More Hands

They expected to reach Beregost first.

A roof. A gate. Beer, if Maeril had any say over the matter. A room where the ground did not climb through the soles of their boots.

For the better part of an hour, the road had tilted toward town. Wagon ruts deepened and bootprints crossed one another in the mud. Woodsmoke, damp wool, horses, tilled earth, and the sour edge of distant tanneries gathered in the air.

Maeril shifted her pack higher. “Another half hour. I can almost taste the beer.”

Rishi studied the traffic ahead. “Close.”

Above them, the hawk rode a slow circle on the weak afternoon air. Maeril borrowed its eyes.

The Coast Way sharpened into a pale line through green-brown fields. Cloakwood darkened the west with tangled boughs. Ahead, Beregost gathered in roofs and chimneys beneath the bright sign on Lathander’s tower.

Before the town, where the Lion’s Way broke toward Candlekeep and the sea, tents covered the ground.

Too many tents for a caravan. Too many fires set close together. Wagon covers had become roofs; sailcloth sagged beneath patches of old sacking. Children moved through the smoke in numbers that tightened something cold beneath Maeril’s ribs.

She returned to herself. “There is a camp ahead.”

Rishi lengthened his stride. “Soldiers?”

“Families. Refugees, I think.” Maeril let the hawk’s view settle into a map she could carry. “Too many children. Low fires. Bad ground.”

He kept walking.

The smell reached them as they descended the last rise: sweat, wet ash, old cloth, stale food, mud stirred with waste, and the sour weight of sickness. A baby wailed somewhere among the canvas. From another direction came a cough deep enough to tear at the lungs.

Maeril’s fingers closed around her staff.

The Coast Way bent around a shallow depression before rising again toward Beregost. Town roofs stood beyond it, close enough for the people below to see where they had not been admitted. Between the town road and the Lion’s Way, the camp sagged into a bowl of churned earth.

“Between town and nowhere,” Maeril murmured.

No one had chosen the site for shelter. The camp had been left to gather there.

The first wagons occupied the higher rim. Later tents leaned into the lower ground, where rain collected beneath blankets and bare feet. Ropes ran from wheels to posts to thornbushes, holding up cloth that no longer pretended to be dry. Along one edge, a shallow drainage ditch had become a dark, foul vein.

“Of course,” Maeril said. “Put the poorest where everything runs downhill.”

Rishi’s jaw set.

At the camp’s edge, he slowed. Children noticed them first. Two dirt-streaked faces stared at Maeril’s horns and green skin. One child pointed until the other slapped the hand down with the solemn wisdom of someone who had learned that attention could be dangerous.

Maeril gave them a small, honest smile.

A woman stirring thin stew watched from a low fire. A man with a bandaged hand stopped mending a harness. Someone whispered inside the nearest tent.

“Let’s not walk through the middle like conquering heroes,” Maeril said under her breath. “People will ask you to fix every cough you pass.”

“That is not a problem.”

“I know. That is what worries me.”

A rough voice carried between the tents before he could answer.

“Lift, not drag. Gently, for the Broken God’s sake—under the frame, or you’ll twist him. There.”

Maeril turned. Rishi had gone still.

Four exhausted people were trying to carry a makeshift stretcher through the mud. Their arms shook, and their footing failed twice in three steps. At the head stood an orc in battered plate and a travel-stained cloak, his boots sunk to the ankles. One broad hand steadied the frame where the bearers could not.

A greatsword rose over one shoulder. Strapped beside it with equal care was a shovel. Its blade had been worn bright by work.

A red cord circled the orc’s wrist above steel dulled by weather. Sweat and mud streaked his face, and his eyes held the patience of someone who had been tired too long to resent it.

Rishi spoke his name softly. “Kargun.”

The orc turned.

For one breath, Rishi saw stone under candlelight instead of canvas: a mausoleum, Elisa’s dawnfire burning where morning had been forgotten, Kargun kneeling in ash while tears cut clean paths through the soot.

Then Lantern Hall. A greatsword laid on the floor as though it had become too heavy to carry. A voice asking not for forgiveness, but for another way to live.

Mud closed over the memory. The stretcher swayed between its bearers. Someone coughed.

Kargun met Rishi’s eyes. “Rishishura.”

He waited until the nearest bearer had both hands under the frame before releasing it. The stretcher dipped anyway and nearly slid from their grip.

“Set him by the cart,” Kargun ordered. “Higher ground. Then water from the north barrel, not the ditch. If I catch you filling from the ditch again, I will make you drink your own sense first.”

The bearers found their footing and obeyed.

Kargun slogged toward them. Up close, he smelled of iron, sweat, mud, smoke, and long work. The shovel across his back looked less carried than lived with.

“You’re early,” he said.

Rishi’s mouth almost moved. “For what?”

“Trouble. You people usually arrive after a problem has learned to be dramatic.”

