a bit of a mystery.

Mazelton played with the mystery like it was a toy. Why would the trees look like that? Well, they seemed to be the same species, just smaller. So… younger? Not enough food? No, not with that kind of density. This screamed young forest. Maybe… well he had no idea how forests aged really, but presumably less than a century? He gave the trees another look. It was getting on towards evening, Time to camp.

He picked an easy spot, this time backing up on some rocks. He felt a strong need to have his back to something solid. And pain be damned, he was going to have another long fire tonight, just to be on the safe side.

Mazelton went around, gingerly collecting wood and keeping his eyes out for standing deadwood. It wasn't too hard to find, it was just that the logs were a bit thinner this time. Which kind of defeated the purpose, but he would try to make up for it with quantity. Maybe space them out a little bit, so they only burned one at a time? He tried to imagine some sort of automatic log feeding system. It was probably doable. Just not by him with broken ribs.

It was while he was waiting for dinner to boil that he had a boring, but good, idea. Mazelton remembered that you could count the rings on a tree to determine its age. And he had a small pile of dead tree trunks to work with. And nothing else to do with his evening.

One, two, three… twenty six, twenty seven, I wish I had a saw and this wasn’t some rageddy hatchet cut, twenty nine… thirty. The tree had been about thirty years old when it died. And since it was still standing, it probably had died in the last year or two. Not old at all, as pine trees went.

He looked around and tried to think it through. The background levels of heat were slightly high, but only slightly. A vibrant forest, a thriving ecosystem, but the trees are young. Mazelton got out his spade and dug himself a deeper than normal hole for his morning dump. Using the last light of the day, he took a look at the soil layers. Leaf litter on top, a thin layer of hummus, then sandy soil. Acidic too, with all the pine and fir around.

Mazelton grinned slightly. He had finally made it to the Disputed Territory. He was looking at the hard work and sacrifice of those thousands of Dusty elders, the labor of the Collective’s craftsmen, and the careful plant selection of the Tribe. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of tons of biological material collected by the Sea Folk to jump start the ecological cycle.

He was close to Danae. Just over the line into the site of what could be a really nasty guerrilla war. Sectarian violence was horrible. Always was. Those who had god on their side were capable of any atrocity, because if god willed it, how could it be wrong? And god seemed to will an awful lot of horrors. Horrors that he was putting himself in the middle of.

It was never murder, if god willed it. Or the Collective good required it, or whatever. How did the Swabians define it? It was kind of catchy. “The unlawful killing of a person under the Emperor’s peace, with malice aforethought.” About that. The sheer number of loopholes in there!

“Unlawful killing.” So there were lawful killings, were there? “A person.” So if someone is legally or not a person, or not human, they are fair game? “Under the Emperor’s peace.” Well, there is another fun one. If you are protected by the laws, you are protected. If you aren't, if you are an outlaw, you cannot have the law’s protection. Even if you are a person. And “malice aforethought” was just a joke. If a person was killed spontaneously or after ten years of planning, they were just as dead either way. So who cares how much their killer thought it through?

Mazelton poked at the fire, lost in his thoughts. People got the wrong impression of the Ma, that they were senseless killers. Far from it. Peaceful cooperation was usually the best survival strategy. Even if the ruling power was tyrannical, peaceful cooperation tended to yield better survival rates.

It’s just that every Ma, from the time they were old enough to understand words, were taught that they were one missed meal away from a riot, and three from outright war. That the world could end at any moment, and had. Repeatedly. So often that it was to be expected. And when it did, the Clan would do its best for you, but really, your survival was ultimately on you. So you better learn how to survive when there are no laws.

You better learn how to kill, and not feel bad about it. And Mazelton had learned that. Even before he set out from Old Radler, he had murdered. He had killed on the dueling sands. He was blooded. He killed that poor delivery person and stole their trike. That had messed him up for a while, but he had forced himself to tolerate it. It had been necessary to survive, and necessity needed no excuse. Or forgiveness.

He frowned. The porridge of his dinner was awfully bland. He dropped a few bits of dried fruit in there. Maybe it would help. Why was he so hung up on the concept of murder tonight? It took him a moment but he got there.

He was going to kill many people tomorrow. Hopefully hundreds, but at the very least, tens. People who were largely strangers to him. Men and women, old and young, not distinguishing the good from the bad. He would trail them, try to stay out of sight, then he would unleash the horror when they camped for the night. Just… turn it loose and see how many bodies it could rack up before it ran out of energy.

The caravan did have a process for adjudicating crimes. He could summon a Congress, present his case, show his wounds and demand that the villains be executed as the contract required.

Mazelton gave himself a mocking smile. He never checked the bodies. He couldn’t even say for sure that they were members of the Collective. He just assumed they were, because who else could they be?

And he was planning on killing all these people way before he was shot. This was just… a confirmation. Coexistence was impossible. So he had to kill as many as he could, while he could. That’s just how things were. It wasn’t a matter of right or wrong, it was who lives and who dies. He still wanted to live. And he wanted Danae to live, so they could live together. So they could make a home.

The bits of dried fruit helped a bit. The portage warmed him wonderfully. It felt nourishing in an almost spiritual way.

He would murder hundreds of people to ease some of his anxiety. And it wouldn’t even be murder, because as far as he was concerned, they were outside any law’s protection. Perhaps it was just the will of the Great Dusty World.

No. He wasn’t a hypocrite. It was his will and no one else. And if he could, he would eat Mendiluze’s heart.