Urag announced it in the morning, after breakfast, before the workday began.
He stood in the center of the settlement and waited until everyone had gathered. It didn't take long—when Urag stood like that, the community knew there was something to hear. Conversations faded away, the last few people stepped closer, and Dravan slipped to the edge of the group with the expression of someone trying very hard not to attract attention.
Urag spoke briefly.
He would be traveling to the administration. The settlement had to be officially registered. He would be gone for four, perhaps five weeks. During his absence, responsibility would be shared between Durrak and Morra—Durrak for decisions that couldn't wait, Morra for the fields and supplies.
That was all.
No long speech. No encouragement. No promises that everything would be fine. Just the facts and who was responsible for what.
The community nodded. A few exchanged brief glances—not worried, more acknowledging, as if this were simply another piece of information to file away and work around.
Samuel watched.
They've been through this before. Not exactly this, but things like it. They know how to handle it.
Urag spoke briefly with Durrak, then with Morra, then with Bercx about the animals. He stepped over to Jorcx, and the two spoke for a while. Jorcx listened, nodded several times, and said only a couple of sentences in return. Urag nodded.
Then he walked over to Samuel.
Samuel hadn't expected that.
Urag looked at him for a moment.
"You know what needs doing in the fields."
"Yes."
"Then do it."
That was all. Urag turned away.
Samuel stood still for a moment.
That wasn't a question. He didn't tell me to try. He said I know. Like it was a fact.
He let that settle.
Preparations for Urag's departure took half a day. He packed little—a small travel sack, provisions for the road, and some money the settlement could barely spare. Bercx checked the horse Urag would be taking, inspected the hooves and tack, and replaced a strap he didn't like.
Keth came by and said something to Urag that Samuel couldn't hear. Urag listened, shook his head once, and replied. Keth stepped back and left it at that.
I think Keth offered to accompany him. Urag didn't want that.
Early in the afternoon, Urag rode out.
There was no ceremony. He mounted, looked once across the settlement, and then rode southwest. The settlement stood and watched him go—Durrak, Gustov, the children, Bercx beside the paddock. Dravan stood with Yeva nearby and kept watching until Urag was nothing more than a silhouette on the horizon, and then not even that.
Then everyone returned to work.
The first days without Urag changed the settlement in a way that was difficult to describe.
It wasn't chaotic. The work continued. Fields were tended, meals were cooked, animals cared for. Durrak handled the smaller decisions with a steady hand. He was different from Urag—less silent, a little more talkative, with a different approach to solving problems—but he solved them. Morra managed the fieldwork with the same wordless competence she had always possessed.
Still, there was a different kind of silence hanging over the settlement.
Not empty. More like a chair left unoccupied, whose absence you noticed anyway.
Samuel noticed it most clearly in the evenings. The fire was the same. The faces were the same. But the balance had shifted slightly. Smaller conversations grew louder. Decisions that would normally have gone automatically to Urag lingered in the air for a moment before Durrak or someone else picked them up.
It worked.
But you noticed who was missing.
One evening, Gustov said:
"A good leader is someone whose absence can be felt."
"Is that a compliment or a criticism?"
"Both."
Samuel thought about that.
That same evening, he met the last two members of the community whose names he still didn't know.
Weva—a quiet woman he often saw near Sarva, who turned out to be Sarva's daughter. She was learning the same knowledge of herbs and remedies, though she was younger and still studying.
And Gorc, an elderly orc who spoke so rarely and appeared so infrequently that Samuel had assumed he was one of several others he already knew. Gorc was the oldest member of the community—older than Vorzak, older than Durrak—with eyes that looked at people as if they had already seen too much to be surprised by anything.
He rarely sat by the fire.
And when he did, never for long.
That evening he sat down beside Samuel.
Samuel was surprised, though he didn't show it.
Gorc stared into the fire for a while without speaking.
Then:
"You work well."
Samuel looked at him.
"Thank you."
Gorc nodded once, slowly, then stood up and left.
Dravan, who had been watching, looked at Samuel with wide eyes.
"Gorc talked to you."
"Yeah."
"He almost never talks to anyone."
"I'd guessed."
Dravan looked after Gorc, who had already disappeared.
"He spoke to my father once. After a year. Just like that."
Samuel said nothing.
That seems to be some kind of unofficial honor around here.
He left the thought where it was.
The weeks without Urag developed their own rhythm.
Durrak led the settlement differently than his son.
Where Urag led through silence and brief gestures, Durrak led through conversation—not long conversations, not rambling ones, but he asked questions, listened, and let people voice their opinions before making a decision.
Some people preferred that.
Others didn't.
Torck was one of the few who openly showed that he preferred decisions simply being made without discussion. He worked as he always did, but whenever Durrak asked him something, he answered more briefly than necessary and waited for the conversation to end.
Samuel observed without interfering.
In the fields, he took on more responsibility than before.
Not because Morra told him to.
Because he saw what needed doing and did it.
A row that had been watered too late.
A tool someone had put away incorrectly that would have caused problems later.
A young plant leaning too far to one side that he straightened before it grew that way.
