Chapter Six: The Rules of the Moving Camp
The stew was rabbit and wild onion, thick enough to stand a spoon in.
Rin ate two bowls without tasting anything except heat and salt.
No one spoke until the second bowl was empty.
The grey-haired woman who had opened the gate finally sat across the fire from her.
Her name was Mara.
"You're small," Mara said, not unkindly. "Small keeps you alive longer these days. How old are you really?"
"Seventeen," Rin answered.
Mara's eyebrow lifted a fraction, but she only nodded.
They let her keep the chair leg across her knees while she ate.
No one tried to take her pack.
No one crowded her.
When the bowls were collected, Mara spoke again, low enough that only the inner circle heard.
"We're not a settlement. We're a caravan.
We stay nowhere longer than ten days.
We collect supplies: food, medicine, fuel, ammunition.
Saving people is secondary.
Helping children is the only exception we make."
A man with a burned face and gentle hands (he had the fire-gift) added, "We've got twenty-three mouths right now. Eight are under fifteen. We lose kids, we don't sleep. That's the rule."
Rin's gaze drifted over the group.
Two teenagers sharpening arrows.
An old woman mending socks with thread pulled from an old curtain.
A boy no older than nine asleep against a dog that watched Rin with calm yellow eyes.
All of them thin, all of them armed, all of them listening.
She thought of the four men by the rail yard.
The false kindness.
The laughter afterward.
Her fingers tightened on the chair leg.
Mara noticed.
Of course she did.
"We're not saints," Mara said quietly. "No one is, anymore.
But we're not them.
If we were, you'd already be in the stew, not eating it."
A few tired laughs rippled around the fire, more breath than sound.
Rin did not laugh.
She was remembering the smell of blood on moonlit gravel.
She was remembering how easy it was to wear a smile while planning worse.
Mara leaned forward, elbows on her knees.
"You can walk out that gate right now.
No one will stop you.
We don't chain people, and we don't chase.
But if you stay till morning, you work.
You carry your weight.
You watch the kids when it's your turn.
And you don't ask where we're going next until we're already moving."
Rin studied every face in the firelight.
None of them looked at her the way predators look at meat.
They looked at her the way tired people look at sharp tools: useful, possibly dangerous, worth keeping an eye on.
The burned man offered her a tin mug of weak tea.
She took it with both hands, letting the warmth sink into her palms.
"I've seen what people do," she said, voice low.
Mara waited.
"I've seen them smile first."
Mara nodded once, slow.
"We all have," she said. "That's why we move.
That's why the fence comes down every tenth dawn.
Staying still gets you eaten, one way or another."
Silence settled, broken only by the pop of burning pine and the soft breathing of sleeping children.
Eventually Mara stood.
"North corner room is empty.
Cot's short, but you'll fit.
Door locks from the inside.
Window faces the playground; you can be over the fence in ten seconds if we turn out to be monsters after all."
Rin almost smiled at that.
Almost.
She stood, small shadow among taller ones.
"I'll take the cot," she said. "One night.
Maybe two."
Mara's mouth curved, not quite a smile.
"That's how most of us started."
They gave her a blanket that smelled of woodsmoke and soap.
They left a candle stub and a box of matches on the floor beside the cot.
They closed the door and let her lock it.
Rin sat on the edge of the narrow cot fully dressed, chair leg across her lap, pack at her feet.
Through the thin walls she could hear the low murmur of voices making plans, the soft laughter of children being tucked in, the creak of someone taking first watch.
No screams.
No dragging footsteps.
No smell of blood.
Yet.
She stayed awake until the candle burned down to a puddle of wax.
Only then did she lie down, boots still on, chair leg under the thin pillow where her hand could find it in the dark.
She slept lightly, the way small animals sleep in open fields.
And for the first time since waking up empty, Rin dreamed of other heartbeats nearby (steady, living, not yet trying to kill her).
Morning would decide if that was a comfort or a trap.
For now, it was enough.
(End of Chapter 6)