12 #3

The world shrank to the wagon ahead. Isolde walked beside Bruma with a rope around her waist. Dust worked its way through her clothes and made every breath an effort.

The blue door came loose from the first wagon.

Neris tried to hold it. A gust hurled it against the wheel. Isolde caught the rope, and the wind dragged the door across the ground.

“Let it go!” Kaoran shouted.

Neris shook her head. That piece of wood held her home, but its weight was pulling at the wagon, threatening to overturn it.

Isolde cut the rope.

The door vanished into the dust.

Neris struck her with the rod.

“It was mine!”

“The wagon was tipping.”

“We could have stopped.”

“The Guard is behind us.”

“The decision was mine.”

Isolde kept the knife beside her thigh. The wheel was back on the ground. Neris’s fingers were spread toward the place where the dust had just taken the door.

“I saw the wagon lift,” Isolde said. “I could have shouted before I cut.”

Neris pushed her aside with an elbow to take hold of the lead rope again.

“Tell the others. So they know what they’ll do with their loads.”

Isolde put away the knife. She went to the next wagon and repeated the warning before touching its bindings.

The storm covered their tracks. It also separated the last wagon.

When the wind eased, Bel, Aren, and two families were missing.

Isolde wanted to go back at once. Neris had everyone counted first. Seventy-six people from Ordel present. Seven missing. One wagon.

Mava was still having contractions. Leya reckoned labor might begin that night.

“Kaoran stays with the caravan,” Isolde said. “I’ll go back for the seven.”

“I’m going with you,” Neris replied.

“Mava needs you.”

“Leya has helped at three births. Bel is my brother-in-law. This choice belongs to me too.”

They both went back along the channel with Teren and Bruma. The storm had erased almost everything. Isolde looked for human signs: a rope caught on a bush, fresh dung, a stone dislodged by a wheel.

The map lived in small traces.

They found the wagon overturned behind a dune. Bel’s leg was trapped. Aren sheltered two children under a blanket. The Guard was less than half a league away, scattered by the dust.

They freed Bel with a lever. His leg was broken. They settled him on Bruma and secured his leg to keep it still. The other six could walk. Aren carried the food; Teren took one of the children, and Neris led the other by the hand. The wagon would have to stay.

“The seeds,” said Tila, one of those who had been missing.

The pillow had torn. Dark seeds covered the earth.

Neris knelt and began picking them up.

“Teren, tell us when you see the first horse on the ridge,” Isolde said. She crouched beside Neris. “Until then.”

The woman moved the cloth closer so they could both hold it. Aren gathered seeds from the depression beneath the wheel; the children filled the hollows of the fabric with small hands. At Teren’s whistle, Neris brought the ends together.

“Now.”

They left with half a bag of seed. Isolde left several visible handfuls beside the axle.

The caravan reached the spring well into the night. Mava went into labor while Kaoran splinted Bel’s leg. Leya turned the mattress wagon into a room. The women hung blankets and heated water.

Isolde stayed outside. She had seen open wounds, death, and fire. The sounds of labor made her feel useless.

“You can hold the lamp,” Leya called from inside.

Isolde climbed in.

Mava gripped her right wrist. Isolde had hung the lamp from a support so she could hold her.

The labor lasted four hours. When the boy was born, Leya wrapped him in the warm cloths and cleared the dust from his face.

His first cry was weak; Mava brought him to her breast and waited, exhausted, until she heard it again.

He was too small for the clothes they had saved. Leya asked for another blanket and explained that they would have to stop often to keep him warm and feed him. Neris changed the next day’s allocations before recording the birth.

Neris added his name at the bottom of the count.

“Darel,” Mava said.

Eighty-four people.

The Guard never reached the spring. The storm had erased the route, and the loose horses had scattered.

For three days, Isolde and Kaoran accompanied the caravan along the shepherds’ trail. They repaired wheels, distributed food, and sent scouts to the wells. On the second day, Neris spoke to Isolde about the door again.

“You cut the door loose,” she said.

“Yes.”

“You saved the wagon.”

“I think so.”

“That answer comes late.”

“At the next wagon, I warned them before touching the ropes,” Isolde said.

Neris took the handle from her pocket. She had removed it when she retied the door after the fight.

“Every family is marking what they can let go if we have to lighten the load. Everything else will be tied separately.”

Isolde nodded.

“I can help you look for it when our relief arrives.”

“The wind will have buried it by now. Help me find a place for the new one.”

Neris stayed beside her as they checked the map of the wells.

At the second well, they found another caravan.

It came from the north with twenty families evicted to make room for an expansion of the military roads.

At the third was a group of young people fleeing recruitment.

They all carried documents directing them toward Meral, where the closed bridge forced travelers through a Guard post.

Isolde spread out the papers.

The routes converged.

Ordel, the northern villages, and two rural districts had received different directions that ended at the same three posts.

There, food was confiscated, young people were recruited, and tools were searched.

The weakened families then continued toward empty ground near Caleryon or toward the ports, where they accepted debt labor.

Kaoran marked their places of origin. Isolde added the departure dates beside them.

One of the northern families still had the complete eviction order. The father had torn it from the door before the soldiers burned the frame. On the back was a plot number and a transfer notation.

“This date comes before the debt,” Isolde said.

“They surveyed our land in the fall,” the man replied. “We lost the crop over the winter. The quota came in spring.”

Kaoran compared the page with Ordel’s documents. The same office had assigned plots to House Rhyne and two allied families months before declaring the debts in default.

“They prepared the new deeds before evicting you,” he said.

Neris brought a bag of copies from her wagon. It was the same in Ordel. The notations used a route code and a destination. M-4 led to the Meral post. A-2 sent people toward Arkhe. C-7 ended at a construction site near Caleryon.

“We need the book that explains the codes,” Isolde said.

A roads post stood two leagues away. The guards were still searching for the caravan in another direction. The building stored duplicates of permits and routes.

“We can get in tonight,” Teren suggested.

Kaoran looked at the mule, already loaded with the copies from Nydel.

“Mella expected you to deliver the papers to the next relay.”

“It’s still the next one. Just a little farther away.”

Teren checked his knife and left the bag of documents with Neris.

Neris chose to stay with the families. Isolde, Kaoran, and Teren followed the channel to the post. Two soldiers slept in the stable. A scribe worked beneath a lamp, copying names from the papers collected from the caravans.

Teren found a window without a latch. Isolde followed him into a storeroom. Kaoran stayed outside with Bruma.