The deep howl sat on the ravine like a lid.
"Reset what you can," Li Jianguo said, voice plain. "Then we walk."
They did not run. Rana retied the knot that would have kept worrying itself loose. Lin Chen chalked a small X where weight had lied earlier. Wang Lili pinned the last receipt to her plank and wrote enough under village once. Old Ma took one last corner of canvas with a palm that promised to remember. They lifted the tarps, shouldered sacks, and turned their backs to the cut.
The veld received them like a rumor it had already spread. Grass licked shins. Thorn hinted at malice. The moons made sure their shadows understood what they were for.
"Left eyes," Li said."Clear-ish," Yu Peng answered."Right eyes.""Clear," a runner said."Middle.""Here," Wang said, hearing the pack's interest as pressure more than sound.
Wolves took the margins - not charging - mapping. A young gray darted at the file's back. Rana's coil lifted like a lazy question and the wolf reconsidered dignity. The heavy presence from the ravine paced outside sightlines, patient as weather.
They reached the invisible line. Air thickened - accepted them - thinned. Inside, the square had already made a shape of itself.
"Lanes," Li Jianguo said, and people remembered what lanes were. Two rows of crates became rails. A tarp laid flat became a decision about where feet go. Lamp poles climbed like quick trees.
"Kids on rope," Sun Jing said, palm steady as gravity. She walked her cluster down the corridor like beads learning the string and seated them where breath stayed regular. "If your hand gets tired, you change hands. If both get tired, you sit and keep holding."
"Head-high lamps," Gao Fei suggested smoothly, arriving with a crate that might have been his or might have learned to belong to whoever touched it first. "Oil rationed to outside lanes first. Runners get a token on return, not before - keeps laps honest." He stacked lanterns like favors and looked at no one in particular when he said token.
"Oil by ledger," Wang Lili said, not looking up from her plank. She posted a quick card: LAMPS - OUTER LANE PRIORITY - SIGN OUT - SIGN IN. She wrote names for two volunteers who had already reached for wicks.
"Whistles," Old Ma said, and produced three from his pocket the way grandfathers produce candy. He had carved them from reed during the last hour like a man who did not trust teeth to carry all the messages. "One chirp left, two right, long for Dr. Zhang." He put one whistle in a boy's hand, one in a woman's, one at his own neck. "If you freeze, you look at me and I will unfreeze you."
"Clinic lane," Dr. Zhang said, clean-voiced as a cut. She set two blankets on the ground in an L and told people that was the shape of help. A kettle went beside her with steam and a ladle. "If it isn't bleeding, it waits. If it is, it gets pressed. Pressing is a job, not a favor."
The wall flexed under paws like glass deciding to be a drum. The pack's first probe struck low at the east curve where foot traffic had been earlier - smart. Lantern shadows flickered. A murmur lifted - the kind that picks up splinters if you let it roll.
"Inside," Li said, the word not louder - just placed where fear would step on it. "Walkers - go."
Four sentries broke into motion along the inside edge, twenty paces apart, eyes on air that made no promises. Yu Peng fell into the second slot without asking. Rana claimed third because her coil wanted to argue with the night.
The pack read the distribution and pressed the other side.
"One," Old Ma chirped - left. "Two," the woman answered from the right. People looked where the sound told them to look; this is why towns exist.
"Hold the line," Li said. "You don't love the wall - you let it love you."
The push at right came in smart - staggered bodies to beat rhythm, snouts low, claws high. The barrier rippled without showing it had rippled. Someone screamed. Someone else said, "It's fine," too fast for fine.
Wang moved to the right curve and knelt by a post that was only a post until you gave it a task. He slid a wire coil from Rana's dropped kit - two loops, a nail, a scrap of tin that wanted to be a plate. He set the nail into earth where it knew how to be ground. He wrapped the coil tight and laid the plate shallow by the barrier like bait no wolf could smell. It looked like nothing because it needed to.
"Don't," Sun Jing said behind him gently - meaning don't make a spectacle.
"Quiet trick," Wang said. He placed his palm flat over the plate and let Electromagnetic Pulse bloom under his skin and into the metal - not a show, not a flash - a static slap that made hair lift and teeth want to step back.
The surge went out like a thought that had chosen a shorter sentence. On the other side of air, four grays in the front rank flinched in the same heartbeat - pads skittered, claws scratched at an itch inside bones, noses sneezed at a storm they could not smell. Their push smeared sideways and tangled the second rank. The barrier hummed - pleased - or maybe that was only the way relief sounds when it looks for a job.
"What was that?" the boy with the whistle breathed, eyes wide.
"Rigged wire," Wang said, not changing his face. He lifted his hand from the plate and set the coil deeper, as if the ground had thought of it first.
The left chirped once - soft - a probe failing to grow teeth. The right was still persuasive. Li Jianguo counted with his chin - one, two, three - then pointed, and two runners shifted lanes without being told which way. He Qiang stood where his shoulders made a corner useful and for once didn't try to be interesting.
"Lantern," Gao Fei called and handed a fresh one to the outer line with a flourish like generosity. "Oil's tight - return what doesn't burn."
"Names," Wang Lili said. She wrote Lantern out → Darin and Lantern in → left blank and drew a box that would be offended if it stayed empty. People looked at the empty box the way you look at an open till.
