Chapter 152: The Second Watch Commander

Ysolde Marr did not hold a gate.

The soldiers of the Wall had always found that strange.

She was the strongest person on the Wall after the Lord Commander. Someone with three Stars at Grand Master Realm with nineteen years of service.

A commander like that should have been given the most important position on the stone.

Instead, she had been given nothing.

The reason was simple.

A gate could only be attacked from one direction. If Ysolde Marr stood at a gate, she would protect that gate and nothing else. And that would be a waste of her powers.

The northern face had eleven sections. She could not be in eleven places.

So six days before the horde arrived, she asked the Council for permission to hold no section at all. Instead, she would move. Wherever a section was about to break, she would go there.

The Council argued about it for two hours and approved it, mostly because nobody could think of a better use for her.

By the first night, every soldier on the Wall understood why.

At the ninth hour, the seventh mile was failing.

There were about two hundred men on that parapet and forty of them were already down. The Roamers had built a ramp of bodies against the stone below. A Talljack had come over twice.

The captain holding the section was named Verrin. He had been a captain for four years, and he had already sent two runners to call for reinforcement.

"Captain!"

Verrin turned.

"What?"

"The flag chain. Commander Marr is coming."

Verrin stopped moving for a second. Then he shouted down the line.

"Hold! Six more minutes!"

The men heard him.

Nothing about the situation changed. There were still two hundred men, forty of them were still down, and the Talljacks were still climbing.

But the line stopped sliding backward.

That was the thing about a name. It did not kill anything. It only made tired men decide to stand for another six minutes.

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She arrived in four minutes.

She came along the walk from the east, alone, at a fast walk. She was not running. Nobody had ever seen her run. She had been on the stone for eighteen hours, and her coat was black with blood that was not hers.

Two Talljacks came over the parapet at the same moment.

A Talljack was twice the height of a man. It was thin, its arms hung past its knees, and its reach was long enough that a parapet gave a defender almost no advantage. Level Three. To kill one, the Wall used an engine, or a full squad, or a cultivator with a Star open.

Ysolde walked toward them.

Three Stars at the Grand Master Realm did not look like anything.

That was the part nobody could explain afterward. There was no light. There was no sound. She did not shout and she did not take a stance.

She went in under the first Talljack’s arms.

-Chak.

The sword went through its body from the hip to the opposite shoulder. She was already moving when it came apart.

The second one turned. It did not finish turning.

-Chak.

Six seconds later, both of them were on the walk, and neither of them was moving.

Verrin stared. He had been a soldier for sixteen years, and he could not think of anything to say.

Ysolde looked down the line.

"Where do you need the help?"

Verrin caught up.

"The left. They have been fighting since the sixth hour."

"Pull them back."

"I have nobody to put there."

"Then put the wounded who can stand, and move the left men behind them."

"The wounded will not hold long."

"They do not have to hold. They have to stand there for a quarter of an hour while the others sit down."

She was already walking east.

"Send to me again if it goes. Do not wait until it has gone."

There was only one visible sign of what she was, and a man had to know to look for it. When she swung the sword, the air along the edge went thin. It was not a glow. It was more like looking through the heat above a stone in summer. Everything behind the blade bent slightly.

She went to nine sections that night.

The flag chain reported her position four times a day so that the Watch commanders would know where she was. That order had come from her own office, and the reason for it was not tactics. A failing section would hold another hour if somebody told the men in it that she was coming.

A sergeant of the Second Watch tried to make her rest at about the seventh hour.

"Commander. There is a cot in the bastion room."

"I know where it is."

"You have been on the stone since yesterday, please take some rest."

"So has everybody on this parapet."

"They rotate. You do not."

She looked at him for a moment and went back to the walk. He did not raise it again, mostly because he could not think of an argument she had not already thought of herself.

At the eleventh hour, Encrid found her sitting on the inner steps of the fourth bastion with her back against the wall and her sword across her knees.

She was not resting. She was waiting for the next flag.

"How long can you keep this up?"

"Three days."

"And after that?"

"After that I will still be walking, but if you want me to fight again - you’d better let me rest for a day."

She stood up before he could answer. Another flag had gone up at the ninth mile.

And the runner was almost visible, running towards her with exhausted face and panting hard.

"I might refuse to rest after three days though," she said as Enrcrid stood facing her back.

"You will have to tell somebody to stop me then, somebody strong enough stop me."

Then she went east again.

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