Rain came before dawn and left everything smelling of mud, wet feathers, and swollen wood. The fields drank it greedily. By sunrise, the village was almost cheerful in the careful way hungry people allowed themselves to be cheerful when the sky had done one useful thing.
Vessa found eight good Tuftest eggs and held them up for everyone to admire.
"Eight," Halen said, impressed. "That is almost a feast."
"That is batter for three days if your mouth stays shut long enough to save some," Mara said.
Halen clamped both hands over his lips. Rynn rolled his eyes but smiled into his sleeve.
Derrick worked the field edge with them, gathering loosened weeds into piles for drying. The damaged parts of him hurt less when his hands were busy. He could almost believe the world had narrowed to mud on his knees, insects in a jar, and Mara's voice telling Halen that no, a beetle with red spots was not a sign of buried treasure.
Then Hooktail screamed from the storage roof.
Derrick had heard Braynex click, hiss, and chatter at scraps. This sound was none of those. It was a ripping cry, sharp with panic. The dark-scaled Leyoki shot across the roof ridge, tail whipping, and vanished behind the smoke platform.
The smoke watcher blew three fast notes.
The field changed shape around Derrick. Children dropped jars. Vessa snatched her egg basket against her chest. Rynn reached for a spear leaning by the fence. Mara grabbed Halen by the collar before he could turn toward the sound.
"Inside," she barked.
"I can help."
"Inside means inside."
The outer brush fence shuddered near the Coustel pens.
Coustel burst from grass in a brown wave, dozens of them, wild ones, not the village stock. They scattered under the lowest rails and along the ditch, beaks snapping, eyes white-rimmed. Behind them came the thing driving them.
The Acousten hit the weak section of fence shoulder first.
It was not as tall as the burning beast from Derrick's nightmares. That almost made the panic worse because his mind had no place to put it. It was near the height of a grown man's chest when hunched, chunkier than a Coustel, bipedal, with four-digit paws hooked for gripping and tearing. Mud striped its fur. Its beak snapped fast enough to crack wood. A long tail lashed behind it, ending in a pale bone barb that caught the morning light.
The fence split where yesterday's rain had softened the post holes.
"Ropes!" the Elder shouted from the gate. "Not spears first. Ropes and nets. Keep it from the Tuftest yard."
The village answered badly and bravely.
Two fence menders dragged a weighted net from the rack. Jorren seized a coil of reed rope and threw one end to Rynn. Vessa ran for the inner yard with the eggs clutched to her ribs. Mara shoved Halen toward the hut line and pointed at Derrick.
"With me. Children. Now."
Derrick's feet did not move.
The Acousten's tail struck a fence post. Bone hit wood with a flat crack. The sound became a roof beam breaking. Mud became ash. The beast's beak became burning antlers in smoke.
Run.
Don't look back.
A child fell between the field rows.
Not Halen. A smaller child, the well girl, one shoe caught in the wet furrow. She looked toward the adults and screamed, but the Acousten's head snapped toward that sound. Its nostrils flared. Coustel scattered around its legs like dirty water.
Derrick's body remembered how to run before it remembered why.
He lurched forward, grabbed a beetle jar from the mud, and threw it hard against a fence stone away from the girl. Clay shattered. Beetles burst across the ground. The Acousten jerked toward the crack and movement. Its tail whipped through the air where the girl had been staring.
Mara reached her first. She scooped the child under one arm and kept moving.
"Derrick!" Rynn shouted.
The rope end lay near Derrick's foot. He grabbed it. Rynn had looped the other end around a post, too high, hands working too fast. Jorren was yelling correction. The Acousten lunged toward the Tuftest yard, driven by noise, hunger, territory, or the frightened Coustel flooding ahead of it. Derrick did not know. He only knew the Tuftest were screaming now, and the egg keeper was crying out like the nests themselves were children.
"Low!" Derrick yelled.
Rynn stared.
Derrick pointed at the tail. "Low, or it cuts free."
Rynn dropped the loop. Jorren swung the weighted end. The rope caught one hind leg, slid, then tightened above the joint. Derrick hauled with both hands. Pain tore through his blistered palms. Rynn threw his weight backward beside him. Jorren wrapped the rope around the post and leaned until his face went purple.
The Acousten stumbled.
