The cargo door bowed outward a third time.
Maelis raised one hand.
Nobody approached it.
"Brinna," she said. "You recognize the wagon?"
Brinna had stopped smiling.
"Not the wagon. The seal."
Blue-green resin had begun leaking between two floorboards, bright enough to stain the mud beneath the axle.
Brinna limped closer before Sylvaine caught her sleeve.
"Weight on the right leg only," Sylvaine said. "Use the brace. No running."
"That sounds almost like freedom."
"It is a medical sentence."
Brinna accepted Ren’s shoulder, mostly because the alternative was admitting she needed it.
The bronze stamp beside the cargo latch showed a narrow tower above three horizontal lines.
"Osric Vadd," she said. "Mossdeep broker. Purchasing, processing, lease work. Half the artificers in this province have bought stabilizer through his people."
Maelis’s eyes sharpened.
"The transport seal on the captured brambleback had the same outer ring."
Brinna looked at her.
"You had a Vadd seal inside a brambleback?"
"Embedded in heartmoss resin."
"That is a sentence I dislike professionally."
Kellan retrieved the waxed manifest tube from the wagon’s outer box under Maelis’s direction. Brinna read without touching it.
"Lamp substrate," she said.
Ren looked at the glowing leak.
"That seems optimistic."
"It’s false." Brinna pointed at the resin. "Heartmoss. Processed shipment, judging by the broker mark. But whatever broke inside is still active enough to scent."
Maelis took the manifest tube from Kellan without touching the paper itself.
"Witness this," she said.
Kellan swallowed. "Manifest recovered sealed. Vadd broker mark on the cargo plate. Blue-green resin leaking before we opened anything."
"Good. Nobody samples the resin. Nobody removes a crate. We preserve what survives."
Brinna glanced at her. "You think it connects to the animal?"
"I think it earns the right to be compared. Evidence first. Conclusions after."
Something slammed into the floor.
Wood split.
A long black muzzle punched through from beneath.
The creature tore upward in a spray of planks.
Lean body. Long ribs. Pale fungal cords webbed its shoulders and jaw. Its mouth opened around too many narrow teeth.
Then another shape moved under the wagon.
"Sporehounds," Brinna said.
Maelis’s sword cleared its sheath.
"Of course they are."
The first hound launched.
Maelis met it halfway.
Her blade struck across the shoulder and turned the leap aside. The creature hit the mud, rolled, and released a burst of blue-white dust from the torn fungal cords.
"Spores!" Sylvaine called.
She was already moving the injured.
"Nia, take every walking casualty north and upwind. Six need transport later. Three can move with support. Nobody crosses my blue markers."
Nia did not reach for her bow.
"On me!"
She sprinted along the safe route she had mapped, calling the caravan workers after her.
Maelis pointed at Kellan.
"Barricade support only."
"Yes, Commander."
"Ren. Workshop frame. Close that road."
Brinna’s eyes lit.
"Oh, that I can do."
Two more sporehounds ripped through the wagon floor.
Ren and Kellan ran to the overturned workshop. The steel side frame they had freed Brinna from still lay beside the cribbing.
"Rope through the square sockets," Brinna ordered.
Ren threaded the first line.
"No. Other direction."
"You designed both sides identical."
"I designed them beautiful. Different problem."
A hound snapped at Maelis’s retreating boot.
She drove it back toward the wreck with the flat of her guard.
The caravan’s surviving watchman lowered a spear beside her.
Ren hauled the steel frame upright.
It was too heavy to hold.
Brinna pressed against his back, one arm sliding beside his to catch the rope below his hand.
"Your grip is wrong."
Her mouth was close to his ear.
Ren became extremely aware of several things that were not relevant to structural defense.
"Move your left hand down."
He did.
"Better."
"You always teach this personally?"
"When the student is interesting."
"Brinna," Sylvaine called from twenty paces away.
"I am performing technical instruction!"
"You are limping while doing it."
"Two things can be true!"
Brinna snapped a battered black-iron clasp shut around her forearm.
Copper channels along it glowed orange.
The Artifact shuddered.
Ren felt the steel under his hand vibrate.
Brinna planted her palm against the workshop frame.
"Temper."
Heat ran in a narrow line through the bent edge—not enough to melt it, but enough for the metal to groan and settle. The warped frame stiffened.
A crack appeared across one copper channel of Brinna’s clasp.
She swore.
"That is all it gets."
The next sporehound hit the barricade.
The steel held.
Kellan locked the second rope around an axle block exactly where Brinna pointed.
He did not strike the creature.
He did not chase when it recoiled.
He held the line.
Maelis killed the first hound with a thrust beneath the jaw.
The caravan watchman drove another away from the barricade. It fled south, glowing spores spilling from a cut along its flank.
The third slammed against the steel again.
Ren and Kellan leaned into the ropes while Brinna shouted load angles over Ren’s shoulder.
"Two inches right!"
"Whose right?"
"Mine!"
"You are behind me!"
"Then choose correctly!"
Ren shifted.
The frame caught the hound’s next rush and redirected it into the ditch.
Maelis was there before it recovered.
The remaining creature fled beneath the broken wagon and vanished into the grass.
Nobody followed.
For one breath, the road became still.
The caravan master stumbled over from the northern casualty line.
"Where do I put six people who cannot sleep on a road?"
Nia answered before Maelis had to.
"Old Crossroads Hall. Bram has food. Elara can clear rooms. It is ugly, the roof is temporary, and you will follow the healer’s rules."
Sylvaine glanced toward her marked patients.
"Six need beds and observation. Three can travel with ordinary support once the road is safe."
The caravan master looked at Ren.
"That your guild?"
"Pending several legal insults, yes."
"Can it take us?"
Ren looked at Maelis.
She nodded once.
"We can receive an emergency shelter request," he said. "Elara decides capacity when you arrive."
Then Brinna looked at the cargo.
"Bad."
A tongue of orange flame had reached the resin leaking beneath the sealed wagon.
Blue-green fire crawled along it.
The smoke changed immediately.
Tiny points of cold light rose inside the black plume.
Sylvaine covered her mouth with a wet cloth and looked toward the slope beyond the wreck.
"The river wind turns after midday."
Maelis followed her gaze.
"How long?"
"Less than an hour."
Ren looked from the burning resin to the six patients Sylvaine had marked for transport.
The nearest real shelter was the hall.
Its roof leaked.
Its clinic did not exist yet.
It was still the best place they had.
Brinna leaned close enough that her shoulder touched Ren’s arm.
"When this stops trying to kill us," she murmured, "I intend to revisit that grip correction."
Ren glanced at her cracked forge clasp.
"After your healer approves standing."
Brinna looked offended.
Sylvaine did not even turn around.
"I heard that."
Then she pointed at the luminous smoke.
"Flirt later. If we do not contain that cargo, those spores reach the river wind within the hour."