One of the women by the window had stopped eating.
Her bowl sat cooling on the table beside her while she leaned toward the glass, watching the road beyond the darkening front path. The farmer in the other chair had done the same. Between them, the two road-facing places had become a kind of stillness that pulled at everyone else in the room.
Nairis noticed it when she came back from the pantry with the empty tray.
Three supper bowls waited to be cleared. A pitcher near the hearth was almost empty. Mara had to lift two abandoned cups before she could wipe the next stretch of the long table.
The woman at the window glanced over her shoulder when Nairis approached.
“Anything?” Mara asked from the table.
“Nothing,” the woman said.
Nairis set the tray down.
“One of you keep the road. The other can help with the room.”
The farmer kept one hand on the back of his chair until the woman beside him said she would take the watch. Then he picked up the nearly empty pitcher and went toward the kitchen.
Nairis picked up two bowls from the nearest table.
“One person at the road,” she said, loud enough for the small room to hear. “Everyone else keeps working. If the watcher sees something, they call out only what they can actually see.”
The stable boy near the hearth nodded.
The rule was not new. What changed was that Nairis no longer had to keep the whole room pointed at the door to make it matter.
She carried the bowls to the kitchen and came back with the pitcher full.
The woman at the window had not moved. Her hands were folded now, one over the other, against the edge of the table. Every few breaths she shifted slightly to keep the road in view past the reflection of the lamplight.
Nairis set the pitcher down.
“I’ll take the next turn.”
The woman looked relieved enough to show it.
“How long?”
Nairis glanced toward the hearth. Orren had just added wood. The top split would burn down enough to need turning before too long.
“Until that settles.”
The woman followed her glance and nodded.
The burning split gave them a measure everyone in the room could see.
When the turn changed, Nairis took the chair nearest the window and pulled it slightly aside so she could see both the road and the front path.
The glass was cooler than the room. She felt it along one cheek before she realized she had leaned closer.
There was almost nothing to watch.
The road ran out beyond the lamps, pale where the last light still reached it and then darker toward the bend. Rain had left a soft sheen in the ruts. The hedge beside the path stirred once when the wind moved through it. Farther off, one upstairs window in a house across the square went dark.
Nairis kept waiting for the road to become useful.
It did not.
Behind her, ordinary work made small sounds she had stopped noticing earlier in the day. Bowls touching the washbasin. A chair leg dragged half an inch across the floor. Mara scraping crumbs into her palm. Orren speaking low to someone at the board.
Nairis looked back once when the front latch shifted under a gust.
Nothing entered.
She turned toward the road again.
The waiting was different when it belonged to one person at a time. There was no murmur to absorb it, no constant exchange of guesses. Only the stretch of the road and the responsibility to notice if it changed.
By the time Orren turned the top split in the hearth, Nairis understood why the woman had looked relieved.
Her eyes ached from holding the same distance. Her shoulders had tightened without her noticing. Twice she had almost stood because a darker patch near the bend seemed to move before she realized it was only the hedge shifting in the wind.
She did not call either time.
When the wood settled, Nairis stood.
“Your turn,” she said to the stable boy.
He came over at once.
Nairis pointed toward the chair. “Road and front path. If you see someone, say where they are. If you can tell who, say who. Don’t add the rest.”
He sat down and leaned forward with both forearms on his knees.
Nairis left him there.
That mattered more than she expected.
For the first time since the delay had become a thing the whole room carried, she turned her back on the road while someone else was responsible for it.
She picked up the pitcher, checked the names on the household list, and moved one family farther down the east-lane route after remembering they had gone to stay with kin for the night. Then she helped Mara clear the last of the supper bowls.
A few minutes later, the stable boy called, “Cart coming from past the square.”
Every head lifted.
Nairis put the bowl she was carrying on the board and waited for him to keep looking.
“One horse,” he said after a moment. “Lantern on the left side.”
The room held there, ready to move if the report changed.
The stable boy stayed at the window.
Then he frowned.
“It’s turning.”
The cart disappeared toward the lane before it reached the Hearthstone.
Nobody rushed to the door.
Mara picked the bowl back up and handed it to Nairis.
“Good watch,” Nairis told the boy.
He looked pleased, though he tried not to show it.