Spears came in then, not to kill cleanly, but to turn it. The spear carrier jabbed at its shoulder. Another man struck with a pitchfork. The beast shrieked, snapped the pitchfork shaft, and lashed its tail. The bone barb caught the spear carrier across the chest and sent him spinning into the mud.
Halen screamed from somewhere behind Mara.
The sound nearly undid everything. The Acousten twisted toward it, dragging all three rope holders a step through the muck. Derrick's feet slid. The rope burned through skin. Rynn shouted wordlessly, half fear, half rage.
The Elder stepped into the open and slammed his staff against a feed trough.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
"Here, you mud-chewing bastard."
The Acousten turned on the sound. The weighted net came down over its head and shoulders. For three breaths, it was trapped in woven reed and rope. Men rushed in with poles. Mara's husband drove a hooked staff through the net and pinned part of it to the ground.
"Back!" the Elder ordered. "Back before it rolls."
They backed.
Not fast enough.
The Acousten threw itself sideways. The net tore. A pole snapped. Its tail came free in a white blur and struck Jorren's knee. He went down with a sound that made Derrick's stomach lurch. The rope jerked through Derrick's hands. Rynn lost his grip and fell.
Derrick held until the rope ripped loose anyway.
The Acousten bounded toward the broken fence, one leg dragging for two steps before it found its stride. Coustel followed in a chaotic stream. A spear flew and glanced off its flank. Blood spattered the wet grass. The beast shrieked back at them once, then vanished through the split rails into the brush.
No one chased it.
The village listened to it crash away until the woods swallowed the sound.
Then everyone moved at once.
Mara found Halen and hit him on the shoulder hard enough to make him yelp, then pulled him into a hug so fierce his face disappeared against her. Rynn sat in mud, staring at his empty hands. Vessa knelt in the Tuftest yard, counting nests with trembling lips. The injured spear carrier groaned, alive. Jorren clutched his knee while two men argued over whether to move him.
The Elder stood at the broken fence, breathing hard.
"Count people," he said. His voice cut through the panic. "Then animals. Then tools. In that order."
Derrick looked at his palms. Skin hung in torn strips. Mud and rope fiber clung to the blood. His hands shook, but he had held the rope. He had done one useful thing.
Rynn came to his feet beside him, face pale.
"You saw the leg," Rynn said.
"What?"
"The rope. You saw where to throw it."
Derrick flexed his fingers and hissed through his teeth. "My father taught snares for river pigs. Not... that."
Rynn nodded once, awkward and stiff, then looked toward Jorren. "I tied it too high."
"You tied it fast."
"Fast wrong can kill."
That sounded like something Derrick's father would have agreed with. He did not say so.
Mara reached them and seized Derrick's hands. She inspected the rope burns, then his face.
"You froze," she said.
Derrick looked down.
"Then you moved," she added. "Remember both."
The words settled heavier than praise.
By afternoon, the rain returned. It fell light and steady through the broken fence while villagers worked with no spare voices. They patched rails, repaired the Tuftest yard, buried two trampled Coustel from the village pens, and cut away the bloodied section of Jorren's trouser before binding his knee. The spear carrier could breathe, but each breath hurt him. Vessa found three cracked eggs and sat with them in her lap like she was mourning something larger than food.
Derrick carried broken rails until his hands bled through Mara's wrappings.
No one told him to stop. That, too, was a kind of acceptance.
Near dusk, the Elder stood by the storehouse and looked over the baskets gathered from the fields. Less than there should have been. Mud, panic, and trampling had stolen part of the day.
"Roots tomorrow," Mara said.
"We need them today," Vessa answered.
No one disagreed.
Derrick heard himself speak before he had measured the wisdom of it.
"I can go. Not far. Woods' edge. I know what to look for."
Mara turned on him. "Your hands are open meat."
"I can still carry a basket."
Rynn frowned. "The Acousten may still be near."
"Then I will stay close."
The Elder studied him. Rain ran down the grooves of his face.
"Close means you can hear the gate horn," he said. "Close means you come when called. Close means you do not turn one useful act into a death we have to explain to the fire."
Derrick nodded.
He meant it when he nodded.
He also needed distance from the walls.
The village had too much sound: hammers, groans, Tuftest shrieks, Halen being too quiet, Mara's anger trying not to become fear. Derrick could feel the Burshemark in every broken rail. If he did not get away from the fence, he thought he might start running and never stop.
So he took a basket from the storehouse, a small knife from Mara, and the Elder's warning behind him.