Chapter 97: Those Who Cannot Walk

The woman at the end of the receiving table could not reach the shelf where Julius had put the evacuation forms.

Dinraal noticed because she tried twice.

The first time, she stretched from her chair and caught the edge of a sheet with two fingers. It slid away before she could pull it down.

The second time, she stopped halfway through the movement and looked around to see whether anyone had noticed.

Dinraal crossed the room.

“Which one?”

“The household form.”

He handed it to her.

“Thank you.”

She placed it carefully on her lap.

Then she looked toward the shelf again.

“My neighbour will need one too. She can’t come down here.”

Dinraal took another.

This time, he did not simply hand it over.

“Would you like someone to visit?”

The woman smiled.

“That would help.”

He wrote the address.

When she had gone, he moved the whole stack to a lower table.

Julius returned from the store compartment carrying a ledger.

“Those belong beside the registration list.”

“They belong where people can reach them.”

Julius looked at the new position.

Then at the empty shelf.

“All right.”

He moved the registration list too.

It was a small correction.

Dinraal would probably have forgotten it by evening.

Then the message about Imber arrived.

Eve sent for them after the first part of the report had resolved.

Dinraal came from the receiving room.

Isolde arrived from the school with soil still beneath her fingernails.

Arcturus was already connected from orbit. Alexander stood beside the map. Tiamat had a chair pulled close to the table but had not sat down.

“They went out,” Eve said.

Dinraal looked toward the display.

“Where?”

“Imber. Another world from the list. The council asked for help after hearing about Orrin.”

Isolde put down her notebook.

“Did they reach them?”

“Yes.”

Eve’s answer came immediately.

That helped for one breath.

Then Dinraal saw the number beneath the name.

Three million.

He sat.

The account remained incomplete. It showed a cold coastal world, people gathering around a capital, an arch cut on a hill. Families had travelled for days to reach the place where they hoped someone might come.

The evacuation had begun.

For hours, it had continued.

Then the Hands had arrived.

Dinraal looked at Eve.

She had gone very pale.

“They burned the world.”

Nobody spoke.

“While the evacuation was underway?”

“Yes.”

“All of it?”

“The account describes attacks across the other cities and the countryside. Then fire moving toward the capital.”

Dinraal put his hands flat on the table.

“Who came back?”

“The expedition returned.”

“And the people?”

The count arrived while they waited.

Eve read it once to herself.

Then aloud.

“Two million, seven hundred and four thousand, three hundred and sixteen.”

Asha closed her eyes.

Isolde gripped Dinraal’s wrist.

For a moment, the number was too large to feel like people saved.

Then Dinraal saw the smaller line beneath it.

Nearly three hundred thousand had not reached the opening.

The old.

The sick.

The people who could not make the journey.

The people who had stayed with them.

He remembered the woman trying to reach a sheet of paper.

He looked down at his hands.

They read enough of the account to understand what had happened.

Not every detail.

There would be time for that later, when their friends had more to say and Hearth had learned how to hear it without demanding that every terrible moment be explained immediately.

Lucas had held the connection.

Kyria and her cutters had made the arch.

The others had kept people moving and defended the hill.

When the fire came close, Dorothy had lifted the last group from a street and carried them through.

Then the expedition withdrew.

The receiving arch on Avalon was destroyed before the fire could follow.

Dinraal watched the final count remain on the wall.

“Almost everyone who reached the hill,” Eve said.

Alexander nodded.

Then he asked the question Dinraal was already trying to form.

“How were the people outside the capital meant to get there?”

“They were told to come nine days earlier. Walk if necessary. Bring the children. Leave what they could.”

“Transport?”

“We don’t have that information.”

Dinraal looked up.

“Some couldn’t.”

“No.”

“And others stayed because they couldn’t leave them.”

Eve did not answer.

She did not need to.

Isolde was looking at the map of Hearth beneath the projection of Imber.

The quarry shelter.

The school route.

The proposed second refuge.

The outlying work sites.

The temporary dwellings along the southern track.

She reached for the local map and pulled it clear.

Dinraal looked at her.

“We keep measuring how long it takes people to walk,” she said.

“Yes.”

“We haven’t measured how long it takes us to reach the people who can’t.”

Tiamat finally sat.

She took the map.

For several moments, she studied it.

Then she looked toward Arcturus.

“I want the transport arrangements reviewed by address.”