Jorcx saw all of it.
He said nothing about it, neither positive nor negative.
But he gave Samuel fewer instructions about what to do next.
That was his own form of recognition.
One morning, Morra addressed him directly.
Not with a correction.
Not with an instruction.
With a question.
"What do you think? Will the south side hold enough water, or should we redirect it?"
Samuel looked where she pointed.
The southern side of the fields sat lower than the rest, and rainwater tended to collect there. Sometimes that was helpful.
Sometimes it was too much.
He thought for a moment.
"Not yet. If it doesn't rain this week, then yes."
Morra looked at the sky.
Then at the ground.
Then nodded.
And did exactly what Samuel had suggested.
He stood still for a moment after she walked away.
She asked me. Not Jorcx. Me.
He let the thought settle and returned to work.
In those weeks, Dravan tried chopping wood again.
This time under Nogg's supervision.
Which meant Nogg stood nearby, showed Dravan once how to hold the axe properly, and then simply remained there without interfering unless necessary.
It wasn't necessary.
Dravan didn't cut himself.
That evening he reported the achievement to Samuel with a level of detail that wasn't entirely proportional to its importance.
Samuel listened.
"That sounds good."
"I can chop wood now."
"One log."
"One log is a beginning."
Samuel looked at him briefly.
That sounds like something Gustov would say.
"True."
Dravan seemed satisfied with that and continued eating.
In the third week without Urag, a small conflict broke out.
Brox and Greth disagreed about where a new water barrel should be placed. Brox wanted it closer to the shelters. Greth insisted that the spot he had always believed was correct was the only sensible option, and he muttered about it so steadily and persistently that Brox eventually lost patience and raised his voice more than usual.
Durrak came over, listened to both sides, asked three questions, and made a decision.
The barrel ended up somewhere neither Brox nor Greth had suggested.
Both accepted it.
Greth spent the rest of the day muttering in a tone that sounded slightly more reconciled than before.
Samuel, who had watched the whole thing from the fields, thought about how Urag probably would have solved it with a gesture and no words at all.
Durrak had taken longer.
But nobody had been left feeling ignored.
Different ways of leading.
Both work.
Toward the end of the fourth week, Samuel began noticing something he couldn't immediately place.
It started small.
A few rabbits in the fields he hadn't seen before.
Then more.
Then the small feeding marks along the outer rows—leaves bitten through, stems gnawed down, a plant that had been standing upright that morning and was simply gone by noon.
He brought it up to Jorcx.
Jorcx examined the damage.
He knelt down, looked at a chewed stem, then at the soil beside it.
He stood and surveyed the field.
"Rabbits."
"Yeah. But a lot of them."
Jorcx nodded slowly.
"And faster than usual."
Samuel looked at him.
"Faster?"
"They're feeding too aggressively. More than they should."
He said it matter-of-factly. No alarm. But with enough focus to show he took it seriously.
Samuel looked over the field.
The outer rows looked worse than yesterday.
The inner rows were still fine.
But if this continued—
This is the kind of problem that becomes serious before anyone realizes it.
"What do you do about it?"
Jorcx thought.
"Fences help. But we don't have enough material."
"What else?"
Jorcx glanced at him, then back at the field.
"I don't know yet."
It was the first time Samuel had ever heard Jorcx say that.
That evening, Morra discussed the problem with Durrak. Samuel sat nearby and listened.
Durrak listened carefully, asked questions, then looked toward Keth.
"Can you reduce their numbers?"
Keth looked at him.
"The rabbits?"
"Yes."
Keth thought for a moment.
"Not quickly enough if there are this many."
Durrak nodded.
The conversation ended without a solution.
They would observe.
They would see how the situation developed.
Samuel sat by the fire and thought.
He thought about the crystals he occasionally saw around the settlement—small magically charged stones some people wore as jewelry or kept in their shelters.
Once, he had watched Setha keep a moth away from a flame using one of those crystals. The insect had veered away as though repelled.
Does it attract insects or repel them?
He didn't know.
But moths were insects.
And if crystals affected insects—
He left the thought unfinished.
Not certain enough yet to say it aloud.
Dravan had already gone to bed an hour earlier.
Yeva had fallen asleep before the fire had even burned low, and Kessa had quietly carried her away.
Gustov drank his herbal brew and sat in the kind of silence that suggested he was thinking.
"Gustov."
"Hm."
"These crystals some people wear. What do they do?"
Gustov looked at him.
"Different things. Depends on the type. Some provide warmth. Some give off a faint light. Some..." He thought for a moment.
"Some attract things."
"And repel them?"
"That depends on the charge. Some can do both."
Samuel nodded slowly.
"Who knows the most about them?"
Gustov looked at him for a moment with the expression of someone who recognized the question behind the question.
"Sarva. And Vorzak."
Samuel nodded.
He would ask tomorrow.
The fire burned lower.
The night above the plains was clear and cool, spring already warm enough to sit outside, but not yet warm enough to make you forget the cold entirely.
Samuel sat and listened to the settlement.
It was quiet.
Somewhere out in the fields, the rabbits kept feeding.