The next turn went to the farmer, now back from filling water. The woman who had watched first carried empty cups to the basin. Orren brought in a bundle of split wood and left it beside the hearth. Mara wiped the long table clean enough for morning.
Nairis found a scrap of paper and wrote four names in a short column beside the route list. She put a small mark beside the stable boy's name for the turn he had already taken.
The farmer saw it when he came to the window.
“You keeping a list for this too?”
“So nobody has to wonder whose turn comes next.”
He settled into the chair.
Nairis went back to the board.
The watch did not make the road less empty. It did not give her an answer or make the late hour easier to explain. It did keep the whole room from spending itself on the same stretch of darkness.
By the time the first four names had each taken a turn, the Hearthstone had found a rhythm it had not had before. One person watched. The others worked, sat, ate what was left, or went home when they needed to. Nairis kept the messenger routes beside the watch order and shifted names as people came and went.
The road remained empty.
The next watcher took the chair without being asked.
Nairis turned back to the board and reached for the water pitcher.
Hoofbeats reached the room before the watcher said anything.
They came faintly at first, softened by wet ground and distance, then sharpened across the square.
The woman at the road-facing chair leaned closer to the glass.
“Rider,” someone near the hearth said.
Nairis set the pitcher down.
“Not yet. Keep listening until you can see it.”
Three people had already turned toward the door. The farmer beside the hearth pushed himself half out of his chair.
The watcher lifted one hand without looking back. “One horse, I think.”
The farmer stayed standing.
The sound grew louder, enough now for Nairis to count the rhythm. One horse at a steady pace. No second set behind it. No wheels.
The watcher shifted in her chair.
“There. Crossing the square toward the north lane.”
Everyone who had turned toward the door held where they were.
The rider came briefly into the lamplight outside the cooper’s shop. Nairis caught only a dark coat, pale horse, and the wet flash of the animal’s flank before the pair passed beyond the window angle.
The hoofbeats changed direction and began to fade.
The watcher sat back.
“Local rider. North lane.”
Nairis nodded. “Good.”
The farmer lowered himself into his chair again.
No one laughed at having turned. No one complained that it had been nothing. The watcher had heard hoofbeats, and hoofbeats had been there. The rest had waited until the road supplied it.
Mara came out from the kitchen carrying a stack of rinsed bowls.
“What was it?”
“One rider,” Nairis said. “Went north.”
Mara set the bowls on the board and went back for more.
The people nearest the hearth returned to their cups and bowls.
Nairis moved the pitcher beside the cups and checked the watch list. The woman at the window had another few minutes before the next turn. Nairis marked the local rider beside the time because it had been directly seen.
A chair scraped near the hearth. Someone fed another split into the fire.
Then metal struck stone outside.
The sound snapped across the front of the Hearthstone, sharp enough to bring two people fully to their feet.
A second clatter followed, then a hollow roll.
The watcher twisted toward the door.
Nairis raised her hand.
“Keep the road.”
The woman faced the window again.
Nairis looked toward the stable boy. “Front path. See what made that.”
He crossed to the door, opened it only wide enough to slip through, and pulled it nearly shut behind him.
Cold air swept across Nairis’s ankles before the latch settled.
People stopped speaking while the boy was outside.
No hoofbeats followed. No voices. The watcher kept her face turned toward the road.
Nairis hated how quickly her own mind had reached for an answer before the boy had even stepped outside. Dropped gear. A horse striking something. Someone arriving too fast.
The sound had given her none of that.
She moved one cup aside and waited.
The door opened again.
The stable boy came back holding a dented tin bucket by its handle.
“Wind knocked it from the cooper’s step,” he said. “Rolled into the stones.”
He set it near the door.
The farmer exhaled through his nose.
Nairis looked at the bucket. One side had been flattened slightly where it had struck the edge of the path. Water dripped from its rim onto the floorboards.
All that urgency had come from a bucket no one in the room had seen fall.
“Put it back when your turn comes off,” she said.
The stable boy nodded.
The watcher called from the window. “Road’s clear.”
Nairis picked up the chalk beside the slate.
“Call what you have first. Where, how many, which direction, whatever you can actually see or hear. Conclusions wait.”
The farmer glanced toward the bucket and nodded.
The woman at the window lifted two fingers toward the road. “Movement by the bend. One shape, low, moving left.”
Nobody stood.
Nairis turned her head but stayed beside the board.
The watcher waited.