Arcturus nodded.

“Today.”

Mara Den called the review that afternoon.

Dinraal expected a list of available vehicles.

He found three different lists.

Vehicles assigned to shelter movement.

Vehicles assigned to the clinic.

Vehicles assigned to the landing ground.

Several appeared on more than one.

Cleopatra laid the sheets beside one another.

“The same driver is on two of these.”

Julius leaned forward.

“Which?”

She pointed.

“Here. And here.”

He checked.

Then took out a fresh page.

For a while, the room filled with quiet, unhappy corrections.

A vehicle stationed near the school would have to cross the busiest pedestrian route to reach the upper terrace.

One driver worked in orbit on alternate weeks.

The transport assigned to two residents using walking frames had a step neither could manage without being lifted.

A household marked as needing no assistance had acquired a new resident after the last count.

Nobody had deliberately left these people out.

That made the work more uncomfortable.

There was no villain to name.

Only assumptions that had remained in place because everyone was busy.

Dinraal watched Mara draw a line through the duplicated assignments.

“We need actual routes,” she said. “And actual people to travel them.”

Tiamat nodded.

“Two people for each route. Someone who can drive and someone who can help residents board.”

“And a substitute,” Johanna said.

Julius looked pained.

“Yes,” she said. “A substitute.”

Isolde added the households gathered through the gardening lessons and school visits.

Aurelius brought names from the reading room.

Rhiannon brought three more that nobody had thought to ask about because the people concerned rarely asked for anything.

Dinraal looked toward the edge of the map.

“What about the coast?”

Alexander followed his gaze.

The temporary harbour survey camp lay beyond the lower cliffs.

There were workers there.

A small number of dependants.

Several people recovering from injuries who had chosen the quiet accommodation rather than the crowded terraces.

The road had been adequate during the dry weeks.

Meret had warned about its lowest crossing before the last rain.

Dinraal looked at her.

She nodded once.

“That needs inspecting.”

They went the following morning.

Cressa flew the first group down before the weather closed over the coast.

Dinraal and Isolde travelled by road with Meret, a transport driver, and two workers who knew the crossing.

Tiamat remained in Hearth to run the rest of the review.

Aurelius took the receiving post at the shelter.

Nobody called it a rescue.

The camp was not under attack.

The forecast gave them time.

They were going to inspect a route and discuss moving people before the next period of heavy weather made that route difficult.

Dinraal repeated that to himself when the first view of the coast appeared between the hills.

Grey water.

A line of white surf.

Temporary buildings above the shore.

The small sheltered inlet the Morrow had surveyed lay farther south.

It was promising ground for a future harbour.

It was not yet a harbour.

There were no permanent roads, no sheltered pier, no reliable way to bring a large group inland if the landing area became unusable.

Isolde studied the map on her knees.

“How many?”

“Thirty-one listed at the camp.”

“Listed.”

He glanced at her.

She looked back.

“We should count.”

“Yes.”

They reached the low crossing before noon.

Water moved beneath the bridge.

Not dangerously high.

Not yet.

Meret asked the driver to stop.

Dinraal climbed down.

The structure had been built for light vehicles and work crews. Two supports stood in the stream bed. One had collected a dense mass of branches and debris.

The water forced itself around the obstruction.

Meret crouched near the abutment.

“Here.”

Dinraal joined her.

A dark gap had opened beneath the edge.

He could see where flowing water had carried away material that should have been supporting the approach.

“How long?”

She shook her head.

“I won’t guess.”

He looked toward the camp road.

Then back at the vehicle.

“We can cross?”

“One at a time. Light load. I want the driver out while we check the wheel line.”

They crossed carefully.

Nobody complained about the delay.

The camp manager had thirty-one names.

There were thirty-four people.

The difference consisted of a visiting technician, a woman helping her sister after an ankle injury, and a child who had come with her.

Isolde wrote all three down.

Dinraal stood beside her while Meret explained the bridge.

The camp manager listened.

Then looked toward the sea.

“We can lift out.”

“Not if the cloud lowers as forecast,” Dinraal said.

“Tomorrow?”

“Possibly.”

“And the road?”

“Usable now. Less certain after more rain.”

The manager folded his arms.

“We have instruments on the shore. Two sets of tidal readings still incomplete. If we move everyone, we lose several days.”

Dinraal understood.

He had wanted those readings.

