He worked behind the storage huts until the light began to slant. He cleaned his tools in sand and ash. He folded his small pouch and tied it twice. He was almost done when a shout split the air from the south gate, raw and urgent.
Hunters stumbled in with a makeshift litter. A boy lay on it with a strip of cloth bound to his thigh. Blood had soaked the fabric through and spread in a dark halo. Dagan rushed forward with the others, face pale beneath his bluster. "Toma," he choked, grabbing the boy's hand. "Hold on."
Chaos pulled the village apart and pushed it back together in the same breath. Someone brought boiling water. Someone else argued for a hot iron. Seris pressed her staff against the ground and called for calm, but fear shook the edges of her voice. Haron crouched at the litter, fingers finding the pulse at the boy's ankle, eyes measuring the color of his lips.
"Not the iron," he said. "Not first. We will kill the leg before the wound does."
He looked up once and found Kael already there at the margin of the crowd, still as a post. Haron's gaze flicked toward the shadow of the storage lane. Kael understood. He slipped away without drawing a single whisper behind him.
In the hollow behind the huts, Kael opened his pouch. The world narrowed to small things. A smear of paste against a leaf to test its bite. A pinch of powder into water until the haze cleared and left something clean behind. His fingers moved without tremor. The air around him smelled of resin and smoke.
When he returned, the crowd had turned louder, as if noise itself could staunch blood. Haron lifted his head at Kael's approach but did not announce him. The hunter simply shifted a fraction, making space where no space had been. Kael knelt. He unwound the soaked cloth with careful, steady motions. The wound was a boar's kiss, ragged and deep along the outer thigh. He cleaned it with water that still steamed and laid a thin layer of paste along the torn edges. The boy flinched, then stilled. The swelling eased, just enough to quiet the panic in the air.
"What is that," Seris demanded. She did not step closer. Her staff scraped the dirt. "What have you spread on him."
"Something that slows rot," Haron answered before Kael could be made to speak. He did not raise his voice. Somehow the words carried anyway.
"Let the boy rest."
Dagan clenched and unclenched his fists. His eyes darted between Kael's calm hands and his cousin's breath. Fury and helplessness warred in him.
"If he dies," Dagan said, "it is the orphan's fault." The words trembled, but they made him feel taller.
"He will not die today," Haron said.
They moved the litter to Mira's hut because it was closest and warm. Night fell by degrees, bringing the clean cold that came after fear had wrung the day dry.