“Dog.”
A few people looked toward the window, then back to what they were doing.
Nairis felt the difference immediately. The room had not ignored the report. It had let the report finish.
She wrote four words at the edge of the watch list: place, number, direction, kind.
The headings would not fit every report, yet they gave the watchers a clear starting shape.
When the watch changed, the farmer took the chair.
He settled slowly, rubbed both hands over his knees, and looked out toward the road.
Nairis moved through the room while he watched. She carried two cups to the basin, shifted the household list farther from a damp ring on the board, and checked the folded route paper beneath it.
The farmer spoke without turning.
“Light near the south end. One, moving toward the square.”
Mara stopped with a cloth in her hand.
Nairis did not ask whether it was them.
The flame appeared between two houses, vanished behind a hedge, then showed again. It bobbed lower than a mounted lantern.
The farmer leaned forward.
“Person walking. One.”
The figure reached the edge of the square and turned toward the baker’s lane.
“Lantern in hand. Going west.”
Nairis marked nothing. The report was complete and irrelevant to the missing warriors.
Mara resumed wiping the table.
Someone near the hearth lowered their cup and said, “So it’s nothing for us.”
“Nothing that changes what we know,” Nairis said.
A few minutes later, a door slammed somewhere across the square.
The farmer glanced that way and kept watching the road.
“Door,” he said after a moment.
Someone near the hearth smiled faintly into their cup at the plainness of the answer.
Nairis did not join it. The ordinary things mattered because everyone in the room had become ready to make them extraordinary.
That was the danger in waiting this long. Not danger on the road. Danger in the gap between a sound and what people wanted or feared it to be.
The watch changed again.
The woman in the shawl took the chair. She adjusted it an inch toward the glass and rested both hands in her lap.
Nairis went to the board and began counting the cups still out in the room.
A horse snorted outside.
Every muscle along her back tightened before she could stop it.
The woman at the window said, “Horse at the hitching rail. One. Dark coat.”
Nairis kept her hand on the stack of cups.
The front latch opened.
A man entered carrying a wrapped parcel under one arm. His hat was wet and his boots left dark prints across the floor. He nodded toward Nairis and lifted the parcel slightly.
“Bread for my sister on east lane. Has anything changed?”
“Nothing confirmed,” Nairis said.
He nodded, accepted the answer, and crossed to the hearth for a moment of warmth.
The horse outside had remained a horse until the man himself supplied the rest.
Nairis moved another cup into the stack.
The watcher called, “Two figures at the far bend.”
The room went quiet enough that Nairis heard the fire shift.
She stayed where she was.
“Two figures walking across the road,” the watcher added after a moment. “Going toward the lower houses.”
Nairis waited.
The watcher watched another moment.
“Gone from view.”
People resumed moving without anyone going to the door.
Nairis picked up the stack of cups and carried it toward the basin.
Behind her, the woman at the window remained in place, waiting for whatever the road actually showed next.
By the time the next watcher took the chair, two names on Nairis's list were already wrong.
The woman from east lane had gone home to put her mother to bed. The farmer near the cooper's shed had promised to return after checking his cattle, but his second turn now sat only three names away. A man who had been waiting beside the hearth stood and pulled on his coat when he heard the church bell mark the hour.
“My youngest won't sleep if I'm not there,” he said.
Nairis crossed his name off the watch order and told him to go home. He hesitated only long enough to remind her that he had been due after Mara.
“I'll move it.”
He looked toward the window.
The woman in the road-facing chair kept her eyes on the dark road.
Nairis folded the man's place out of the list with one line of chalk and shifted the next two names upward.
This time he left.
The latch closed behind him. Cold air reached halfway across the room before the door settled again.
Nairis looked down at the list.
Two names crossed out. One uncertain return. Three people still working in the Hearthstone who had already taken turns. Mara had another turn coming. Orren had not taken one yet because he had spent most of the evening between the kitchen and the woodpile.
The stable boy leaned over the board.
“I can take his too.”
Nairis looked at him properly.
He blinked hard, then rubbed one eye with the heel of his hand. His hair had dried into uneven curls around his forehead after the rain, and there was soot on one sleeve from where he had leaned against the hearthstones.
“You can carry the next wood bundle in.”
His mouth tightened.
“I can watch.”
“I know. I need you awake enough to notice what changes.”
