Chapter 140: What the Trenches Were For

The trenches dug through the effort of nine hundred workers finally showed why they had been built.

Encrid had never been completely certain that the idea would work.

The concept itself had seemed simple enough when he first remembered it, but turning that memory into something that could actually be built had been another matter entirely. Encrid had drawn what he could remember, explained what he wanted to the Works, and then discovered that he was considerably worse at explaining practical ideas than he had expected.

The Works draughtsman had stared at his drawings for a long time, asked several questions, erased half of what Encrid had put on the paper, and eventually produced something that actually made sense.

That was how the funnels had come into existence.

There had been no proper way to test them.

They could not exactly bring a few hundred Roamers to the Wall, arrange them in front of the stakes, and see whether the creatures behaved as Encrid expected. Even if they had been able to do that, there was no guarantee that the behavior of a few beasts would tell them anything about what tens of thousands would do when packed together.

So Encrid had simply trusted the idea.

A Roamer did not stop simply because it saw a line of sharpened stakes.

A sane animal might slow down when faced with something that could hurt it. It might hesitate, look for another path, or decide that going around was safer than going through. The creatures coming toward the Wall were not sane, however. They were driven by whatever force had gathered them into that enormous horde, and the Reevers at the front were moving at a speed that left very little room for thought.

The first Reevers reached the stakes before dawn.

They did exactly what Encrid had expected.

They did not stop.

The creatures rushed toward the sharpened points, and at the last moment they twisted their bodies away from them, slipping to either side of the stake line while maintaining almost all of their speed.

For a moment, it looked as though the entire arrangement had been pointless.

Then the next line caught them.

The Reevers turned again.

The second funnel forced them farther to the side, and the third pushed them in the same direction until the creatures that had been charging directly toward the Wall were suddenly running parallel to it.

They were still moving quickly, but they were no longer moving where they wanted to go.

That difference was everything.

The front of the wave traveled sideways for nearly four hundred paces, guided by nothing more complicated than the shape of the stakes and the narrow paths between them. The Reevers did not understand what was happening. They simply followed the only route that remained open to them, while the thousands behind them continued pushing forward.

Then they reached the trench.

The first line was twelve feet deep and eighteen feet across, with the sides cut at an angle that made climbing out difficult. It had also been dug in a broken line rather than as one perfectly straight channel, which meant that a creature running toward it could not see the full width of the trench until it was already almost upon it.

The first Reever went over the edge without even slowing.

It disappeared into the darkness.

Another followed.

Then another.

Within moments, the creatures were pouring into the trench so quickly that from the Wall it looked almost as though something was falling from the sky.

The sound reached the soldiers a moment later.

Bodies striking earth.

Bones breaking.

The shrieks of wounded creatures.

Then the next wave came.

Some of the Reevers behind the first ranks began to realize that something was wrong. Instinct made them try to slow down or turn away, but the creatures behind them were already pressing forward, and there were tens of thousands more Roamers still moving toward the Wall from the treeline.

The ones at the front had no choice.

They were pushed forward by the weight of everything behind them.

More disappeared into the trench.

The pit swallowed them one after another, while those farther back continued running toward the same place without understanding what waited ahead.

Encrid watched from the fifth bastion.

He had spent months looking at drawings of those trenches.

He had watched the Works crews dig them.

He had walked along their unfinished edges, measured their depth, corrected mistakes, and ordered men to keep working when they were already exhausted.

He had imagined this moment many times.

It was different from actually seeing it.

The trench was doing exactly what he had wanted it to do, yet Encrid found no satisfaction in watching thousands of creatures disappear into it.

The nine Watch commanders were watching too.

None of them smiled.

Not even those who had doubted the plan.

The funnels were working.

The trench was working.

The Wall had successfully taken a charging wave of Reevers moving at full speed and forced them into a killing ground where their own numbers had become a disadvantage.

It was a success.

Everyone understood that.

It was also terrifying.

Because the trench had not stopped the horde.

It had only changed the way the horde was reaching the Wall.

Encrid kept his eyes on the northern horizon.

Behind the Reevers, the rest of the horde was still coming.

The first creatures had fallen because they had been forced into the trench, but the mass behind them had not even begun to slow.

The nine hundred workers had spent days digging that first line.

They had complained about the work.

They had cursed the Watcher for keeping them outside the Wall so long.

Many of them had probably wondered whether any of it would matter when the horde finally arrived.

Now they could see the answer.

The trenches had not been built to stop the Roamers.

They had been built to take away their speed.

And once the first wave lost its speed, the Wall gained something far more valuable than a few hundred dead beasts.

It gained time.

Encrid watched the creatures continue to disappear into the darkness below.

For the first time since the horde had appeared beyond the forest, the Wall had forced it to obey the shape of the battlefield.

But Encrid knew better than anyone that this was only the beginning.

The horde had not even reached the Wall yet.

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