Chapter 150: Stab those tall motherfuckers!

"Spears!"

The order went out from the offices and was carried along the parapet by shouting men.

"Hold your positions!"

"Spears at the edge!"

The words passed from one section to the next until the entire northern face of the Wall was filled with the same command.

The horde had finally reached the Wall.

For two days, the defenders had watched the Roamers die in the killing ground. The trenches had slowed them. The stakes had turned them. The Boxes had cut through them. Fire had scattered them.

But all of those defenses had been designed to make this moment take longer to arrive.

They had never been meant to prevent it.

Now the Roamers were at the stone.

Along with the Reevers, Gorehorns, and the Sumpers, which were the first to reach the wall, there came creatures that many of the soldiers had hardly seen before.

Grinners.

The defenders stared for only a moment before training took over.

"Spears!"

Hundreds of spear shafts were lifted.

The first Grinners reached the Wall.

They were the smallest Roamers of the Great Green Forest, roughly the size of a large dog. Their bodies were low to the ground, and their legs were short, but their heads were far too large for their bodies.

Their teeth were worse.

They were too long to fit inside the mouth, leaving several rows exposed even when the creature was not attacking. The jaw could not close properly around them, which gave every Grinner the appearance of being permanently enraged.

They were only Level One Roamers.

A grown man with a spear could kill one with some effort.

One Grinner was nothing.

Ten were troublesome.

A thousand were a disaster.

The creatures swarmed the bottom of the Wall, climbing over one another and biting into the stone with their oversized jaws. Some found cracks between the blocks and tried to pull themselves upward. Others climbed over the backs of the creatures beneath them.

There were too many.

The Wall was not designed to stop them from reaching the stone.

It was designed to stop them from reaching the men standing above it.

Fortunately, that would take time.

The Grinners could bite into the stone, but they were not strong enough to climb quickly. Their bodies piled over one another, creating unstable heaps that collapsed whenever too many tried to climb the same section.

The soldiers above them watched uneasily.

"Keep your spears ready!"

"Don’t throw them!"

"Wait until they reach the edge!"

Then something much larger appeared behind the Grinners.

A soldier saw it first.

"Talljack!"

The shout spread immediately.

"Talljacks!"

The mood on the parapet changed.

A Talljack stood nearly three times the height of a man.

It was thin, almost unnaturally so, with a body that seemed too narrow to support its height. Its arms hung past its knees, and its fingers were long enough to wrap around a man’s torso.

They were Level Three Roamers.

That alone made them dangerous.

Their reach made them worse.

The entire purpose of a parapet was simple. It placed defenders higher than their attackers and gave them a stone barrier behind which they could fight.

A Talljack nearly erased that advantage.

The creature reached the base of the Wall and looked upward.

A soldier raised his spear.

The Talljack bent its knees.

"Stab those tall motherfuckers!"

The creature jumped.

Its hands came over the parapet.

Three spears struck it at once.

One pierced the palm.

Another drove into its forearm.

The third struck its shoulder.

The Talljack screamed and fell backward.

"Again!"

Another Talljack reached the Wall.

This one managed to get one hand over the edge.

A soldier stepped forward and drove his spear down through its wrist.

The creature pulled.

The soldier nearly went over with it.

Two men grabbed him by the belt and hauled him backward.

"Don’t let them grab the Wall!"

The command became a roar.

"Don’t let them hold onto the Wall!"

The fighting had finally become what everyone had expected from the beginning.

A siege.

The Roamers were no longer dying hundreds of paces away.

They were beneath the defenders’ feet.

They were climbing.

They were biting the stone.

They were reaching for the men standing above them.

The blue lamps burned from the masts along the Wall, their light shining through the dust and smoke. Oil covered sections of the stone where the defenders had poured it earlier, making the surface difficult for the Roamers to grip.

That preparation was already proving its worth.

A Sumpers tried to climb.

Its claws found the stone.

It managed to rise several feet before its feet slipped.

The creature fell backward into the mass below.

The machines stood ready behind the parapet.

The Ballistae, Catapults and the Boxes were all full again.

But they were silent.

That was what frustrated the soldiers most.

They could see the weapons.

They could see the crews standing beside them.

They knew what those machines could do.

And yet the Watcher’s order remained the same.

Do not fire without permission.

Many of the men blamed him for it.

They could not understand why he would allow the machines to sit silent while thousands of Roamers gathered beneath the Wall.

Encrid understood something they did not.

The machines were strongest when used against massed targets at a distance.

Here, the Roamers were already against the Wall.

A volley now would kill some.

It might kill many.

But it would also destroy the prepared firing positions and make the machines difficult to use again without striking their own men.

So Encrid waited.

He had spent months preparing for this exact moment.

The Wall did not need to kill everything.

It needed to survive.

And for the first time since the horde arrived, the strongest men on the Wall began to move.

The Watch commanders, who had been waiting behind the lines until now. They had mostly directed their men, moved reserves, checked sections, and responded to breaches.

That was no longer enough.

The horde was enormous.

The Wall was still surrounded.

The battle had come to them.

And now it was time for the strongest men on the Wall to finally join the fight.

✦ ✦ ✦