He looked toward the window, then away.
Orren came through the kitchen passage with an empty basket.
“Send him with me,” he said. “I need another armful before we shut the shed.”
The boy frowned at the basket, then took it.
Nairis watched the two of them go through the back passage.
The next two names on the list belonged to people who were already rubbing tired eyes.
She erased the old spacing and rewrote the order closer together.
Mara came to the board carrying a folded cloth.
“You've put yourself in twice.”
“For now.”
Mara looked at the list.
“That's not the same as fixing it.”
Nairis set the chalk down.
“No.”
The current watcher called, “Road clear.”
Nairis glanced at the hearth. The top split had burned low enough that orange showed through the cracked black surface.
“How much longer can you stay?” Nairis asked Mara.
“Through another turn. Maybe two. Then the kitchen needs closing.”
Nairis nodded.
The woman at the window shifted in her chair and rubbed both palms down her skirt.
Nairis raised her voice enough for the people still in the room.
“I need one short turn after Mara before anyone else goes.”
A woman near the hearth lifted her hand halfway. She was leaving for mill road, but she could stay for one turn first.
Nairis added her name.
“Then go as soon as you're done.”
The woman nodded.
That covered the next gap.
It did not cover the rest of the night.
Nairis took her own turn before Mara's.
The chair felt different now. Her body remembered the earlier strain before she had been sitting a full minute. The same dark road. The same wet hedge. A little less light in the square. Fewer windows lit in the houses beyond it.
Behind her, people kept moving.
Mara stacked the last dry cups. Someone swept under the long table. The woman who had offered one final turn tied her shawl tighter while waiting.
Nairis held her eyes on the bend.
A shape moved near the lower hedge.
She leaned forward.
Small. Four-legged. Gone behind the ditch grass.
“Animal by the lower hedge,” she said.
No one stopped working.
The shape appeared again.
“Dog.”
Mara kept stacking cups.
Nairis let her shoulders drop by a fraction.
The watch had become quiet enough that a report could pass through the room without taking it over.
When her turn ended, Mara took the chair.
Nairis went straight to the board.
She rewrote the remaining names according to what people were already doing.
Mara now. Then the woman going toward mill road. After that Orren, once the wood shed was shut. Then the farmer if he returned. If he did not, Nairis would cover the gap.
She did not like the last part.
The stable boy returned carrying split wood against his chest. Orren came behind him with the basket.
The boy set the wood down too quickly. One piece slipped and struck the floor.
He bent after it, slower than before.
Nairis pointed toward the water bucket.
“Fill cups. Then sit by the hearth.”
His face tightened again.
“You're keeping me off the watch because I missed my footing once?”
Nairis looked at the dropped wood, then at him.
“Because you're moving slower with half the load you carried an hour ago.”
He followed her glance.
The argument went out of his shoulders.
“I can still help.”
“I know. Fill cups.”
He took the pitcher.
Orren looked at Nairis after the boy turned away.
“He'll hate that for five minutes.”
“He can hate it with both eyes open.”
Orren's mouth shifted, but he did not answer.
Mara called from the window.
“Someone crossing near the square. One person. Walking east.”
Nairis looked that way.
The figure passed between two houses and vanished down a side lane.
“Good,” she said.
The woman waiting for the next turn stood before Mara had to ask.
“I've got it.”
Mara left the chair and went back toward the kitchen.
Nairis watched the handoff.
No explanation. No hesitation. One person stood, another sat, and the road never went unwatched.
That was useful.
She took the chalk again.
The list no longer needed equal turns from everyone. It needed clean handoffs between people who were already present and alert.
She drew a line from Orren's name to the wood notation beside the hearth.
“You take the watch when the next wood is settled,” she told him.
He nodded.
She marked the woman at the window as the current turn, then added the returning farmer beneath Orren with a question mark.
The front door opened.
The farmer came in rubbing his hands together.
“Cattle are fed. Wife says if I'm staying much longer, I owe her the morning milking.”
Nairis erased the question mark and asked him for one turn after Orren before he went home.
“One,” he said.
She nodded and left his name in place.
He moved toward the hearth.
The stable boy handed him a cup of water.
The watch order had shortened without breaking.
Later, the woman at the window failed to call a cart moving along the far end of the square.
Nairis saw it while carrying folded cloths toward the kitchen.
