Wang moved before the third.
The boy's shoe cleared the twine loop. Wang's hand found the back of his collar and put him on his heels so gently it looked like balance. "Rope is your friend," he said, and put the boy's palm on the line. The child blinked, startled back into his body.
The thin cry threaded the lamps again - aoo - aoo - aoo - silver and soft, as if someone had taught it to go around adults.Pup, the meaning arrived through Beast-Tongue. Lost. Come. Bring soft ones.
"Not ours," Wang said to Sun Jing, pitched for her, not for the crowd. "It's calling small."
She nodded once, not looking at him, voice steady for the children. "Hands on rope. If your hand hurts, use the other hand. Count the knots. Five knots means you're home."
"Gate," Li Jianguo said, arriving at a jog that had no panic in it. "Rescue team on me. Runners, left and right flanks. You -" he pointed to a teenager and a woman with a butcher's forearms "- keep the cluster stuck to that rope like it's made of sugar."
Wang Lili was already at the board. "Names out, names in," she said, pen tapping a column that didn't exist a minute ago. "Say it loud, I write it twice.""Wang Shuai," Wang said, casual."Peng, Yu," said the delivery driver with the bright eyes."Rana," said the mechanic with oil in the lines of her fingers."Brukk -" Old Ma started to say an old name that wasn't his; corrected himself with a grunt. "Ma Xing. I'll sit the rope."Lili's pen flew. She circled child beside a small name Tao, because Sun Jing had provided it without raising her voice.
"Med pouch," Dr. Zhang said, tossed a roll and a strip of tape. She hooked a finger at Wang. "If someone stops breathing, tilt, not yank. If someone bleeds, press, not think."Wang caught the pouch. "Press, not think."
Gao Fei slid near the forming line as if he'd been invited. "Priority access for rescues," he suggested lightly, smile for the crowd, eyes for the rule. "Tokens after - we don't make heroes queue."
"Heroes don't need lines," Li Jianguo said, not pausing. "Gate, now." He didn't look at Gao again, which made it policy.
They ran. The Level-1 barrier met them like warm glass. It let them go because they belonged to the word rescue. The veld outside took their ankles and asked questions later.
Grass hissed at knees and shins; thornbush learned to be important. A pale moon fed edges to everything mean. The thin cry braided through the wind and beds of sleepy insects. Right, Wang's strange ear translated. Not far. Hurry. Bring small.
"Left eyes," Li said, and the runner on the left said, "Clear.""Right eyes," Li said, and Yu Peng said, "Clear-ish.""Middle," Li said. "Shuai, with me.""Here," Wang said.
They moved as a line that wanted to remain true. Rana carried a coil and two stakes like ideas; Yu Peng jogged with a blade held like letters he already knew; He Qiang was not invited and did not argue, a rare choice that bought him future points.
The ground dipped into a shallow basin. Grass bent wrong there - small bodies had rolled and then stood. A child's scarf - blue with white fish - hung from a thorn as if someone had looped it there for demonstration.
"Mark," Wang Lili would have said if she were here. Wang said it for her, soft. He pictured the circle on her board filling later with what mattered.
"Pause," Li said. The line crouched, not because they'd been told - because knees wanted to be useful. The cry came again, closer and bent, as if it bounced off a hollow."Den?" Rana whispered."Shallow," Wang said. "Not home. Stage."
He let Beast-Tongue ride the next sound and listened to the grammar of it. Tiny hurt, the cry embellished, bring soft; pack will say good job. There was pride in it, taught, not born.
"Two flanks testing," Wang said, not loudly. "Right heavier.""How do you -" Yu Peng started, then closed his mouth because now was not the hour for curiosity.
Li shifted the line toward a narrow throat between two thorn clumps. "Rana, stakes. Peng, low left. Shuai, take middle - keep it quiet."
They went through the throat single-file, every foot placed where the foot in front had proof. The den was a scoop in the veld's hide - grass flattened in a careful circle, a little net of pup-strings braided from sinew tied to a branch and tickled by the wind. The blue fish scarf nodded like a helpful liar.
"Whoever taught this," Rana said under her breath, "has hands."
"Eyes up," Li said. He tilted his chin toward the far bank of the scoop where shadow wore fur and then didn't. "Close," he added, for his own blood, not for theirs.
The boy - Tao - had learned to keep quiet from someone competent. He was inside the circle, wrapped like a comma in grass, eyes wide, lips pressed, hands tucked under knees. He was three steps from the branch with the strings. Three steps from history.
"Hey," Wang said softly. He kept his voice where you would keep a cup of tea in a sickroom. "Home's this way." He didn't say Don't move. He said, "Can you count?"Tao nodded, too fast, then steadied."Count to five with the rope," Wang said. "One." He held up a hand where the boy could see the fingers. "Two." He kept the hand steady. "Three."The boy rose. The branch sighed with the movement. The pup-strings sang a little on the wind as if complimenting a job done well."Four," Wang said, and reached."Five," Tao mouthed, and Wang had him.
