Everyone at the fire looked at him. Corvin had already started shouting for his captains, and he stopped with his mouth open.
"It's not coming in here," Big D said. "The stones keep out its body. They don't keep out what it does." He looked around at the cook fires, at twenty thousand people eating their supper inside the ring.
"The Lull killed sixty thousand in Brightwater from outside the line. We meet it out there."
"Where?" asked Rudra.
"Between it and them." Big D nodded east. "Before it reaches the soup people."
Ainen did not go with them.
"Somebody has to keep the soup on," he said. He was already pulling pots off the cart. "They're walking to a table. There has to be a table when they get here."
"You'll be alone at the fire," said Almond.
"I won't be alone," Ainen said. "I'll have twenty thousand people and a ladle."
They went out at first light.