The future harbour would make Hearth less dependent on flying everything between settlements.

It mattered.

So did the people sitting in the mess room while they talked.

“We don’t need to abandon the work,” Isolde said. “We need a way for everyone to leave without waiting for the weather to decide.”

The manager looked at her.

She opened the list.

“Who cannot make the upper path?”

Six people needed help.

One could walk a little but not the whole distance.

Another used a chair.

The child would need an adult who was not also carrying equipment.

The remaining workers could move with ordinary assistance if the road stayed open.

Dinraal looked around the room.

“We should bring everyone inland today.”

The manager glanced toward the equipment racks.

Dinraal saw the question before it was spoken.

“We can return for the instruments.”

“If the water reaches the lower shed—”

“Then we may lose the instruments.”

The words were hard to say.

He had spent too much of his life trying to recover everything at once.

The manager looked at him for a long moment.

Then he nodded.

“I’ll call the crew in.”

The first mistake was asking people to prepare quickly.

They did.

In different ways.

One worker packed his tools.

Another began securing the generator.

A woman filled a bag with medication and then spent twenty minutes looking for the written instructions that went with it.

The technician who was not on the manifest went down to the shore to collect a sensor without telling anyone.

Isolde caught the confusion before it became a delay nobody could explain.

She stood at the mess-room door with the revised list.

“Come here before you leave the compound.”

The workers looked toward her.

“Tell us where you’re going. If someone has asked you to do something, tell us who.”

Dinraal moved beside her.

“We have time to do this properly. Use it.”

That changed the camp more effectively than telling everyone to hurry.

The manager assigned people.

Meret and the transport crew returned to the bridge to mark the safe approach.

Cressa lifted the first passengers before the landing area disappeared into low cloud.

Five people.

Then another four.

The ninth passenger was the woman who used a chair. Cressa secured it herself and made certain the woman could reach the fastenings.

Dinraal watched the shuttle rise.

The remaining twenty-five would leave by road.

They had two light vehicles and a small work carrier.

That was enough in stages.

As long as the crossing held.

He looked toward the hills.

The cloud had lowered farther.

Isolde followed his gaze.

“Don’t do the whole afternoon in your head.”

“I’m trying not to.”

“What’s next?”

He looked at the people waiting near the mess room.

“Get the first vehicle moving.”

“Then do that.”

He took the bag she handed him and carried it to the carrier.

The crossing had changed when they reached it.

Not dramatically.

That was what made it dangerous.

The debris had shifted.

Water struck the exposed edge of the approach at a different angle.

A section of gravel had fallen into the stream.

Meret stood on the far side with a marker pole.

She held up her hand before the vehicle reached the bridge.

“Stop.”

The driver stopped.

Dinraal got out.

He could hear the stream now over the engine.

He walked forward alone.

The bridge itself remained sound enough to cross on foot.

The approach was failing beneath the weight of the vehicles.

“How long to reinforce it?” he asked.

Meret pointed toward the ground.

“We need fill and support below that edge. We can place a temporary span over it.”

“I can hold it.”

She looked at him.

“For one crossing,” he said. “Then we fit the span.”

“And if the support moves while you’re underneath it?”

He looked back at the vehicle.

Seven passengers.

Two requiring help to walk.

Isolde stood beside the open door, speaking to them.

Dinraal could force the crossing.

He could brace the whole approach with silver, send the vehicle over, then remain there while the others made trip after trip.

It would work until it did not.

Behind him, the stream dragged another branch against the support.

He looked upstream.

There was firmer ground above the bend.

A longer route.

A narrower stretch.

“Can we take them across there?”

Meret followed his gaze.

“On foot?”

“With a temporary walkway.”

She looked at the banks.

Then nodded.

“If we anchor it beyond the soft ground.”

Dinraal raised his communicator.

He asked for the work carrier to bring the spare frames from the camp.

Then he went back to Isolde.

“We’re changing the crossing.”

She looked at his face.

Then nodded.

“What do you need me to do?”

They used the carrier’s deck panels for the walkway.

The frames came from the camp’s unfinished equipment shelter.

Dinraal carried them to the bend.

Gilgamesh arrived with the inland support vehicle and carried them from there.

Dinraal had not asked for him.

Tiamat had checked who could reach the site and sent the people suited to the work.

Seeing him step out of the rain made Dinraal laugh once.

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m glad you’re here.”