A low cart, one horse, moving south. It was visible for several breaths before the watcher noticed.
“Cart,” the woman said at last.
Her voice carried embarrassment before anything else.
Nairis set the cloths down.
“One horse. Southbound,” the watcher added.
The cart turned away from the Hearthstone and disappeared.
The woman rubbed one eye.
“I should have seen it sooner.”
Nairis looked at the watch list.
Her turn had lasted longer than the earlier ones. Nairis had stretched it when the mill-road woman left and Orren was still outside with the wood.
“That turn was too long,” Nairis said.
The woman dropped her hand.
“I missed it.”
“You saw it before it mattered. The schedule is the problem.”
Nairis crossed a line through the old spacing marks.
“Shorter turns from now on.”
Orren came to the window as soon as she called him.
Nairis pointed to the hearth.
“When that top split burns halfway down, hand off. Don't wait for it to settle.”
He took the chair.
The woman stood and stretched both hands behind her back.
“That's barely any time.”
“Enough time to stay sharp.”
She looked toward the road, then nodded.
Nairis shortened every remaining turn on the list.
The farmer after Orren. Then Mara if the kitchen was closed. Then Nairis. Anyone else who returned could take one before going home.
The stable boy watched her write.
“Could I take a short one?”
Nairis looked at him.
He was sitting now, cup in both hands, eyes steadier than before.
“After you've rested through two turns.”
He nodded.
That was different from the earlier refusal. It was not a reward and not a punishment. It was a condition she could actually judge.
Another pair left the Hearthstone a few minutes later. One had been on the watch list. Nairis crossed the name out without trying to replace it immediately.
Orren was still at the window. The farmer stood ready behind him. Mara came from the kitchen wiping her hands dry.
“I can take the one after his.”
Nairis added her.
The top split in the hearth burned down to the new mark.
Orren stood.
“Clear road.”
The farmer took his place.
No gap.
Nairis looked over the room.
Fewer people. Fewer cups. Less light. The same empty road.
The watch was still there.
She moved the list closer to the edge of the board where the next person could see it without asking.
The farmer leaned toward the glass.
“Nothing moving.”
Nairis picked up the folded cloths again and carried them toward the kitchen.
Nairis came back from the kitchen with the folded cloths gone from her hands and stopped at the board.
The watch list sat near the edge where she had left it. The farmer was still at the window, one shoulder angled toward the glass. Mara had closed the kitchen shutters. Orren was stacking the last dry bowls beneath the counter.
The room no longer resembled the welcome they had prepared that morning.
Nairis looked at what still did not belong.
Two folded table runners remained on the bench near the wall. A bundle of ribbons lay beside the lamp box. Six clean cups had been set apart earlier for the returning warriors, arranged in a straight row beneath the shelf.
She picked up the runners first.
Mara saw her and came over.
“Those too?”
“Yes.”
Mara gathered the ribbons without being asked.
Nairis carried the runners to the cupboard and pushed them onto the upper shelf. When she came back, the six cups were still waiting in their line.
She broke the row apart and stacked them with the others.
One cup remained in her hand.
For a moment she held it by the rim.
Then she set it upside down on the shelf.
The farmer at the window spoke.
“Road clear.”
Nairis checked the top split in the hearth. Half burned.
“Two more minutes, then Mara.”
The farmer nodded.
Nairis moved to the front door and opened it.
Cold damp air touched her face. The front path was clear from the threshold to the road. No chairs had drifted back into the way. No buckets stood near the step. The stable boy had returned the cooper’s dented bucket earlier, and the only thing beside the wall now was the wood basket.
She stepped outside long enough to look both ways.
The square was darker. Most of the upper windows had gone black. A few lamps remained at the baker’s and the smithy. The road beyond the turn stayed empty.
Nairis came back inside and shut the door.
“Keep the front clear through the night,” she said.
Orren looked up from the bowls and nodded.
Nairis went to the pantry.
The small reserve Mara had wrapped earlier sat on the cool shelf. Bread. Meat. Roasted roots. Enough for six plates if they came in hungry.
Nairis checked the cloth around the bread and tightened it where the corner had loosened. She touched the side of the covered dish holding the meat. Cool now.
Mara came in behind her.
“If they come tonight, I can heat the meat in the small pan. The hearth will still be up.”
Nairis nodded.
