Chapter 153: The Eastern Gate

The eastern gate was held by Halvic Ostrand of the Third Watch.

Ostrand was fifty years old. He had two Stars, one Golden and one Verdant, and both were at the Master Realm. He had commanded that section for fourteen years.

By the second hour of the night, the Third Watch had the lowest casualties of any section on the Wall.

That surprised people who did not know the eastern ground. The eastern approach was open. There were no ridges and no marsh to slow anything down, and the horde had been pressing there since the first hour.

The Third Watch was not holding because the ground was kind.

It was holding because of a boy with no weapon.

The boy was fifteen. His name was Pell and he had been a kitchen runner before the siege. He stood beside Ostrand on the parapet and his only job was to count out loud.

"...seventy-eight. Seventy-nine. Eighty."

Ostrand raised one hand.

"Change."

The front rank came off the edge. The second rank went forward. Nobody argued about it, because nobody was allowed to argue about it.

A soldier who had just been pulled off sat down against the inner parapet, breathing hard.

"Commander, I can keep going."

"Shut up."

"At least let me stay."

"If you have a death wish - I can split open your skull myself."

Ostrand did not explain it while the man was still angry. He explained it later, when the same soldier came back on.

"So you know that a man can only fight well for about eighty breaths."

The soldier stared at his commander in doubt.

"That is not very long."

"It is not. After eighty he is still fighting. He is just not fighting well any more."

"I would know if I was slowing down."

"You would not. Nobody does. That is why I use the boy."

The soldier looked at Pell, who had already started counting again, and did not say anything else about it.

Ostrand fought in four-minute pieces. He would step into the line, kill whatever had come over the edge, and step back out. Then he walked behind his own men and watched them.

That was where most of his time went. Not fighting. Watching.

He moved two men off the left because one of them had started holding his spear too low. He sent somebody down the stairs for water. He pushed a young soldier half a pace forward because the man had drifted out of the line without noticing.

-Kwang!

A Gorehorn got a foreleg over the edge.

Ostrand stepped in. His sword came down on the joint, and the Verdant Star ran along the blade, which was not what the Verdant Star was for. Verdant was the healer’s Star. It mended things. Ostrand had spent fourteen years learning to use it the other way, and the results were ugly and slow and worked perfectly well on a joint.

The limb gave. The Gorehorn fell.

He stepped back out of the line.

"Change."

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At the fifth hour a soldier went over the outer edge.

He did not fall all the way. He caught the stone and hung there, forty feet above the bodies, screaming. Two men reached for him and could not get low enough.

Ostrand put his sword down on the wall.

Then he went over the parapet after him.

He did it with a rope round his waist and three men holding it. He was gone about ninety seconds. When he came back up he had the soldier under one arm and the man’s leg was broken in two places.

Ostrand put him down, picked his sword back up, and went straight back into the line without saying anything to anybody.

Pell had never stopped counting.

"...Fifty-one. Fifty-two."

Nobody on that parapet mentioned it afterward. Not because they forgot. Because Ostrand had gone back to work, and a man who does not want a thing talked about is usually not talked about.

There was one more thing the Third Watch did that no other section did.

Ostrand fed them.

Every man on that parapet ate twice during the night. Not a meal. Bread and water, about four minutes, sitting down.

The other Watch commanders had not thought of it. Food was not something a man thought about during a siege, and the kitchens had stopped sending anything up after the second hour because nobody had asked them to continue.

Ostrand sent a runner down at the fourth hour and told them to keep sending.

"Commander, they will lose their place in the line."

"They will get it back."

"It will cost us time."

"Four minutes. And it will buy three hours out of every man on this wall."

By dawn the Third Watch was the only section on the northern face whose men had eaten since the previous evening.

They had lost thirty-one men. The Eighth Watch, on ground that was no worse, had lost a hundred and forty.

Ostrand came down off the parapet at first light and sat on the top step of the inner stair. He was not hurt, which was unusual for a Watch commander after a night like that one.

A captain came up with the returns.

"Thirty-one, Commander."

"Names?"

"I have them here."

"Read them."

The captain read them. It took about a minute. Ostrand listened to the whole list without moving, and when it was finished, he nodded once.

"Write to their families before you sleep."

"Yes, Commander."

"And find out who is going to take the eleventh section. Corran is dead, and somebody has been doing his job since the eighth hour without being told to."

The captain went.

Halvic Ostrand sat on the step and looked at the eastern gate. Fourteen years. He had never lost it.

He had learned the trick of the eighty breaths from the man who held the eastern gate before him, a commander named Orrel who had died of a fever nine years ago. Ostrand had never asked where Orrel got it. He had simply kept doing it, and had never told anybody on the Council about it, because it had not occurred to him that it was worth telling.

Then he got up, because the sun was coming and the third day was going to start whether he was ready or not.

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