The cable drew breath; Evan found the off-beat and moved his wrist.
"Slack—hold—pull," he said, wrist a metronome with opinions.
The line obeyed, dampers thudding dully. The cable answered with a tighten that arrived a half-beat late. Cross-brace took load and did not confess. Mud-slick hides drank a slice of the hum and gave it back in tatters.
"Again," Evan said. "Slack—pull—hold."
Aurora stitched a micro spark into a damp patch near the cable's kiss. Steam hissed. The cloth went from wet to hot to stubborn. The hum slipped once, like a boot on algae stone.
"Mech—pry against brace," Evan said.
The Goblin leaned the wrench into the rope at the brace junction, not to lift but to make the cable negotiate with something that didn't care about music. Metal met fiber; the cable's tone grew angrier, less certain.
"Knife—eyes on my wrist. No cut unless I say. Archer—stay on beat."
"Copy," the archer said, hands honest, mouth quiet for once.
The hedge poured that anger into body. A Weaver vaulted on the cable's pulse, hooks reaching for rope already in its song.
Evan beat it to the barline. "Drop—pull," he called. The rope sagged then caught; the Weaver planted into wrong timing and stumbled belly-first over dampers. "Meet." The Mech shaved limb to post. "Eyes." Aurora tapped bead-cluster with a sting; not bright, just rude. Evan took one step into the furrow, let rope climb his forearm for two counts, and gave the line back before it could own him.
"Drive," he said.
The wedge and the brace did what dead things and wood do under command. The Weaver clattered into carcass and made the sound of glass regretting its career. Evan touched the head hinge with the Pumpkin tip—short burn, disciplined.
[ENEMY DOWN: HEDGE WEAVER (LV?)] [CHECK][LOOT GENERATED]
The cable pulled harder, as if mourning with anger. Dampers thumped; bundles tried to become saints. The hum sought a cleaner path and found none it liked.
Evan rolled his shoulder. "Again. Slack—hold—pull."
The cable's tighten arrived, off by a half-beat, then corrected with a mean, clever little shift. Smart. He didn't make it a contest; he made it work.
"Aurora, heat the third damper, not the first," he said. "Make the wrong place firm."
A micro-arc kissed mud-soaked cloth; steam sighed. The cable's hum snagged on a stiffness it hadn't baked into its plan.
"Brace," Evan told the Mech.
The Goblin pressed wrench and body into the brace until wood announced its boundaries and agreed to keep them.
For one breath, the rope stopped trying to be a song and remembered it was rope. The cable's tone frayed. Evan didn't cheer; he spent the moment.
"Harvest while it sulks," he said. He knelt, hands sure. UI highlights bloomed on the dead Weaver—glands neat as punctuation, thread coils like commas.
[HARVESTABLE: THREAD COILS | VENOM GLAND] [CHECK][YOU OBTAIN: THREAD COILS ×? | VENOM GLAND ×?] [CHECK][COINS: +? | REPUTATION: +? (Novice Village)] [CHECK]
Flags blinked, polite and insistent.
[HUNDREDFOLD: CONTEXT FLAGGED][POTENTIAL AMPLIFICATION: RARE SILK / DEFENSE CHAIN / LOCAL RENOWN] [CHECK]
"Later," he told the clerk in his periphery.
The hedge changed its mind in the worst way—second cable. It whispered out lower than the first, duller, as if braided around bone, and clamped two posts at once like a patient vice.
"Cross-brace, two more," Evan said. "Chest height—tie through ribs. Archer—on me. Knife—ready."
He counted the hums. First cable: long-long-tighten. Second: long—longer—hold. They weren't friends; they were cousins who argued in public. That gave him a wedge of time no wood could provide.
"On my word," he said. "Cut between dampers three and four."
"Cut… the rope?" The knife-man's boredom fled.
"Between dampers," Evan said. "We keep the brace and the law. Mech becomes the gate for two beats."
The humming rose. He let it crest. "Slack—hold—pull." The first cable missed by half a beat; the second arrived on a long. Evan's wrist marked the off-beat between their wrong marriage.
"Cut," he said.