Gilgamesh looked at the stream.

“So am I. This appears inconvenient.”

Meret marked the anchors.

The two work crews fitted the frames.

Dinraal held each section while they fastened it.

The silver spread beneath the joints, taking weight until the bolts were seated.

Isolde helped the passengers out of the vehicle.

She made sure they wore coats.

Made sure the medication bag stayed with its owner.

Made sure the child knew which adult would remain beside her.

One of the older men apologized repeatedly for needing to be carried.

Dinraal came to kneel in front of him.

“We’ve built the crossing. We have a chair for you. You don’t need to apologize for the part the chair does.”

The man looked at him.

Then at the stream.

“It’s a great deal of trouble.”

“Yes,” Dinraal said. “We’re handling it.”

That seemed to help more than pretending otherwise.

They brought the chair forward.

Gilgamesh took one end.

A worker took the other.

Dinraal crossed first and stood where the joined panels needed the most support.

The older man came over slowly.

Then the next passenger.

Then the child, holding Isolde’s hand.

Rain tapped against the silver along Dinraal’s forearms.

He could feel each change in weight.

On the far bank, people moved toward the waiting vehicle.

Nobody rushed.

Nobody was left alone.

When the last passenger from the first load was across, Dinraal withdrew enough silver to check the joints.

The walkway held.

The camp manager wanted one more trip to the shore.

The instruments were already recording a dangerous rise in the water.

If they could recover the central unit, the lost equipment would be far less expensive to replace.

Dinraal stood beneath the mess-room awning while the manager explained.

The remaining people were gathering their bags.

The last vehicle waited outside.

The rain had become steady.

“How long?”

“Ten minutes.”

Dinraal looked toward the track.

He could get there faster.

He could probably carry the whole rack back.

He could probably do several other things too.

Isolde stood at the registration table, checking names.

She looked up.

Did not speak.

Dinraal thought of Imber.

Of Lucas holding the arch while there were other things he could have done.

Of people saved because someone stayed with the task already in his hands.

He looked back at the manager.

“We’re leaving now.”

“I can go myself.”

“You can.”

The manager’s expression changed.

Dinraal kept his voice level.

“I can’t make the choice for you. I can tell you the route is deteriorating and the transport is leaving. I won’t hold these people here for the instrument.”

For a moment, rain filled the silence.

Then the manager looked toward the shore.

He swore softly.

Picked up his bag.

“All right.”

Dinraal nodded.

They locked the stores they could secure.

Disconnected what needed disconnecting.

Left the instruments where they were.

Isolde read the last names.

The visiting technician answered.

So did the woman helping her sister.

So did the child.

Dinraal waited until all three were marked.

Then he lifted the final bag into the carrier and climbed beside the driver.

The second crossing took longer.

One passenger became frightened halfway across.

She stopped.

The worker beside her could not persuade her to move.

Dinraal felt the whole walkway tighten beneath the stalled weight.

He could have carried her.

He began to step forward.

Isolde reached her first.

She moved slowly, one hand on the side rail.

“Look at me.”

The woman shook her head.

The stream beneath them was loud.

Isolde lowered herself until their faces were level.

“You don’t have to look down.”

“I can’t—”

“I know. Put your hand here.”

The woman gripped her arm.

The silver beneath Isolde’s sleeve strengthened without closing into a gauntlet.

“Good. We’ll move one foot. Just one.”

Dinraal held the frame steady.

The woman moved.

Then stopped again.

Isolde waited.

On the far bank, Gilgamesh stood ready.

He did not call encouragement across the water.

He did not make the waiting feel like impatience.

They crossed one step at a time.

When the woman reached firm ground, she began to cry.

Isolde stayed with her while the worker fetched a blanket.

The next passenger waited without complaint.

By the time Dinraal crossed last, his shoulders ached.

He checked the anchors once more.

They would leave the walkway until the weather passed and inspect it before anyone used it again.

Meret marked it closed to unsupervised traffic.

The two vehicles pulled away.

Dinraal looked back at the camp road.

They had left useful equipment.

They had left unfinished work.

The people were all on the inland side of the water.

He turned forward.

Isolde sat beside him, the frightened woman’s hand still resting in hers.

Aurelius had made the receiving room warm.

Not hot.

Warm enough that wet clothes stopped feeling like part of the weather.

Rhiannon and the kitchen team had food ready.

