Chapter 141: Forty Thousand

The first trench filled in nineteen minutes.

Encrid watched it from the fifth bastion with the same cold calculation he had used when he first drew the plan, although the reality in front of him was far more difficult to look at than anything he had put on paper.

Gus stood beside him.

The boy had been quiet since the fighting began. His eyes remained fixed on the trench below, where the bodies of the Reevers had already begun to pile high enough for those behind them to climb over.

Encrid glanced at him.

For Encrid, this was not the first time he had seen blood. He had seen far worse things in his previous life, and although he had never become comfortable with death, the sight of it no longer had the power to shock him the way it once might have.

For Gus, everything was new.

He had never stood above a battlefield and watched thousands of creatures die within minutes. He had never seen living bodies crushed beneath the weight of others, nor had he witnessed a carefully prepared plan turn into something so violent.

From Gus’s perspective, the entire thing might have seemed cruel.

Perhaps it was.

Yet the boy was managing better than Encrid had expected.

His face had gone pale, and his hands were gripping the stone railing tightly, but he had not looked away. He had not become sick, nor had he asked to leave. He simply continued watching, trying to understand what he was seeing.

Encrid said nothing to him.

There was nothing useful to say.

He had already explained the plan in the Council chamber. He had stood before the commanders and described exactly what he expected to happen once the horde reached the defenses. Ysolde had forced him to speak plainly about the ugly part of it, and Encrid had told them that the trenches would fill with bodies.

The trench fills.

The horde climbs over it.

The bodies become the next road.

That had been the plan.

It was one thing to explain such a thing while standing in a warm chamber with a map spread across a table.

It was another thing entirely to stand above the battlefield and watch it happen.

The first trench had been twelve feet deep and eighteen feet across when the first Reevers entered it.

Now, nineteen minutes later, it was almost gone.

The creatures had fallen into it faster than the trench could hold them. Those behind had been forced down upon those already trapped below, and the bodies had slowly raised the ground until the depression disappeared beneath the mass.

By the time the last visible section of the trench had been filled, the horde simply walked over it.

There was no pause.

The creatures at the front stepped onto the bodies beneath them and continued forward, while those behind pushed them onward.

Some of what lay underneath was still moving.

Encrid could see it in places where the mass shifted.

A leg moved.

A claw scraped against another body.

Something tried to pull itself free before being buried beneath another wave.

The sound carried farther than he expected.

The soldiers on the Wall heard it too.

It was not the kind of sound anyone would forget easily.

There were men who would remember the roar of the horde for the rest of their lives, and there were men who would remember the fighting, the screams, and the smell of blood.

But many of them would remember the sound coming from beneath the bodies.

They would hear it again in their dreams.

Encrid looked away from the trench for a moment.

The second line was already taking the next wave.

It lasted longer than the first.

A little more than twenty-five minutes passed before that trench disappeared beneath the dead.

The soldiers were beginning to understand what they were watching.

The trenches were not meant to stop the horde.

They were meant to make it pay for every step.

The third trench was different.

It was shallower, and the Works had filled its bottom with stakes.

When the first Roamers reached it, they did something the earlier waves had not.

They jumped.

Some cleared the trench.

Some did not.

Those that failed fell onto the stakes and did not rise again, while others landed badly, scrambled back to their feet, and attempted to jump again.

For the first time, the horde seemed to hesitate.

Not because the creatures had suddenly become intelligent, but because even a beast driven by instinct could recognize that falling into that particular hole meant death.

The front ranks began leaping over it.

Some succeeded.

Some failed.

Those that succeeded landed on the other side and kept running.

Those that failed were immediately buried beneath the creatures coming behind them.

The trench did not fill in the same way as the first two.

Instead, the bodies spread across it until the depression was covered by a tangled layer of dead and dying Roamers.

By the time the main body of the horde reached the Wall, the three trenches had ceased to resemble trenches at all.

The first two had become ramps.

The third had become a gruesome mat of bodies and broken stakes.

Nothing would clear them.

Nothing would restore them.

For the remainder of the siege, those bodies would remain where they had fallen, compacted beneath the weight of everything that followed.

The trenches had done their work.

They had taken away the speed of the horde.

That was what mattered.

Everything that eventually reached the foot of the Wall had been forced to slow down.

And for the defenders above, every moment mattered.

Lord Commander Ulrich Vance came to stand beside Encrid.

For a while, neither man spoke.

Ulrich watched the battlefield with his arms folded behind his back, his expression difficult to read.

Then he asked, "Do we have a number?"

Encrid did not look at him.

"Not an exact one."

"Give me an estimate."

Encrid watched another group of Roamers cross the remains of the first trench.

"Somewhere between eight hundred and a thousand dead."

Ulrich was quiet for a moment.

"How many are there?"

Encrid finally turned his head toward him.

"Do you want the official number we’ll give the officers, or do you want the truth?"

Ulrich looked at him.

"The truth."

Encrid stayed silent for a few seconds before answering.

"According to the most recent scouting reports, we believe there are close to forty thousand."

Ulrich stared at the horde.

For several seconds, he said nothing.

Then he gave a short laugh.

It was not the laugh of a man who had heard good news.

"So we killed a thousand."

"Approximately."

"And there are forty thousand."

"Near forty thousand."

Ulrich watched the endless mass moving toward the Wall.

Then he laughed again.

"Only thirty-nine thousand to go."

Encrid looked at him.

He could not tell whether the Lord Commander was genuinely amused by the absurdity of the situation or whether something inside him had finally broken beneath the weight of it.

Perhaps there was no difference anymore.

Below them, the horde continued to advance.

The trenches had worked.

The funnels had worked.

Thousands of Roamers had already died before ever reaching the Wall.

And yet the northern horizon was still full.

There were still tens of thousands behind them.

The real battle was about to start.

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