Chapter 124: Six Months

The Wall spent the next six months preparing for something nobody could properly describe.

Afterward, even the people who had lived through those six months found it difficult to explain what had happened during that time. There had been no single great event that marked the beginning or the end of it. Instead, everyone had simply worked. Every day brought another task, another problem, and another thing that needed to be prepared.

The grain came first.

It was also the largest part of the preparations, and it took almost the entire summer.

Vess and Bree spent six weeks renegotiating the core contracts because apparently the guild couldn’t accept the term that Vess had negotiated and came back again with new complains.

But Bree was not someone to be messed with, he pushed the northren guilds harder than Encrid had originally suggested. Bree, as it turned out, had been waiting eleven years for someone to give him the chance.

The price of a level-four core from the Wall increased by almost a third.

The northern guilds complained about it, but they still paid. There was nowhere else they could buy one after all.

The extra money was used to purchase grain.

Then more grain.

By the end of the sixth month, the Wall had twenty-eight weeks of grain stored away. Vess looked as though the process had aged him by four years.

The stone came next.

The Works tripled their winter repair schedule. When that was not enough, they tripled it again.

Volk and his men spent the entire summer repairing the western face of the Wall. They also replaced the drainage grates mentioned in Corr’s report. The new grates were twice as thick and made entirely of iron, and they were installed along the whole northern face.

Then there were the people.

That was the part Encrid watched most closely.

The school continued to grow.

By the fourth month, it was running four classes every day. By the sixth month, it was running six.

The bathhouse was no longer large enough to hold everyone, so the school moved into a disused magazine at the seventh mile.

Encrid had originally written down four hundred and eleven names.

By the end of the sixth month, three hundred and forty of those people had attended the school at least once.

Ninety-one of them had opened a Star.

The number spread across the Wall within days.

And It changed people’s minds.

Encrid had expected to spend every month arguing for the school to remain open. Instead, watch commanders began sending him letters and asking for places.

Ysolde Marr sent thirty of her own people during the fifth month.

Her note contained only one sentence.

’Teach these ones next.’

Encrid did.

Eleven of the thirty opened Stars.

After that, nobody questioned whether the school should continue.

Encrid also changed during those six months.

He did not notice it happening.

He had arrived at the Wall a year earlier in a body that had been ruined by six years of someone else’s indulgence. During his first four months there, he had been quietly horrified by how little that body could do.

It was not that body anymore.

The soft line around his jaw had disappeared. The weight around his middle was gone and had not returned. His shoulders and forearms had become harder after eleven months of practicing the Falling Talon in the dark.

His face had changed as well.

That happened to almost everyone who spent enough time north of the Riven. The wind from the Great Green Forest struck the Wall every day of the year, even during summer. Encrid had developed the same slight squint that most men on the Wall eventually gained.

He had also stopped wearing the clothes like Encrid used to at the Gannon estate.

At first, that had been a deliberate choice. By the sixth month, it was simply what he owned.

He wore Wall grey now. His coat had been issued by the Wall and had already been patched twice at the left elbow. His clerk’s satchel had lost its shape from years of use, and the coat itself had once belonged to someone working in the Works.

His hands had changed the most.

There was always ink in the cracks of his fingers, no matter how much he washed them. Thick calluses had formed across both palms from the Gannon Family swordmanship practice.

He was twenty-five years old.

Some of the men in the Quartermastery who had worked under him for almost a year would have guessed he was closer to thirty-five.

It was not because of his face - that was league more handsome that when he first woke up in this world.

It was because of the way he moved.

Encrid no longer moved like a young man.

He moved like an officer.

He walked without wasting steps. He did not hurry unless he needed to. He had learned that there was very little reason to rush on a wall in winter.

A man who hurried on a wall in winter could easily fall from it.

Merta was the first person to point out the change.

She told him about it during the fifth month while they were standing in the granary and arguing about lamp oil.

"You have gone north," she said.

Encrid looked at her.

"What does that mean?"

Merta continued looking at her slate.

"It happens to people."

"I still do not understand."

"Southerners come here and spend their first year acting like visitors. You can usually tell who they are."

"How?"

"They still complain about the wind. They still wear colorful coats. They still look at the Wall as if they are waiting for someone to take them home."

Encrid looked down at his grey coat.

"And I do not?"

"No."

Merta turned the page on her slate.

"You stopped complaining about the wind months ago."

"I complain about the wind every day, though."

"You complain about the damage the wind causes to the Wall. That is different."

Encrid frowned.

Merta finally looked up at him.

"Young Master, you have not touched your nose when the wind changed since spring."

"I did not know that was important."

"It is not. That is why it is important."

Encrid stared at her.

Merta went back to her slate.

"You have also started calling it the Riven."

"What?"

"The Riven."

Encrid thought about it.

"I have always called it that."

"No, you have not."

Merta turned another page.

"Last week, you told a southern merchant that the road ended at the Riven. You used to call it the river."

Encrid was silent for a moment.

"Does that mean I have gone north?"

Merta nodded.

"Yes."

He looked around the granary.

The grey stone walls.

The sacks of grain.

The cold air coming through the cracks in the shutters.

Then he looked back at Merta.

"I suppose I have."

Merta gave him a small smile.

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