“And if it’s later?”
“Then we heat it in the morning.”
The words landed harder than Nairis expected.
Morning.
She looked at the shelf again.
“Keep it here,” she said. “Don’t hold the kitchen open for it.”
Mara’s face changed slightly, but she only nodded.
They returned to the front room.
The farmer stood from the watch chair as the hearth mark reached the handoff point.
“Clear road.”
Mara took his place.
Nairis pulled the route list and household sheet together on the board.
“Orren.”
He came over.
She pointed to the names still marked for tonight.
“These three are close enough to reach if we have real news. East lane can still go by foot. Mill road waits unless somebody actually comes in from that direction. The cooper’s shed is covered if the farmer stays another turn.”
The farmer, still standing nearby, said, “One more.”
Nairis marked it.
Mara called from the window.
“Nothing moving.”
Nairis continued.
“If anything comes after the next two turns, we wake only the houses we know need the news first. No sending people through the whole village in the dark for a maybe.”
Orren studied the sheet.
“And if they arrive themselves?”
“Then we light the front and send from here.”
He nodded.
Mara looked back from the chair.
“The welcome lamps?”
Nairis’s eyes went to the pair above the door.
They had stayed dark through supper. Their glass was polished and ready. Wicks trimmed. Oil filled.
Before Nairis could answer, the woman in the shawl spoke from the hearth.
“Could light them now.”
Nobody else said anything.
The woman rubbed her hands together near the fire.
“They’d see them if they’re close.”
Nairis looked toward the window.
Mara waited.
The road beyond her was black except for the ordinary lamps along the square.
“We keep the ordinary lamps,” Nairis said. “The welcome lamps go on when somebody sees them coming.”
The woman in the shawl lowered her hands.
“So they stay dark.”
“Until we have someone to welcome.”
The room accepted that without argument.
Nairis moved the lamp box farther beneath the counter so no one would catch a foot on it.
The stable boy had recovered enough to take a short watch. He stood from the hearth when Mara’s turn ended and went to the window without being called.
Mara came back to the board.
“The farmer follows him, then you. Orren can take the one after if he’s still able.”
Orren nodded. “I can.”
Mara folded the cleaning cloth once and carried it away.
The stable boy called, “One person crossing the square. Walking toward the smithy.”
Nobody moved.
A few breaths later he added, “Gone inside.”
Orren continued stacking bowls.
The woman in the shawl pulled her chair a little closer to the hearth.
Nairis looked over the front room again.
The changes had stopped needing explanation.
One person watched. The rest used the room. Cups were cleared. The fire was tended. People left when they needed to and said where they could be reached. Reports came in plain language and ended when the facts ended.
No one had said the missing warriors were in danger.
No one still behaved as though they would walk through the door before the next pot cooled.
Nairis felt both truths at once and did not know what to do with the space between them.
She returned to the pantry one more time.
The reserve was still there.
She counted it without moving anything.
Six.
When she came back, the stable boy was standing from the chair.
“Clear road.”
The farmer took his place.
Nairis checked the household list and crossed out one family that had already gone to bed elsewhere. She moved another name under east lane after Mara reminded her they were staying with relatives there.
The list was smaller now.
So was the room.
The man whose head had been dipping woke enough to stand and put on his coat.
“I’m going.”
Nairis looked at the sheet.
“South side?”
He nodded.
“We won’t send unless something changes.”
“Good.”
He left.
The farmer kept the road.
Orren put the last bowl away.
Mara closed the kitchen door but did not latch it.
The welcome lamps remained dark.
Nairis stood at the board and checked everything again.
Watch order. Household locations. Messenger routes. Food reserve. Front path. Ordinary lamps.
Nothing she could verify had changed about the warriors themselves.
Everything inside the Hearthstone had changed around that absence.
The farmer called, “Road clear.”
His turn ended.
Nairis went to the window.
The chair was still warm from him.
She sat.
The road stretched beyond the glass, dark and wet and empty.
Behind her, Mara lowered one lamp at the long table. Orren banked the hearth. The stable boy drank the last of his water. The woman in the shawl pulled her coat around her shoulders but stayed.
No one asked Nairis what the delay meant.
No one asked whether the warriors were almost there.
The Hearthstone held its watch.
Nairis kept her eyes on the bend until the top split burned to the handoff mark.