Johanna’s assistants checked the people who needed it.

Tiamat took the final count from Isolde.

Thirty-four.

Nine by air.

Twenty-five by road.

All accounted for.

Dinraal stood beside the entrance while the last passenger came in.

He had expected relief to arrive cleanly.

Instead, he found himself staring at the wet floor.

At a bag placed beside a chair.

At the small distances between people.

Aurelius touched his shoulder.

“Everyone?”

“Yes.”

The older man nodded.

“Then take your coat off.”

Dinraal looked down.

He was still wearing it.

The silver had withdrawn, leaving his sleeves soaked where the rain had reached the fabric.

He removed the coat.

Isolde came toward him carrying two cups.

One was for Aurelius.

One for Dinraal.

She had forgotten herself.

He took the cup, then handed it back to her.

She looked at him.

He smiled.

“We have more.”

Aurelius went to fetch another.

Across the room, the camp manager sat with his hands around a bowl.

He looked exhausted.

When Dinraal passed, he said, “I should have asked for the road work earlier.”

Dinraal stopped.

“Yes,” he said.

The man nodded.

“I should have checked who we had there before agreeing the place was ready,” Dinraal added.

The manager looked up.

For a moment, neither spoke.

Then Dinraal pulled out the chair beside him.

“When the weather clears, we’ll inspect it together.”

The man looked toward the people around the room.

“All right.”

They ate before discussing the instruments again.

Thale’s name arrived the following morning.

Dinraal was in the workshop, helping remove the mud from the borrowed frames.

Eve called him.

He heard her voice and knew the news from Imber had not been the end of the account.

Thale had burned on the same night.

A world Avalon had never reached.

A world that had not called them.

Four million people.

No evacuation through an arch.

No saved count written beneath the total.

Dinraal stood beside the workbench with a cloth in his hand.

He did not move for several seconds.

Then he put the cloth down.

At the relay room, Eve explained the discussion that had followed.

The houses were destroying worlds they could no longer hold.

Whether the loss came from resistance, evacuation, or the advancing Hungry mattered less to them than the loss itself.

Dinraal listened.

He remembered the records around the Questioner.

People reassigned as cargo.

Deaths described as transfers.

A system capable of making a human life disappear inside a change of category.

But he did not say the enemies were the same.

Cruel systems did not need to share a maker to resemble one another.

Isolde stood near the window.

“What has Avalon decided?”

Eve opened the last part of the message.

The defensive work would continue.

The evacuation effort would begin before it was finished.

Sixty-two worlds.

The intention was to reach them before the Hands.

Dinraal read the number.

This time, it described places they meant to save.

Not people already gone.

Asha had begun assembling the support requests.

Mostly information.

Methods.

Plans that could be shared.

Every useful improvement to receiving people, feeding them, housing them, and preventing the exhausted from being lost in another count.

Dinraal looked at Isolde.

She opened the notebook she had carried to the coast.

“We have something to send.”

They did not send a heroic account of the crossing.

Isolde wrote what had failed first.

The camp list had been wrong.

The route had been inspected for vehicles more carefully than for people.

Air evacuation had depended on weather that could not be commanded.

The temporary bridge had remained useful after its approach had become unsafe.

People had tried to save equipment because nobody had clearly told them which decisions were already made.

Then she wrote what had worked.

A named person responsible for the count.

A second person checking it.

Passengers travelling with the medicines and equipment they needed.

An adult whose only task was helping someone who could not walk.

A route wide enough for a carrying chair.

Time allowed for a frightened person without treating the fear as misconduct.

Dinraal read the draft.

At the bottom, he added the figures.

Thirty-four.

All reached Hearth.

He looked at the number beside the report from Imber.

Thirty-four.

Two million, seven hundred and four thousand, three hundred and sixteen.

He had no intention of comparing them.

He wanted the smaller figure to remain exact.

Eve would send the practical notes to the people coordinating reception work.

Enna attached a drawing of the temporary walkway with the loads corrected from the actual crossing.

Meret added the inspection signs they had missed.

Johanna reviewed the notes about medical transport.

No one claimed their experience answered the needs of millions.

It answered a few questions that millions of people might still need answered.

When the packet was ready, Dinraal asked Eve to include one line for Lucas.

We read about the hill. We know you stayed.

He stopped there.

He did not tell his friend how to feel about the people he had not reached.

