By the time Maelis let them leave Asterfall, the smoke had become a black bruise against the southern sky.
She did not let urgency become permission.
"Kellan, hall first. Field pack, two rope coils, blankets, lanterns. Tell Elara where we’re going and that Bram may receive casualties before dawn."
Kellan ran.
"Nia?"
"Old caravan road. I can cut ahead at the split and come back."
"No bow."
Nia’s ears flattened.
"Bellwater cleared your legs," Maelis said. "Not your shoulder."
"I heard the healer too."
"Good. Ren?"
"Whatever doesn’t involve this."
He lifted his wrapped wrist.
"Correct."
They left before sunset with a borrowed handcart, ordinary rope, water, splints, and more bandages than Ren wanted to think about.
The old caravan road was farther than the collapsed waymarker.
It was also better built.
Even in darkness, Ren could see the same impossible width Edrin had complained about: two wagons could have passed comfortably with room left for drainage stone. Grass had swallowed the edges, but the road beneath remained stubbornly level.
They walked through most of the night.
Near dawn, Nia returned at a run.
"Wreck ahead. Big one."
Maelis stopped.
"Numbers?"
"Five wagons I can see. One burning. One half over a washout. Horses loose north of the road. At least nine people moving. More down."
"Threat?"
"No raiders. No creatures visible."
"Visible matters."
"I know."
Maelis pointed.
"Nia, survivor map and escape routes. Kellan, messages only until I say otherwise. Ren, with me. Nobody moves an injured person unless there is immediate danger or a healer approves it."
They crested the rise.
The road below looked as though a giant had kicked a caravan apart.
A freight wagon burned near the ditch, flames eating through its rear canopy. Another leaned over a rain-cut washout with one wheel hanging in empty air. Crates, harness, canvas, and broken axle wood covered half the road.
The strangest wreck lay sideways across the other half.
A wagon built around a steel-framed workshop had rolled onto its flank.
Tools glittered in the dawn mud.
Someone beneath it was swearing with professional concentration.
"Do not pull that beam!"
Ren changed direction.
"Ren," Maelis warned.
"I’m looking."
"Look usefully."
He reached the overturned workshop and found a dwarven woman pinned beneath a triangular section of steel frame. She was short, broad through the shoulders, with copper-red curls full of grit and one scarred hand wrapped around a bent support.
Her gold-brown eyes tracked Ren once from boots to face.
"Well," she said. "Rescue improved."
Ren crouched.
"Can you feel both feet?"
"Yes."
"Any trouble breathing?"
"My dignity is under more pressure than my ribs."
"Good sign."
"No. The good sign is that I designed this frame."
She pointed at a warped brace.
"If you lift there, the upper rack drops and turns me into a very educated stain. See the square socket?"
Ren found it.
"Crib beneath that. Two layers, crossed. Pull line through the rear axle eye, not the decorative ring."
"That ring looks structural."
"It is decorative."
"Cruel design."
"It looked excellent yesterday."
Maelis arrived, assessed the frame, then the woman.
"You know the load?"
"I built the wagon."
"Name?"
"Brinna Coalvein. Artificer. Currently furniture."
Maelis looked at Ren.
"Follow her rigging. No Cuff."
"Wasn’t planning to."
Brinna’s gaze dropped to his wrapped wrist.
"Damaged Artifact?"
"Critical."
"And you’re actually not using it?"
"I’m trying a new hobby called listening to qualified women."
Brinna stared at him for half a second.
Then she laughed hard enough to wince.
"Oh, I like you."
Nia appeared on the frame above them.
"Get in line."
Ren looked up.
Nia’s tail flicked once.
There was amusement in her face again.
Not resolution.
But amusement was better than the silence in the market square.
Kellan arrived dragging cribbing cut from a broken cargo rack.
"Where?"
Brinna immediately stopped flirting.
"Here. Grain across the load. Second pair crosswise. No, turn that one—the split faces out."
Kellan obeyed.
Ren fed the rope through the rear axle eye. Maelis took the opposite line with two caravan workers.
"On my count," Brinna said.
Maelis raised an eyebrow.
Brinna corrected herself.
"On hers. I’m trapped. I have perspective."
"Three," Maelis said. "Two. One."
They pulled.
The steel frame rose two inches.
Kellan drove the cribbing home.
"Hold."
Another layer.
Another pull.
Brinna slid herself free with Ren supporting only where she told him.
The instant she was clear, she slapped his hand away from her left knee.
"Not there."
Ren froze.
A soft voice behind him said, "Excellent. Keep doing that."
An elven woman stepped around the ruined workshop carrying a medical satchel already stained at one corner.
Tall. Olive-toned skin. Long dark hair tied back badly enough that strands had escaped around simple metal ear cuffs. Her warm brown eyes moved over Ren, paused for one brief unreadable moment, then settled on Brinna.
"Syl," Brinna said.
"Can you stand?"
"Probably."
"That was not permission to try."
Brinna sighed.
The healer knelt and checked her leg with quick, careful hands.
Then she looked past Ren toward two caravan workers lifting an unconscious man from beside the burning wagon.
"Stop."
She did not shout.
Everyone stopped anyway.
"Put him down exactly where he was. Slowly."
One worker blinked. "But the fire—"
"Is moving away from him. His neck may not survive you being helpful."
They lowered him.
The healer stood.
"I am Sylvaine Orren. If someone is bleeding badly, not breathing, trapped by fire, or about to fall into that washout, move them. Otherwise, nobody changes an injured person’s position until I assess them."
Her eyes found Maelis.
"Who commands?"
"Maelis Corven. Provincial field assessor."
"Good. I control triage."
"You do."
No argument.
No performance.
Two kinds of authority met and made room for each other.
Ren liked that more than he expected.
Sylvaine pointed at him.
"You. Wrapped wrist."
"Ren."
"Ren. Carry water, blankets, messages, or people I clear for movement. You do not improvise treatment because you know first aid."
"I wasn’t going to."
"Wonderful. You are already my favorite patient."
Brinna, still sitting in the mud, grinned.
"I saw him first."
Sylvaine ignored her.
Nia did not.
"Oh, Elara is going to love this."
Ren decided survival was the more immediate concern.
The next hour became work.
Nia marked survivors with strips of torn blue canvas and found a safe northern route around the washout. Kellan ran names, injury counts, and equipment requests between Maelis, Sylvaine, and the caravan master without once trying to turn himself into a fighter.
Ren hauled water.
He braced an axle with timber.
He helped three uninjured merchants drag cargo away from the burning wagon.
His Cuff stayed cold beneath the bandages.
By full morning, the fire had shrunk.
The hanging wagon had temporary lines on three separate anchors.
Sylvaine had nine injured people sorted by urgency.
Brinna, with her left knee bound and strict orders not to stand, had somehow acquired charcoal and was drawing a better support for her overturned workshop on the back of a shipping invoice.
Then the road went quiet.
Not gradually.
One impact hit the sealed cargo wagon near the rear of the wreck.
BOOM.
Everyone turned.
The wagon rocked on its springs.
Maelis drew steel.
Nia’s hand went to the bow she had been forbidden to use, then stopped.
Brinna’s charcoal froze above the paper.
Sylvaine rose beside her patients.
A second impact struck from inside.
Harder.
The cargo door bowed outward.