One nick. Rope parted with a breath, not a scream. The line sagged into the brace and hides and tusks. The first cable pulled a length of dead rope that refused to sing. The second tugged on mud and cloth and got nothing elegant.
"Mech—gate," Evan said. The Goblin stepped into the cut, wrench held like a door had decided to be a weapon. "Spear—pin any thread that tries to bridge." Her haft pressed silk into bark without letting the point trespass into beans. "Archer—two-step pull on the brace only."
The hedge threw a Weaver across the cut. It found Mech instead of song. Wrench met limb; Aurora flicked eyes; Evan stung hinge; the thing chose to die on furniture.
[ENEMY DOWN][LOOT GENERATED]
"Edge team—carry outside," Evan said. The archer and knife-man lifted, annoyed and obedient. The Chief's boy wrote with serious elbows.
The first cable, robbed of elegance, tried drag. It hauled dead line toward the hedge and got a carcass rib tied through that insult of cloth and tusk. The second cable hunted a clean angle and found mud.
Evan looked at his orb—silk spooled around glass like a trophy. An idea arrived with a taste of risk.
"Spear," he said. "Knife. On me."
He lifted the staff and let a long coil unwind into his left palm—sticky, strong. "We don't lasso a live thing," he said. "We dress what it leaves us." He walked the coil along the dead rope segment and looped it around the first cable just behind where it kissed the line. "Pin," he said.
The spearwoman set her haft against a post and leaned, pressing silk and cable and bark into a marriage none of them preferred. The knife-man took two quick ties around a carcass rib and a tusk and made a triangle ugly enough to survive.
The cable tried to choose away. Silk held because silk is a liar with truth's hands.
"Aurora," Evan said, "kiss the damper, not the cable." Steam puffed. The tie locked as the cloth tightened. The cable's hum lost note and sulked into load.
"Good," Evan said. "Again at six."
They repeated the ugliness another span along the line. The first cable became a sad decoration. The second discovered that a brace tied through bones holds opinions.
The hedge did not stop being a hedge. It sent one more Weaver, slower and angrier; they denied it the music it wanted and gave it furniture instead.
[ENEMY DOWN][LOOT GENERATED]
"Close," Evan said. "Row—set. Pull." Stakes bit. The gap pinched. Silk that had wanted to be sky turned into thread choking on wood.
The rope—shorter now—sagged with dignity. The cross-brace thrummed like a low, tired animal. The field took a breath that belonged to farms.
He harvested fast, the way a man does when quiet feels rented. Glands, coils, a shard of pale chitin that the UI politely flagged.
[HARVESTABLE: CHITIN SHARD (GRADE ?)] [CHECK][YOU OBTAIN: CHITIN SHARD ×1][COINS: +? | REPUTATION: +?] [CHECK]
Flags chimed again.
[HUNDREDFOLD: CONTEXT FLAGGED][POTENTIAL AMPLIFICATION: RARE SILK / CHITIN QUALITY / DEFENSE CHAIN] [CHECK]
"Later," he said. He stood, checked the Mech's cracked lens with two fingers, and pressed the dented plate near its ribs.
[ALLY STATUS: MECH GOBLIN — INTEGRITY 41%] [CHECK][ALLY STATUS: THUNDER SPRITE — STABLE]
"Lane—count," he told the Chief, and the man nodded without looking away from the ledger. "Edge team—carry. Edge only."
They moved. The spearwoman's spear butt stayed in the lane like law. The archer—competent hands, glib mouth currently off-duty—hauled without complaint. The knife-man rolled a shoulder to hide how his forearms were beginning to shake.
They returned. Evan rolled another carcass into the wedge and pushed the broken post deeper so the split grain had fewer decisions to make.
The hedge said nothing. That was not the same as being done.
Silk on the orb trembled once, like a plucked hair. Evan felt the tremor through his thumb—a low pulse, not strong, not weak, counting. Somewhere deeper, something else counted with it.
He didn't look at the raiders. He didn't look at the Chief. He looked at the gap that had decided to speak in math and answered with the only rule that had kept this many people and beans upright all afternoon.
"Edge holds," he said.