The visible column left at dawn.
It looked exactly the way Cassian would expect.
Slow.
Stretched thin.
Vulnerable in all the obvious places.
Ninety people moved along the western road with supplies, carts, children among them, and just enough visible disorder to resemble a town still learning how to evacuate under pressure.
It wasn't the town.
The real column had left hours earlier.
Three hundred and twenty-two people moved east through rougher terrain Feld had helped map, following a route Imperial scouts had little reason to watch. It was slower ground, harder on the legs, but hidden well enough that the people using it disappeared almost immediately behind the low ridges.
No banners.
No carts large enough to catch attention.
No obvious fighters stationed where a distant observer might count them.
Just three hundred and twenty-two people moving quietly toward safety while ninety volunteers gave Cassian exactly what he expected to see.
