"Edge only," Evan said. The hedge breathed in.
The spearwoman's boot kissed the rope and held. A ridiculous distance—half a thumb—became the size of the world. The archer's smile stayed; his fingers tightened on the line. The knife-man looked at the alpha tusk like a man examining a door he could open if it were convenient to be a thief today.
"Rope sings," the Chief reminded the air, the way a bell reminds a village what time is.
Evan kept his staff low, the Pumpkin orb painting warm on leather and wood. He didn't posture. He pointed at jobs. "We carry to the lane. We stack by size. We document in front of the Chief. Edge team—help on the outside. Hands off the beans."
The spearwoman withdrew her toe that half-thumb and let the butt of her spear bite dirt. "Carry where you point," she said. Not agreement—precision.
"Good." He set his body to block the alpha's head like a doorstop. "Three to the lane. Archer and knife—take the rear. You don't turn your back to the hedge."
The archer tsked softly. "Bossy." He still took the tusk's weight when Evan angled it toward him—elbows and posture telling the truth about practice. The knife-man got the other side, shoulders casual, eyes everywhere they didn't belong. The spearwoman watched the gap, spear held loose as if it were a thought.
"Move," Evan said.
They did, cautious and theatrical. Villagers stepped aside the way a river makes room for a boat it didn't ask for. The rope curved like a smile not yet convinced of its joke.
From the hedge came the smallest verdict—rooting, then the wet rip of soil. A boar, not proud of it.
"Hold," Evan said without raising his voice. The archer and knife-man froze mid-carry because men who live long learn to freeze when told to by the person the geometry believes. The spearwoman slid a half-step to widen her angle on the gap—still outside the beans.
"Mech, cheek. Aurora, eye. Rope—slack then sing."
The boar chose the gate—animals do, when a human builds a door and dares them to imagine walls. The Mech slid the tusk onto the post. Aurora tapped the ridge. Evan bled a small sting across the inner foreleg; the rope took the line and made music.
"Edge," he said, and the spearwoman did exactly that: a neat prod at the shoulder that didn't over-commit. The boar flinched into the wedge and gave up balance for pride.
"Finish." Wrench, sting, tap; the animal became furniture.
[ENEMY DOWN][LOOT GENERATED]
Flags blinked with the politeness of paperwork.
[HUNDREDFOLD: CONTEXT FLAGGED][POTENTIAL AMPLIFICATION: CHAIN DEFENSE / RENOWN] [CHECK]
"Later," he told the UI like it was a junior clerk with very good timing and very bad judgment.
"Carry," he said. The archer and knife-man resumed, stepping backward along the line Evan set. The villagers made a space that felt like a law.
Halfway to the lane, the knife-man tried clever. Not big—just a heel pivot, a foot wandering over the beans as if physics had suggested it. Evan didn't look. He shifted the rope with his right wrist, and the line tugged the knife-man's boot back into proper citizenship like a dog correcting its own owner.
"Edge," Evan said, friendly as weather.
The knife-man grinned the wrong kind of grin and made a show of over-obeying. The archer did not grin; he carried weight with a competence that embarrassed his mouth.
They set the tusk on a cart plank the villagers had dragged to the lane's edge. The Chief watched like a ledger. "One," he told a boy with charcoal and a board. The boy wrote 1 — Crown Tusks (Alpha) in a fist that would one day be proud to have been neat today.
"Back," Evan said. He didn't turn to watch them comply. He returned to the rope, the wedge, the posts, to Aurora's whisper-hum and the Mech's soft gear-grind. The spearwoman met his eyes for the first time without a smile or a strategy.
"Your village law," she asked. "Or yours?"
"Same," he said. "Today."
A sound farther in the brush—something heavier thinking about their lane. Inspect rose and bounced.
[INSPECT][SCAN FAILED: THRESHOLD EXCEEDED]
"Hands ready," Evan said. "No one steps in for curiosity."
The spearwoman's spear tilted one polite degree toward the hedge. The archer returned with his mouth ready to talk and stayed quiet anyway. The knife-man rolled a shoulder and discovered how many eyes were on his boots.
The hedge didn't give them the big one yet. It gave them two uncoordinated chargers who had arrived late to a party and were determined to be interesting anyway. Evan ran the gate like a teacher repeating a lesson he refused to grade on a curve.
"Carpet," he said. Glue low."Meet." Wrench slid tusk to wood."Tap." Aurora stitched the tendon."Sting." He bled the staff along the hinge.
They fell into the wedge like arguments abandoned mid-sentence.
[ENEMY DOWN][ENEMY DOWN][LOOT GENERATED]
The rope sang softer. Stakes stopped trying to be stories and settled into being furniture. The hedge's breath pulled back from weight toward weather.
"Close the tear," Evan said. "Row three—set. Pull."
The villagers did. He worked the carcasses, blocking from outside, forcing even his own hands to obey his rule. The spearwoman watched with an expression that belonged to a person who loves competence even when it ruins her afternoon.
The knife-man drifted. Evan saw it the way you see a shadow being unprofessional. A line of beans flattened under his boot toe, then popped back with offended dignity.
"Edge," Evan said. The single word headed off a paragraph.
The knife-man showed his teeth, bored. "You plan to hand-count every breath I take?"