The grass on the right lifted like water over a stone. Three wolves stepped out at once, not charging - pressing. The left side rippled and rethought. Pup-eyes peered from the far edge. The thin cry changed color - found! found! - and died, proud.
"Line," Li said calmly. "Feet, not arms."
Wang slid back with Tao's ribs tucked under his forearm, dao-saber low. He felt the boy's breath stutter against his hip and gave him his own steadiness to borrow. I will hand you to the rope, he told his body; his body nodded.
The right wolf made one testing step, slow. Yu Peng answered with a lower step and the kind of smile you show a dog when you both know who is brave. The wolf blinked and rechecked math.
"Rana," Li said, and Rana drove a stake into the throat where they'd come in. She threaded the coil through and back to a second stake and made a trip-line that wasn't proud but would do its job.
"Back on my count," Li said. "Three. Two -"
A shape heavier than the rest paced the far rim. Not closer - wider. You could feel the idea of it in the grass, the way taller grass leans to taller wind.
"See it?" Wang asked, and didn't look away from the small."I see it," Li said. "We go now."
They went.
The line flowed backward through the throat, not fast enough to call it panic, not slow enough to invite teeth. Rana took the last stake in a smooth pull that didn't brag. Yu Peng kept his shoulders the width of a door. Wang kept Tao's ear under his palm so the boy could hear a heartbeat that was not his.
The right wolf decided to learn and lunged. Rana tugged the line at the exact bad height for knees. The wolf taught itself about falling and made the lesson loud. The others paused, offended that physics had joined the conversation.
"Walk," Li said again, the word a metronome. "Don't give them run."
They walked. The veld tried to be a maze; they told it no. The thin cry had gone quiet; a real pup made a small, confused sound that had no job. The heavier shape on the rim kept pace and didn't spend itself.
"Back eyes?" Li called."Clear-ish," Yu Peng said, a little too bright, which meant no blood yet."Middle?""Clear," Wang said, which meant small alive."Left?""Clear," Rana said, and you could hear the wrench in her pocket want to fix the night.
They crested a low shoulder of earth and saw the lamps like coins pasted to a wall that wasn't visible. The Level-1 barrier had never looked like anything until you wanted it.
"Home rope - five knots -" Sun Jing's voice carried from the square, calm and inevitable as bread. Wang watched Tao turn his face toward it without meaning to. The boy's feet got better.
A pair of wolves tested their left again - nothing dramatic - just pressure like a rude shoulder in a crowded bus. Yu Peng let his blade talk once: a short, flat sentence that said No. The wolves reinterpreted and decided to be patient.
"Don't break," Li said, and the line didn't.
The grass opened to ground they'd trampled earlier. Footprints became a path because they said so. The lamps grew. The sound of people doing jobs grew - a pot lid; a ledger page; a runner's breath.
The far right cracked and tried to pour teeth into their ankles - four bodies at once, low and mean. Rana flung the ramshackle coil like a question she didn't want answered later; it caught two in sloppy blessing. Yu Peng shouldered one with the flat of his blade; Wang dropped his weight and let the fourth collide with the place where his knee had been a second ago - just footwork, nothing you could write on a board. The wolf's chin hit dirt; its pride hit later.
"Walk," Li said, and because the word hadn't changed, the night obeyed.
They reached the line where the air hardened. It seemed to lean toward them, as if the wall had missed them and only just remembered how to be a wall.
"Inside first," Li said. "Small first."
Wang stepped so Tao's face crossed the invisible plane before his ribs did. The boy gasped as if the air tasted different; maybe it did.
"Home rope," Sun Jing said, and Tao's hand found it like a promise he had earned.
Behind, a gray slipped faster, offended at the idea of losing. Its paws skidded on nothing. The wall threw its momentum back like a polite friend returning a bad joke. The bigger shape didn't lunge. It watched, paced, weighed, learned.
Wang felt the lesson being written in the tall grass for later. He did not look at it. He passed Tao to Sun Jing's hand and to Wang Lili's pen at once - two kinds of home.
"Name in," Lili said softly, and under Tao she wrote back in block letters a child could read later and feel the shape of.
Dr. Zhang's palm checked Tao's ribs and found breath returning. She didn't say good; she said, "Water sip. Not big."
Wang stepped back one pace because too many hands make a story heavy. The pack outside flowed along the wall, not a charge - a mapping. The big presence paced with it, a shadow that had ideas.
"Gate - two," Li Jianguo said, counting the rest of the team in without looking away from the outside. Rana and Yu Peng crossed. Stakes came last, because tools like to be thanked.
The wolves pressed once more as if to ask if the math had changed. The wall did not answer in words.
Wang stood on the village side of the line and did nothing you could list. He let Tao's hand slide down the rope to five knots. He watched Sun Jing count with her breath. He watched Lili's board take the in as seriously as the out.
Outside, the big gray changed speed again just to see who would flinch at which rhythm. The darker shape matched it like a teacher demonstration.
Wang didn't flinch. He put his hand on the post nearest the gate and pretended it mattered.