Kargun took in Maeril’s staff and circlet, her mud-dark boots, and the hawk circling above. “Passing through?”

“We meant to be,” Rishi said.

“And the Broken God dropped you here anyway.”

Rishi inclined his head. “It seems so.”

Maeril cleared her throat. “I’m Maeril.”

Kargun looked at her properly and nodded once. “Kargun.”

Maeril glanced from the greatsword to the shovel. “Which one gets more use?”

“The shovel.”

“So, more mud than blood.”

Kargun glanced at the mud caked to her boots. “Seems we have a common enemy.”

Rishi looked past him. “What happened?”

Kargun answered with facts.

“Floods inland. Bandits on the smaller roads. One village lost its mill, another its fields. Fever took hold in a third. People moved toward the Coast Way because roads feel like answers when homes stop being one.”

He tipped his chin toward Beregost.

“Some got into town. Children. The worst cases. Those with coin or kin. The rest stopped here.”

“Why here?” Maeril asked.

“No one stopped the first wagons. Afterward, everyone pretended the camp had chosen itself.”

Maeril exhaled through her nose. She knew what it meant when neglect disguised itself as permission.

“Rain came three nights ago,” Kargun continued. “The ground turned. Sickness followed the water.”

Rishi looked from tent to tent. A child lay with mouth open and breath too shallow. A man shook beneath two blankets. Beside the ditch, a woman rinsed a cloth in water that should not have touched skin.

“What kills them?” he asked.

“Bad water. Fever after. Hunger underneath. Fear through all of it.”

Maeril glanced toward the town. “The wells?”

“One shared by permission. Too far for the weak and not enough for the many. The Song of the Morning is stretched thin. They send what they can.”

Kargun’s voice held no bitterness, which made the truth harder.

“They ration miracles. I do not blame them. If they spend all their light here, someone inside goes dark. Still.” He looked once toward Lathander’s tower. “Light does not seem to like being asked to choose.”

Rishi kept his eyes on the sick.

Maeril moved far enough past Kargun to read the slope. Her attention left individual faces and followed lines: ground, water, smoke, tent ropes, children’s paths, the places where flies gathered, the patches where people had traded dryness for safety.

“This is a bowl,” she said.

Kargun nodded. “That was my thought. Less elegantly.”

“It catches everything that should be leaving.” She sniffed and frowned. “Not only runoff. There is a twist in the air. Someone tried to cleanse this place?”

“A young acolyte, I think. Or a hedge-priest passing through. Before I arrived.”

“Of course.” Maeril’s tail snapped beneath her cloak. “Someone told the filth to stay politely contained and forgot to tell it where to go afterward.”

Kargun’s attention settled fully on her. “You can see how it is failing.”

“I can smell the stupidity from here.”

“Useful.”

“Unfortunately.”

Rishi nodded toward the shovel. “When did you arrive?”

“Six days ago. I was on pilgrimage. Meant to offer labor at the temple for a tenday. I saw this and asked to stay.”

“They let you.”

“They were relieved to.” Kargun touched the shovel strap. “Conscience strains less when someone else stands where the overflow gathers.”

A boy ran too close to the ditch. Kargun turned his head.

“Darvo.”

The child stopped.

Kargun did not raise his voice. “What did I say?”

Darvo looked at the ditch, then at his feet. “Not past the rope.”

“And?”

“North barrel.”

“And?”

The boy sighed with the full exhaustion of the very young. “Mud is not soup.”

“Good. Go tell your sister.”

Darvo ran.

Maeril watched him go. “You have been holding this together with a shovel and threats.”

“And poor theology.”

The dry humor left his voice. Fatigue showed at last in the set of his mouth.

“I can lift. Dig. Keep men from drawing blades when fear makes them foolish. I can stand between two people until their anger remembers hunger is the enemy. But I cannot see all the flows—water, sickness, magic, authority.”

His thumb found the red cord at his wrist.

“I have two hands.”

Smoke moved low through the camp. Someone coughed. Mud sucked at passing feet while wary faces watched the three of them.

Kargun lowered his voice.

“Last night, I stood on that rise and told Ilmater I had reached the limit of what one back could carry. I asked for help that knew how to mend in ways I do not.”

He looked from Rishi to Maeril.

“I do not presume to say the gods sent you. I do not trust them to be that tidy. But the timing.”

He left the rest unsaid.

Rishi could have answered with doctrine. He chose what they could use.

“You asked for more hands,” he said. “You have four.”

Kargun looked over the muddy lanes, sagging canvas, and thin faces. His shoulders lowered by one small measure.

“Good. Then let’s make use of the mercy before it gets ideas about being symbolic.”

He turned to Maeril. “Tell me where the water wants to go.”

Then to Rishi. “Tell me who cannot wait until morning.”

Kargun settled the shovel across his back.

“I’ll keep the camp moving. Tell me where you need me.”