The proposal came from Tessa Dene just before midnight, while the assembly was still arguing over how many sacks of dried peas could be hauled through the culvert silt.
“We don’t move thirty people together,” Tessa had said, her voice cutting through the frightened chatter like a sharp cleaver. “We move the frailest first. Four children and two miners each night, wrapped in sheepskins, crawling through the sheep-pen pipe between the second and third watch. My father, Renn, and Luma’s eight little ones can be in the high gorge before tomorrow’s noon bell.”
“And the rearguard?” Edren had asked from the bench, his voice raspy and thin.
“Six of us stay on the rampart,” Tessa answered without flinching. “Sella, Hobb, Fen, and three volunteers. We keep the hearth fires smoking. We show sentry silhouettes on the western wall. We make enough noise with Hesta’s drums to make Gant think the whole garrison is sleeping in the barracks. We buy the children forty-eight hours.”
From the limestone fireplace, Noll Vey had endorsed the plan with every ounce of warm, reassuring authority his stage-trained baritone could muster.
“Tessa is right,” Noll had told the room, letting his blue core-light pulse with steady, paternal warmth. “It is an honest plan. It puts no false words into the valley, it risks nobody on an untried bluff, and it gives the vulnerable a real chance at the mountain woods. Hobb, pack three days of cold bannocks for the first party. Sella, grease the culvert hinges…