"Only the ones you take inside my fence," Evan said, which earned a cough-that-wanted-to-be-a-laugh from one of the lane hands.
The archer leaned on the rope and examined the tusk cart as if he were appraising a horse. "So. Work is rights. Does work pay out? Or is this one of those sermons where we pass a plate for the preacher?"
"Work pays when the field stops trying to eat you," Evan said. "Count in the lane. In the lane you'll find I'm generous."
"Define generous," the archer said, still cheerful.
"I let you keep your edge," Evan said. "All of it."
Aurora's hum ticked up. The Mech stiffened with that small, shared stiffness of trained things. The hedge chewed the air like a choir clearing throats.
"Ready," Evan said.
This time the forest tried thinking and moving at once. Something big didn't come; something attention-shaped did. Leaves turned the pale of their undersides the wrong way; a line of shrubs bowed without wind. Inspect popped like a bad fuse.
[INSPECT][SCAN FAILED]
"Hold," Evan said to the rope and to the village and to the three strangers who liked rules only when they owned them.
The presence passed—no, paused. Counted. Found itself bored or satisfied. The wrongness ebbed. The hedge remembered plants.
The spearwoman exhaled a breath that sounded like a coin deciding to be spent later. "Your field sings," she said.
"It does when it learns the words," Evan said.
They finished the wedge. The gap shrank to stubborn plants; the rope sagged to a friendly line. Evan still didn't open the flags.
[HUNDREDFOLD: CONTEXT FLAGGED][POTENTIAL AMPLIFICATION: DEFENSE CHAIN / LOCAL RENOWN] [CHECK]
"Later," he repeated, and the clerk in his head sulked.
The archer decided the quiet was an invitation. "Right," he said briskly, rubbing his hands like a man preparing to enjoy fairness. "Let's settle rights. Guild policy says—"
"Village policy," the Chief said, and nothing else, which is still a lot.
"—that after defense, qualified parties may—"
"Qualified means rope," Evan said. "Qualified means you didn't try to step inside it."
The knife-man's grin sharpened. "Qualified means your word."
"It means our fence," the Chief said, and the chorus of poles behind him agreed by existing.
The spearwoman measured the moment like a tailor measuring a lie for fit. "What can we carry for you," she asked Evan, "that makes both of us unharmed and neither of us poorer?"
"Everything," he said. "To the lane. I log in front of the Chief. You lift heavy and don't lose count."
"Loot rights," the archer insisted, amiable to his last breath.
"Edge only," Evan said. "Or you can leave. I won't chase. I will remember."
The spearwoman's mouth went thoughtful. "Memories keep men poor," she said.
"They keep villages alive," the Chief said.
The knife-man spun his knife in his palm until the handle sat exact in his grip. He looked at the hedge, at the rope, at the tusk cart, at Evan. He had the face of a man who'd enjoyed making small problems out of other people's laws. Now he wanted to make a medium one.
"Claim," he said lightly. "On the alpha. On the brutes. On—"
A leaf fell wrong again, and this time it wasn't wind or presence; it was precedent. The forest had decided that if humans were going to talk about rights at its mouth, it would provide a subject.
"Ready," Evan said, already sliding his foot back into the furrow. The Mech stepped hip-to-hip; Aurora tightened; the rope straightened along the posts like a body remembering its spine.
The hedge tore—not big, not alpha-big—just mean and fresh. A single brute, shoulders angry, eyes wrong with the kind of hurt that comes from watching your king die. It chose the gate like it had been told a rumor about human pride and wanted to check.
"Meet," Evan said. Wrench slid tusk to wood. "Tap." Aurora stroked tendon. "Sting."
The brute hit every lesson in order and learned them badly. It fell into the wedge, hard and ugly. The spearwoman's spear kissed its flank once to keep it honest and then returned to air.
[ENEMY DOWN][LOOT GENERATED]
"Carry," Evan said without looking at the raiders, and the archer and knife-man did, because competence is contagious.
They got the brute to the lane. The Chief's boy wrote +1 — Brute Hide / Tusks. The rope sagged into a tired smile.
The archer wiped his palms, looked at the tusk cart, then at Evan. "You know," he said conversationally, "if we'd shown up ten minutes earlier, this would be simpler."
"It would," Evan said. "You'd be tired and I'd be less polite."
The knife-man chuckled despite himself. The spearwoman planted her spear butt again and let the point sway like a clock.
"Final run," Evan said to the villagers. "Stake the last row. Tight."
They did. The gap gave up pretensions and became plants again. The hedge exhaled a breath that belonged to trees. The world tried to remember it was a farm.
The spearwoman rolled her shoulder. "So. Lane counting." She put one boot right on the rope and let it sit there. Not a breach. A tease. A suggestion of one.
Evan held her eyes. "Edge."
She held his in return. "Guild claim," she said, and took the full step, weight inside the beans, spear still low, as the archer opened his mouth to make it law with a smile—
—and the hedge ripped hard, deeper than any of the afternoon's theatrics, a sound like a page torn out of a book you aren't finished reading.
Aurora's hum snapped high. The Mech took a stance that meant if a god came through the gap it would at least have to argue first. The rope lifted under Evan's wrist like a live thing.
The spearwoman's foot was inside his rule. The forest's weight was inside his future.
"Edge," Evan said one last time, and had to choose whether to move her back or meet what was coming through.