Mazelton was exhausted, he always was after a fight. Didn’t have a scratch on him… well he did, but it was just scratches from the bushes he crawled through. But he was exhausted, and then they made him sew everyone up, like there wasn’t a difference between tailoring and surgery. Which, he kept reminding them, there really, really was. Is. He was so tired. And now he had to search the corpses and find the bandit camp. You know what? Delegation was a beautiful thing when it meant that he didn’t have to do the work.

“I need a volunteer.” This statement was met with horrified silence.

“To go track the bandit camp. We need to know if this is all of them, and it would be useful to know that, if it was all of them, did they have any loot stashed anywhere.” Ah, fear and greed, the salt and sugar of motivation. The looks got considerably less horrified. Father Sun give him strength, what did they think he wanted them for!

“Do you think there are more of them?” One of the bookkeepers asked.

“I have no idea. Bandits are usually either starving peasants or mercenaries when there’s no work on. These fuckwits don’t look like soldiers to me, but unless things are very different in the Disputed Territory, peasants don’t have longbows, polymer crossbows and muskets. So some kind of fuckery is afoot, and I want to know what fucker is a’fucking so I can fuck them before they fuck me.”

This statement apparently took some parsing, but soon there were nods of grim agreement. Duane stood up, ax on shoulder, and started walking towards the woods. A couple of lean, sharp eyed types fell in with him. Mazelton wouldn’t mind losing them, but his heart seized a bit when he saw Duane striding off. He hadn’t noticed it before, but Duane could really move through the woods.

He shook his head. He had work at hand. He started frisking the corpses. Always mucky work, as they started voiding their bowels or leaking bits of entrails, that kind of thing. And the concentrated smell of blood was never very nice. Still. It all scrubbed off with enough soap. He stripped down to his loincloth, just to save on washing. He was going to get naked (same logic) but he could feel the rising number of horrified looks so he just didn’t. Someone else would be bribed or bullied into doing the washing.

The teeth were an underrated place to start. You could tell a lot about someone, looking at their teeth. This lot were clearly skipping the old dental hygiene, and had been for a long time. Mmm. One point in the “starving peasant” column. Most armies, and even mercenary groups, were strict about that kind of thing. Easy way to pick up an avoidable infection. Their bodies were skinny, very skinny, but not skeletal. They had been eating something, just not enough to completely fill their bellies. Not a whole lot of muscle there. Not enough calories to support muscles, despite all the physical labor.

He vaguely remembered that people got sent to work camps to weaken them. He hadn’t understood why that worked, but he could see it now. Callused hands, homemade hide moccasins on their feet. Poor, weak, starving, and armed well enough to make Mazelton’s hands twitch. Even if he didn’t want to use them, he could sell them, right? The math on this was pretty simple, he just wasn’t liking the sums he was reaching.

Mazelton worked through the bodies, totally failing to find a coded letter, or a coin from a distant country, or perhaps a unit patch. Those were a classic- the torn bit of cloth that just happened to have the unit patch belonging to the elite womp womp regiment of the whoevers. He looked at the shit smeared corpses leaking upsettingly over the road. Some people just had no sense of art. He was glad they were dead. He was so tired.

Someone would have to drag the bodies off the road. It was not going to be him, or by the Endless Earth Demons, there would be yet more bodies on the road. That someone else would have to drag away. Well, strictly speaking the Aurochs could pull the wagons over the bodies but that really was upsettingly messy, and it hurt morale in really ugly ways. Maybe shove them into the gorge? Seemed like an easy option. Not a rad on them, which figured. A few snacks, but no real rations. They definitely had a camp somewhere else. Only their weapons were of any real value. Mazelton made a neat row of them. Good ceramic knives too- those cost more than an elm. A lot more. If people wanted to strip the clothes off them, they could do it their damn selves.

“Aren’t you going to take their cores?” Someone yelled from the wagons.

“No. They just aren’t worth the work. These broke bastards have less heat in ‘em than the trees.” It wasn’t strictly true, the trees were very young after all. But it was true that he really, truly, could not be bothered to get elbow deep in a bunch of torsos for some severely rubbish cores.

