“Less than a mile.”
“Can everyone manage it?”
His jaw tightened. “Not quickly.”
“We don’t take the direct path,” I said, seeing it as I spoke. “The smoke will cut across it before the people get through. We move north first, then east along the lower ground.”
Wulfric studied the wind-bent smoke. “There is a deer path.”
“Wide enough?”
“For one cart. Mayhap two abreast on foot.”
“Then that’s our route.”
Godwin was already turning.
Wulfric caught his arm. “Send runners. No carts except food, the injured, and children too small to walk. Leave the rest.”
I looked at him. Months ago, he might have tried to save everything, now he didn’t hesitate.
“Tell them what matters,” he said.
I nodded. “People first.”
He held my gaze for the space of one breath.
The camp was controlled chaos as children cried, goats objected, chickens escaped with the supernatural talent poultry possessed for making emergencies worse, and somewhere nearthe shelters a man was trying to load a wooden chest onto a cart already filled with sacks of grain.
I grabbed one end.
“What’s in this?”
“My wife’s cups.”
I stared at him.
“Are they magic?”
“What?”
“Do they stop fire?”
“No.”
“Then leave them.”
His wife appeared, shoved the chest off the cart, and said, “I never liked them, anyway.”
We moved people in groups so no one vanished in the smoke. Wystan counted children twice, because his first count included the goat, while Gilda, despite her wounded arm, stood near the path and struck anyone who tried to turn back with a walking stick she had somehow acquired.
“You should be on a cart,” I told her.
“You should be less tiresome.”
A gust of wind pushed smoke through the trees. It wasn’t thick, not yet, but close.
“Move!” I shouted.