Night thinned and lost its grip. The cedars kept the last scraps of dark. The road held its quiet.

Han walked the ditch where the lord had fallen. Mud showed broken circles where weight had turned. The prints now pointed away.

Hanna paced the far side with two maids in tow. Bell straps lay soft and low. Cloth on each tongue kept the metal from speaking.

The snares he'd set on low branches lay still. No bell quivered. No line twitched.

Xena rose from the brush with a smear of wet clay on her cheek. Her breath stayed even. Her eyes said all was clear.

Bellatrix stood with a board and chalk. She had tallies, weights, and marks that mattered. She had the night written plain.

Han nodded once. The nod traveled down the line. Maids shifted without sound.

"Three minutes to light work," he said. "We clean, choose, and move without dithering."

Hanna lifted a hand and split the nine. Three to salvage. Three to guard. Three to field repair.

The hub brace held. Twine crossed in a neat lattice. A wedge sat tight where wood had split.

"Wrap it again," Han said. "I want the strain to travel, not fail in one spot."

Denver rolled the wheel and listened to the tone. He touched the spoke and felt for give. He looked up and gave a short nod.

The mirror twins watched from their coach with ashen faces. Their driver held the lines as if they could carry more than the team. They did not speak.

Han walked to the dead. He chose the order. Ours first. Then theirs. Then the ogres.

They laid the woman from the red canopy on a cloth. They set her rings and a single coin on her chest. Bellatrix wrote her name where she could.

The teak guard lay where he had fallen. Hanna closed his eyes. Xena took the knife from his belt and wrapped it in linen.

The ogres went to a burn pile. Wood from the broken boxes made the base. Salt drew a ring around the heap.

"Why salt?" the younger twin asked.

"So the smoke doesn't invite more mouths," Bellatrix said. "So the smell dies fast."

Han lit the pile with a coal on a spoon. Flame walked the wood and found the flesh. Heat rose in a low sheet.

Hanna placed stones to stop the creep of fire. Two maids fed small branches, measured and clean. No one spoke over the burn.

When the flames settled, Bellatrix marked tusks taken and brands seen. She said each mark once. The chalk kept the rest.

Han watched the road instead of the fire. He let the wind pass across his cheek. It smelled of wet bark and iron, nothing worse.

"Pick your trail," he said to the twins without looking back. "Ride behind us, keep a coach length until I call, and speak to no one."

"We will pay for escort," one said.

"You will pay with silence, because talk buys knives you cannot see," Han said.

They bowed and stepped away.

Hanna retrieved the reed-and-wire charm they'd pocketed from the twins' rail and set it on his palm. The weave was tight. The knots were crude.

"It's meant to bait the team," he said when it thrummed in the wind.

"Who planted it?" Xena asked.

"Watch who misses it when it doesn't sing," Han said. He pocketed the charm and let it be.

Light came thin and flat. The last stars burned out one by one. The sky took the color of iron.

Hanna set the nine in a diamond on foot. Two at the flanks. Two at the corners. One by the axle with the cracked brace.

Bellatrix walked with the board against her hip. She counted time under her breath. She kept the tallies with the steps.

Xena ranged out and back on the right. Her knife hung low. Her eyes ran the roots and the cropped grass.

Han inspected each harness by touch. He trimmed cords that did not belong. He rubbed cedar and salt into leather and spoke to the team.

"Easy now, you carry us and we carry you," he told the mare. She flicked an ear. She believed him.

They loaded tools that would not fail. Hooks. Pins. Straps. Iron bells wrapped in cloth.

Han folded the mission scroll and slid it into its rack. He touched the glass and saw his own eyes. They looked steady now.

"Why do they drum?" he asked into the quiet.

Hanna answered without looking up. "Stone keeps what air loses, the beats run down into the ribs of the ground, and the ducts turn the road into a throat."

She tied cloth on the last clapper and tested the ring. It crawled the teeth and set the forearm's skin to a tremble.

"Two beats gather, three hunt, and one long calls war, which is how they pace their blood so the surge doesn't burn them hollow," she said.

Bellatrix touched the chalk on the board. "The night map agrees: we sat between gather and hunt, and the long rolled only when the lord came."

Han let the shape of the answer sit. He could see the beats in the mud now. He could feel the figure they wanted people to make.

"We won't march to their drum; we answer with our own," he said.

He tapped the window twice. Denver set the team in motion. The coach eased into the first light.

The line moved like a single body. Horse, hub, hand, and bell. Breath found the rhythm and kept it.

They passed the place where the boulders had hit. The broken crown showed a fresh crack. The ditch held a dark pool that gave no reflection.

Ogre ash drifted along the road in thin veins. Heat still lived under the coal. A crow dropped and then rose again, confused by the taste.

Han watched the trees. The trunks were black bars. Lichen glowed a quiet green on the bark. Nothing shifted that should not.

A runner crossed the ridge far ahead. Small. Thin. White clay on the face. A child or a scout.

Xena lifted two fingers and let them fall. Not ours. Not a threat yet.

They reached the ash ring that marked trade ground. Stones sat with soot on their shoulders. The air felt cleaner inside the circle.

Han halted at the edge and did not set a foot in. He let the team breathe. He waited for the ground to answer.

It answered with a low drum built from wood and hide. Not the cave roll of night. A morning call meant for trading.

Wind shifted; resin and ash lifted from the ring, carrying a memory of night. Han weighed the teeth on the stone and chose patience. Hanna checked the bell's cloth again, nodding once. Denver breathed with the team, hands quiet. Far off, a crow spoke twice and went silent, for now.

A broker came from the trees with a chain of teeth around his neck. He walked with open hands. He stopped one pace from the first stone.

"The ring allows speech," the broker said, "and no one hunts inside or shouts."

"Then we will speak," Han said. His voice stayed even.

Hanna took the front with two maids at her back. Bellatrix held the board ready. Xena watched the ridge where the child had run.

The broker set down a flat stone and a purse. He poured out small bones with marks. Price teeth. Oath tokens. Favors knotted with hair.

"This circle holds debts," he said. "It pays for clean sales and kills trades that lie."

"Good," Han said. "We have names to buy clean, iron bells, and salt, and we have time if you do not waste it."

The broker tasted the word iron with his tongue. His eyes slid to the wrapped bells. "Iron speaks across fog and sets a beat in the stomach," he said.

"That is why I carry it."

Han put down a road token made in town ink. It bore the clinic mark and his name. It bore the sliver of wax with a tooth seal from the last gate.

"Clinic script outranks caravan lien under city law, last amended in spring," Bellatrix said.

The broker read and did not rush. He thumbed the wax. He sniffed the slate. He looked at the bell Hanna had half unwrapped.

"I will release two names on sight, three more at noon when the witness comes, and the boy with the cough must come with proof of cure," he said.

"The cure is mine to prove, and your witness will smell it if he knows the work," Han said.

The broker knelt and chalked the circle around the teeth. He laid a braid of grass across them and looked up.

"Why do you stand outside the ring?" he asked.

"Because it's yours, and because a man who enters a thing too fast ends up owing it more than he thinks," Han said.

The broker's mouth tugged. Not a smile. Approval, or something near it.

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