Hans guided the extraction column around the wrecked clinic while Hajin held StarGuard over fifteen patients on litters and wagons. Two carts rolled behind them carrying eleven dead beneath sheets, and Ressa, Kenny and Dalen lay among those still shapes.
'All our dead come home, every last damned one of them, and nobody stays out here.'
'Eleven under those sheets, and that bastard Dreth still wants our wagons as trophies.'
"Litters up front," Hans barked, waving the carriers around a snapped axle, "and no wagon passes them until that bend opens."
Mara walked beside the mother and her sleeping infant, but the woman kept reaching toward Dalen's cart rail.
"We'll bring word to his family, I swear it," Hajin told her quietly, matching his pace to her slow wheel.
She nodded, but her gaze never left the sheet above Dalen's cart.
Cassie popped up above the southern ditch with her blade jabbing toward the brush.