He wandered towards the woods, smeared in blood, mud and other, more foul smelling things. Mazelton shoved his way between the scrubby little trees, instantly regretting the lack of clothes. He only whined a little bit, then pressed on to find the musketeers. If anyone was going to have useful information on them, it should be them. Plus the guns were worth a small fortune in their own right.

There were four of them. A bit better fed. Clothes in better condition. Maybe officers of some kind? Officers with exploded and cooked internal organs, now. He swept up the heat as he went. He hadn’t felt the need to mention to the wagon train that all the bandit’s cores had been drained while he searched them. Woops. Oh well. Ah, powder, extra ball ammunition… oh these guys were half bright- they had already prepackaged the powder and shot into little twists of paper, to speed up the loading. He cheerfully collected the loot, much less cheerfully by the third musket as they were damn heavy. He hauled everything back towards the wagons. He was going to hang onto one or two muskets. Maybe Danae could use them.

Mazelton hummed a little, his mind drifting on the subject of muskets. Muskets were… well they were terrible, in most senses. Not reliable in the rain, though these were well designed flintlocks. Much better than matchlocks and simpler than wheellocks. No, not very reliable, the black powder was dangerously easy to ignite, so the guns were accident prone. Ball ammunition was much less accurate than the elongated bullet shape, and the smooth bore didn’t give the rounds the same stabilizing spin that a rifle did. Much shorter range than a rifle. Slower to load. Couldn’t really breech load them. Or maybe someone had made a breech loading musket, but he didn’t know about them. So you had to load them from the muzzle end, which meant that the barrel had to be loaded standing, generally. Which meant that your options for firing from cover were limited. Very limited. So, fine for firing from a line in volleys, but kind of shit for most other purposes. You could hunt with them, but you were likely better with a bow or spear. Or sling.

But. They did have a couple of huge advantages on the frontier. With a bit of knowledge, you could make your own black powder. Not what you would call a safe hobby, but you could. Lead was a common metal even now, and childishly easy to form into bullets. You just melted the lead in a pan, then poured it into a little mold. Once it was solid, you just trimmed off the excess and added it to the next melt. Heck, you could even use stone balls. As long as the wadding stopped the ball from bouncing around in the barrel, it was all good. The muskets required careful craftsmanship to make, but were actually quite easy to maintain, and if a part broke, a halfway competent blacksmith could usually make a replacement part. In other words, once the musket was made, it could be a functional weapon almost indefinitely. Decades, certainly. Perhaps as long as a century, with regular care and replacement parts.

A small team of shitkicker farmers, who’s shit had apparently kicked them back so hard it knocked them clean off their farms. Who managed to scrounge up enough weapons to live very well indeed in most medium sized towns. Including four muskets that would be easy for even illiterate morons to operate and maintain, almost indefinitely.

Yeah, the math kept adding up to the same number, now firmly underlined and with a little exclamation mark next to it.

He hiked directly back to the wagon, deposited two of the muskets in the pile with the rest, took another two and all the powder and shot directly to his wagon, then stripped off and scrubbed up. He was done tolerating everyone’s nudity taboos. He was exhausted, grimy, and smelled foul. If they couldn’t grant him ten minutes with a washcloth and a bucket of cold water… He couldn’t even muster the energy to get mad. He just scrubbed up as best he could. He was wet, cold, miserable and exhausted, but clean. It would do.

Someone, or many someones, had divvied up the weapons while he wasn’t looking. As long as nobody came for his loot, he didn’t care. Duane came back with a couple of barrels and a sack, plus more loot carried by the now wild eyed men with him.

“There were three people left in camp, cooking and cleaning, that kind of thing. He just… threw rocks at them. Thump. Dead. Thump. Down. Thump. Dead. Then he beheaded them. I, I think I’m going to throw up.”

“Any interesting loot?”

“I don’t know, we grabbed anything that looked useful. There really wasn’t much at all. Hardly any food, their tents were crap, all the good weapons are here- if you want to check it out it’s just two miles up that way. I need to just… sit a while.” Mazelton shook his head, listening to the wild eyed man. Something about murder hit differently for most people. Acting in your own defense was one thing, and not a very nice thing for most. But coldly looking at someone and just deciding to end that life? Just to make your own life a little better? That was something much colder. And harder.

