At sunrise on Day 146, the morning air in the northern throat of Alderfast Basin was sharp with the scent of pine smoke, damp limestone gravel, and cold garden earth.
On the terraced slopes below the former castle stone base, the physical escape of the valley began not with the sounding of military horns or the shouting of wagon drivers, but with the quiet, orderly movement of thirty-four households carrying their lives down to the new roadway.
Throughout the long siege, Adra Pike had insisted that a community in crisis must never allow itself to be herded like cattle. The Cairn Host had seized the grain stores two winters back. Then, panic had nearly emptied the lower hamlet into the winter snowdrifts. Only Adra’s strict census and household rosters had kept families together. Now, in the hour of deliverance, she enforced the same unrushed discipline.
“We don’t leave in a mob,” Adra announced from the stone wellhead of the assembly terrace, her voice carrying clearly to the gathered families. “A mob breaks wheel axles, tramples children in the switchbacks, and turns an open road into an obstacle. We leave in four-household echelons, spaced twenty minutes apart. Every echelon has two miners with pry-bars, one elder who knows the trail, and three young people assigned to the litter poles. If a cart throws a tire or a mule slips its harness, the entire echelon pulls into the next road bay and lets the column pass. Nobody is left behind, and nobody…
