By evening Dan stood on a high ledge beyond the eastern edge of the village, watching the line of people stretching far below between dried palms and pale, dusted shrubs. Hungry. Worn thin. Barefoot. Some carried children. Others carried empty water skins, hoping to fill them. A few stumbled and stayed down longer than they should have.

  Bob stood beside him, silent, taking in the same sight.

  “If we take them all,” he said at last, “there won’t be a tomorrow for us.”

  Dan nodded. He already knew. Every store, every careful count he had kept in his head was collapsing under the weight of new mouths. He had delayed this step for as long as he could, waiting for rain.

  It had not come.

  “Tomorrow we gather the elders. We begin resettlement.”

  “You mean to send them away?”

  “I mean that no one dies on our land.”

  The next day, when the sun climbed high, the square was crowded. Beside Dan stood the commanders of the fighting bands, the heads of workshops, the shamans who carried memory and lore. Clay tablets lay on a flat stone, and on them a map drawn in charcoal. Riverbeds now dry. Empty lakes. Hills. Sparse brushland.

  “A new village will stand here,” Dan said, pointing northeast. “And another here. Each place has a riverbed and workable ground. Game still passes through. They will be closer to the hunting trails. Each settlement will dig its own well. Each will raise a ditch for defense. We will give them seed, goats, tools, and weapons. We will give them the name Agha.”

  “And who goes?” someone asked.

  “Those who arrived last,” Dan replied. “And those who volunteer. It will be hard there. But there will be more chance. Fewer mouths for one well. More food for one bow. That is how we survive. That is how they survive.”

  He looked over the crowd.

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  “We are not driving people out. We are spreading. We are no longer a single village. We are a people. And a people should not die of thirst in one place. Every new settlement will be a branch. Not a burden. A shield.”

  At first no one spoke. Then old Amat gave a slow nod. The shaman Keo said their ancestors had done the same in the time of the last Kho-arra, remembered now only in fragments. “When the water left, they followed it. And they carried their fire with them.”

  Within a week, wagons lined the wall of the capital. Sacks of grain. Water skins. Hides. Stone and bone tools. Bundles of arrows. Warriors stood ready to escort them. In their eyes there was worry and resolve. In their chests a small, stubborn hope.

  Before the departure, there were long and difficult days.

  In the council hall Dan, Bob, and several senior commanders bent over the tablets. They chose sites carefully. Places where a well might be dug near a dry riverbed or at the foot of a hill. Places near hunting paths. Places that could be defended. Places with at least a little shade.

  “We cannot just send them off,” Bob said. “They have to live. This is not a move. It is the building of new ground.”

  “Then we begin with those who know how,” Dan answered. “Hunters. Craftsmen. Herders. Those who can stand without handouts. We group them in bands. Each band like a small tribe. With its own elder. Its own fire.”

  Choosing those elders proved harder than anything else. Many were strong but untested. Stubborn but shallow. Dan spoke to each candidate himself. Sometimes for hours. Sometimes only for a few minutes.

  He did not look for strength of arm or smooth words. He looked for the calm that holds men steady in a fight. Calm and firmness.

  From among them he chose five. The first five leaders.

  “They will report directly to me,” he said at the gathering. “I will know how you live. If you need help, we will send it. If trouble comes and you must return, we will take you back.”

  To keep the roads safe between settlements, he formed light patrols traveling on foot and with small wagons. They would carry news, watch the paths, search for the lost, and judge the state of the land. Each warrior in those patrols understood he was more than a guard. He was a vein between heart and hands.

  Still, there was grief.

  Those leaving wept as they looked at the ones who stayed behind. Some tried to slip back under cover of night, begging to remain. But morning came all the same, and the wagons rolled out. Dust rose. Wheels groaned. Fear sat in many eyes, but something else burned there too. The first spark of a future.

  That morning Dan stood on the wall and watched them go. Bob stood beside him.

  “It has begun,” Bob said.

  “Yes,” Dan replied. “We are more than a village now. We have roots. Even if the trunk burns, the tree will live.”

  Even in drought, the old settlement kept sending roots into the earth.

  That was what made it a tree.