The pack adjusted tempo. The big gray from earlier arrived at the right curve and paced, watching where sentries breathed and where they pretended not to. It didn't hit. It wrote notes with its paws. The presence behind it - heavier - matched step.
"Don't break," Li said. "If it asks for a panic, charge it a price."
A surge came low - five at once - noses together, eyes spread. The coil's second slap told their feet a lie about the ground. Two tumbled, one barked like it had been stepped on by ideology, and the pack regridded without losing temper. Smart - and patient - which is worse.
"Whistles," Old Ma reminded softly, and the boy remembered air has jobs and gave it one: two short to the right. The sound traveled without bragging.
"Med," the long note came from the left. A man stumbled along the inside lane, hands clasped to a forearm where a stray nail had expressed its opinion. He didn't cry, which is sometimes useful and sometimes stupid.
"Sit," Dr. Zhang said, and the man's body obeyed because hers made meaning. "Who is pressing here?""I am," Wang said, arriving a breath before he was needed. He found pulse above the wound and told it to choose smaller roads. "Talk to me," Dr. Zhang said to the man, not because she cared about biography - because talking borrows blood from panic.
The barrier took another insult. A pot lid skittered. Someone near Gao Fei's stack said, "We should pay the runners more - they're saving us," and Gao, who had not said it, nodded as if shepherding the notion in from the cold.
"Runners are paid in posted tokens," Wang Lili said without looking up. "Post-run. If you want higher rates, put your name under pledge and we discuss when the wall isn't talking." She clipped a smaller sheet to the board: RUNNER BONUS - PLEDGE HERE - DUE AFTER NIGHT.
Three names wrote themselves as if the pen had wanted a job.
The right push tried variety - bodies alternating high-low to confuse eyes, claws testing for places where flesh believed too much in itself. The coil trick worked twice and then taught less - learning had happened. Wang slid the plate an inch, turned the nail, bled the next pulse sideways. The front rank shivered again without understanding why and slowed enough for fear to finish cooling.
"Walkers," Li said. "If you're tired, say I am tired and hand your lane to the next legs. Pride is for funerals."
Two swapped without drama. The left chirped once, twice - then went quiet. The big gray shifted to the left and tested there. The heavy presence watched both sides and did not spend itself - a banker of violence.
"Oil," Gao Fei intoned cheerfully, handing a can to Old Ma with a smile that assigned the old man as partner. "We'll have to talk rationing tomorrow - for now, my table's collecting empties. One token back for two returns." He turned to the line before anyone could vote on that sentence.
"Board," Lili said, and added OIL RETURNS → 2 = 1 TOKEN beneath LAMPS. If a rule must exist, write it before it learns bad manners. People started setting empties where the sign told them to.
A child at the rope started to cry for no reason her mouth could name. Sun Jing put a palm on her back and breathed slow until the child borrowed the tempo. The cry half-happened again - then decided not to.
The wolves tried a coordinated double - a press at left, a half-breath later a press at right, hoping human heads would swivel toward the loud and away from the important. Heads did not swivel in time because whistles told them where to look before eyes decided. Old Ma chirped once, the woman twice, and the square looked like it had learned a drill it could carry into a second night.
Wang's coil warmed his palm through the dirt. He fired a shallow pulse at the left to step on the front paws' idea of timing and bought two heartbeats for Yu Peng to plant his feet the way a door does.
"Hold," Li said, not for the wall, for pride. The word landed and put weight where it needed to.
The push faded - not like a retreat - like a note held past comfort and then allowed to go home. The big gray paced the right curve one last time, then loped left as if to teach a different class. The heavy presence didn't bless or curse - it simply turned away and was elsewhere. Small shapes flowed with it, a flock finding another field to insult.
The coil on the ground cooled from opinion back to metal. The boy with the whistle realized he had been holding breath and took a noisy one because he had earned it.
"Tally," Wang Lili said, posting numbers on her plank: WOLVES DOWN OUTSIDE WALL: 0 - honesty, because the barrier had done the work tonight and knives had stayed polite. INJURIES: 6 minor, 1 moderate. LAMPS: 17 out, 11 in, 6 burning. OIL RETURNS: 9 - token due 4. Her pencil made the village feel like a ledger that wanted to balance.
"Any singing?" Li called to walkers."Not sing," Rana said at the left, coil over her shoulder. "Just sulk.""Not sing," Yu Peng said at the right, and you could hear how much he wanted to fight something he could outrun.
"Med lane stays," Dr. Zhang said. "If you lie down I will step on you, and if you snore I will make art with tape."
Laughter ran along the crates, brief and not hungry.
"Lanterns - trim," Gao Fei suggested, snuffing wicks with a flourish that spared oil. "Runners, last lap - bring me your empties - token on board." He set a lamp high and let the light make his teeth look trustworthy.
A whistle sounded far down the inside line - a single chirp - left - the quiet kind that meant attention, not alarm. Heads turned that way because the village had learned the shape of the sound.
Wang set his palm on the coil one last time to feel if the trick still had manners. It did. He left it buried where ground could keep a secret without gossiping.
The wall breathed like glass deciding to be a drum again only if asked.