The saved count remained beneath the message.

Hearth’s own plan changed.

The coast road would be rebuilt before the camp reopened.

No permanent settlement would be approved on the basis that its residents could simply walk inland if something went wrong.

The council required a transport plan alongside the building plan.

A route for ordinary vehicles.

A second route where possible.

A list of residents who would need assistance.

Storage for the equipment that made movement possible.

Dinraal helped write the requirement.

Then he asked Mara to put it through the same review as any other proposal.

She looked at him.

“You know we may alter it.”

“Yes.”

“And it may delay the harbour work.”

“Yes.”

She nodded.

The proposal changed in three places.

One of those changes was better than anything he had written.

Isolde visited the people who had moved from the camp.

Some wanted to return as soon as they could.

Others had discovered that the terraces suited them better.

The woman who had frozen on the walkway chose a room near Adela.

The child who had been missing from the original list joined Nessa’s afternoon group and immediately objected to the rules governing the wooden ship.

Mira objected back.

By the end of the day, they had formed a council.

Dinraal was informed that adults could attend only by invitation.

He accepted the decision.

At the workshop, the repaired frames returned to ordinary use.

The mud washed away.

The record of the crossing remained.

Sera Venn copied the parts most relevant to transport equipment into the class notes.

Enna checked them.

Then she let another instructor teach the lesson.

Aurelius found Dinraal in the garden two evenings later.

He was sitting beside the empty chair, looking at a map.

“Another route?”

“The same one.”

“Has it changed?”

“No.”

The older man sat.

Dinraal folded the map.

For a while, they listened to the town.

A door closing.

Someone calling a child home.

The faint sound of work still underway near the landing ground.

Then Dinraal said, “I keep thinking about the ones who stayed.”

“On Imber?”

“Yes.”

“They couldn’t leave someone.”

“Some of them.”

He looked at his father.

“I would have stayed.”

Aurelius nodded.

“So would I, in some circumstances.”

That answer hurt more than reassurance would have.

Dinraal looked away.

“I want to build something that doesn’t ask that of people.”

“A sensible ambition.”

“An impossible one.”

“Not entirely.”

Aurelius pointed toward the map.

“You moved thirty-four people before the road failed.”

“The road nearly failed while we were there.”

“Yes.”

“We should have done it sooner.”

“Yes.”

Dinraal let out a breath.

His father waited.

There was room in the conversation for the mistake and the result.

Eventually, Dinraal said, “I left the instruments.”

“I heard.”

“I could have gone back.”

“Perhaps.”

“I still think about it.”

Aurelius looked toward the garden gate.

“Everyone thinks about the thing left behind. It gives the mind somewhere to put the wish that the day had been easier.”

Dinraal considered that.

Then he leaned back.

“I’m glad you’re here.”

Aurelius put a hand over his.

“So am I.”

They sat until Isolde called them in for supper.

That night, Dinraal and Isolde looked through the plan for their house.

It was a modest plan.

A table.

Two bedrooms.

The study space by the window.

The small store beside the kitchen.

There was no reason to spread it across the table during a month when other people had lost whole worlds.

Except that this was their home.

They intended to keep living in it.

Isolde traced the wall of the spare room.

“We don’t need to change it yet.”

“I know.”

“Aurelius can still stay.”

“I know.”

“And if we do need more room someday, we can ask Halen before you decide to move a wall during breakfast.”

Dinraal smiled.

“That happened once.”

“You thought about it once in my hearing.”

He took her hand.

They had not begun making announcements.

They were still gathering information with Johanna.

Still deciding how to turn their wish into a choice made with care.

But they no longer pretended the wish was only a remote possibility.

Dinraal looked at the little room on the page.

A bed.

A window.

Room for someone who did not yet exist.

He thought of the children from Imber looking up at unfamiliar ceilings.

Then he looked at his wife.

“We should keep the drawing.”

She nodded.

“I was going to.”

“Not in the work folder.”

“No.”

She folded it and placed it in the desk beside her notebook.

The coast stone rested nearby.

Outside, the rain had stopped.

Dinraal opened the kitchen window.

Cool air entered the room.

From the field came the last voices of the evening watch changing places.

Someone else knew who was on duty.

Someone else was checking the transport list.

Someone else would call if they were needed.

Isolde came beside him.

He put an arm around her.

For a while, they looked at the lights of the town they were still learning how to keep.