Duane was a warm soul, but the northern woods he escaped were very cold and hard indeed. He clearly despised bandits. Mazelton rather thought better of him for it.

Oh, missed opportunity there. He could have tested out his new murder-magic. He didn’t want to try it out in the middle of an active battle, and he really, really didn’t want witnesses. That sort of thing was best kept to oneself, lest one be lynched by one’s superstitious, if in this case completely correct, neighbors. Three isolated bandits sounded like the perfect test subjects. Oh well. Next time. Because there would definitely be a next time. He collapsed into the box of the wagon and fell asleep sitting up.

Mazelton woke when the wagon jolted over a particularly egregious pothole. It seemed that someone had hauled away the corpses, and someone, presumably not the same someone, got the caravan organized and moving again. Pressing on was the last thing anyone wanted, but there was just no choice. They couldn’t camp where they were, like ants on a string. There was no water, and just no space to camp. So the wagons rolled.

Mazelton looked south. Technically it was a slope, not a sheer drop, but he wasn’t inclined to wager on how many times he would bounce before he hit the bottom. Not more than… five times. Even with the trees. But he wouldn’t put money on it. They only traveled about five miles, or a smidge less. There was a wide, bare gravelly patch off to the side of the road. It would have been too small to fit the whole caravan four months ago, but now, they could crowd in. There was a little pond and a slightly bigger creek a couple of hundred feet away. It would do.

Mazelton set up his tent mechanically. It had become rote by now. Soon Cookie would have dinner going and… where was Cookie? No…

Cookie was ministering to Polyclitus, which Mazelton thought was decent of him. He had made a pot of nourishing broth which Polyclitus was drinking with a hollow tube. A bit clever, that. It looked like a fun way to drink things.

“Feeling any better?”

“Not as such, no. But thank you for asking. I’ll mend.”

“Good. The replacement is terrible, lacking both your style, charisma, and keen fashion sense. Frankly, I think they should be trusted with neither livestock or gourds. You must recover quickly.”

“You have no idea who is leading the caravan, do you.”

“None at all.”

“Heh. Alright, I accept your wishes for a speedy recovery. Find anything that I should know about, pawing through the corpses dressed only in a loincloth?”

“Who is going to get the bloodstains out of my clothes? You? The dead don’t care, their souls are being eaten by demons as we speak.”

“Wait, demons?” Cookie cut in.

“Mmm. Yes demons.”

“What demons?” Cookie was looking spooked. Mazelton raised an eyebrow in surprise.

“The Earth Demons, of course. They eat almost everybody. Don’t worry, it takes them a while to eat a person, but it’s not forever. Eventually the soul is obliterated in a final agonizing moment, and then the energy of that life is scattered into entropy, aligned with the rest of the universe.”

“This is what you believe happens?”

“Cookie. I don’t, you know, like to get into religion too much? It’s kind of a tense thing in the Caravan. But as a Ma as well as a Dusty, I can tell you that “Eaten by Earth Demons” is the number one cause of soul extinction. It’s nothing to be afraid of. The Dusties believe that souls come back in one form or another, reconstituted from the shattering noise of Entropy. There are some who have been proven to remember their previous lives. But the Ma know as a definite fact- most souls are eaten by Earth Demons, and it is horribly, horribly painful. We can imagine teeth, but of course, as immaterial beings, they aren’t using anything so… reassuring and understandable to do their devouring with.”

Mazelton patted Cookie on the shoulder comfortingly. “But you aren’t a Ma, so there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. So, you know, why worry? Worrying won’t change anything, right?”

Mazelton smiled cheerfully over at Polyclitus.

“Not that you need to worry, Boss. You are going to be just fine. And if you aren’t, well, I will cut a deal. I can probably work something out.”

Polyclitus was trying not to laugh and failing.

“Scram. Scram away with you, you are making him spill my lunch. Off you go and darken some other door.”

“Wagons don’t have doors.”

“Some do. Scram!”

He scrammed. His suspicions would keep. About sixty seven miles from home now… no, sixty four? He would have to check the map again.