Chapter 155: Rookwings

Encrid had read about Rookwings once.

It had been during his first winter on the Wall, when he had spent most of his nights in his room reading everything he could find. The bestiary had given the Rookwing around half a page.

A Level Two Roamer. It nested in the high canopy of the deep forest and hunted in flocks.

And it had never been recorded within fifty miles of the Wall.

The half page had not mentioned how many of them there could be.

Encrid raised the glass to his eye.

The dark smudge above the treeline was already breaking apart as it came closer, and slowly it turned into wings.

Hundreds of them.

Each Rookwing was about the size of a calf. It had a narrow body, a long hooked beak, and two wide wings of grey leather stretched between thin bony fingers. Its hind legs ended in curved claws, the kind built for gripping branches.

Or shoulders.

The flock did not fly straight at the Wall.

It rose high into the air, circled once over the killing ground, and then turned east along the face of the stone. It moved slowly. Almost carefully.

Encrid lowered the glass.

"It’s looking for something," he said.

Corr understood immediately.

"The weakest section."

The flock circled a second time, lower now.

Then it dropped.

It fell toward the sixth mile, just east of the Fifth Bastion, where a company of the Second Watch had been fighting since midnight.

The first Rookwings hit the parapet like thrown stones.

A soldier was lifted clean off the walk by his shoulders. The Rookwing that had him beat its wings twice, climbed twenty feet above the killing ground, and let go.

The man fell into the horde below and disappeared.

Another soldier raised his spear, and three Rookwings came at him from three different directions at once.

Encrid’s jaw tightened.

The sixth mile had been built to fight things climbing up. Every spear, every javelin, every soldier on that walk was facing outward and downward.

Nothing on the Wall had been built to fight something coming from above.

"Archers!" someone was shouting in the distance. "Shoot them! Shoot them down!"

The archers shot.

A few Rookwings fell. Most did not.

They were too fast, and they turned too sharply. Every arrow that missed flew out over the killing ground and was gone.

Encrid turned around.

The Box stood on its reinforced carriage at the eastern edge of the Fifth Bastion. It was loaded and pointed north. Its crew was standing beside it, staring east like everyone else. With every box there was one blacksmith involved in its making acting as a chief

"Turn it."

The crew chief looked at him.

"My lord?"

"Turn the carriage east. Put the front on those sandbags." Encrid pointed at the sacks stacked beside the oil barrels. "I want the tubes pointed higher."

The crew chief hesitated.

"My lord, the mechanism was never built to fire that high. The arrows will not fly true."

Encrid knew that better than him.

"They don’t need to fly true," Encrid said. "They only need to fill the air in front of that flock."

The crew chief stared at him for a moment.

Then he turned and shouted at his men.

Six of them threw their shoulders against the carriage. It was heavy, and it moved slowly. The wheels ground against the stone, and the whole frame groaned as it turned. Two men dragged sandbags under the front edge, and the rows of tubes slowly tilted up and toward the east.

Encrid did not watch the machine.

He was watching the flock.

The Rookwings did not stay on the parapet. They dove, grabbed, and climbed back into the sky. Then they circled back to the rest of the flock before diving again.

And every time they climbed, they gathered together above the sixth mile.

For a moment, they formed a single dark knot in the air.

Then they broke apart for the next dive.

It lasted two, maybe three heartbeats.

Encrid’s eyes narrowed.

That was enough.

"Wait for my word," he said.

"My lord, they are killing our men."

"I know. Wait."

The flock dove again.

Screams rose from the sixth mile. A shield came up, and a Rookwing tore it out of the man’s hands. Another soldier stabbed upward blindly and caught one through the wing. The creature thrashed on the walk until someone crushed its head with a boot.

Then the flock climbed.

Encrid watched the wings pull together above the sixth mile.

Tighter.

Tighter.

"Now."

The crew chief pulled the lever.

-Kwaaaang!

One hundred and twenty arrows left the tilted tubes in a single breath.

The crew chief had been right. They did not fly true. They spread wide, some high and some low, and some tumbled end over end through the air.

But the air in front of the flock was suddenly full of iron.

And the Rookwings flew straight into it.

The sound that came back across the sky was wet and ugly, like someone snapping a bundle of green sticks. Rookwings fell out of the air by the dozen. Some dropped straight down onto the killing ground. Some struck the face of the Wall and slid down the stone. A few fell onto the parapet of the sixth mile, where the soldiers finished them with their spears.

The flock broke.

It did not scatter the way ordinary birds would. It split in two, circled wide, and hung over the killing ground, screeching, as if it could not understand what had just happened.

On the Fifth Bastion, the crew stared at the machine they had just fired.

"Reload," Encrid said. "Keep it pointed east."

Then he turned to Corr.

"Send runners to every Box on the northern face. If the Rookwings come to their section, they fire when the flock gathers to climb. Not when it dives."

Corr was already writing.

It would take hours for the order to reach the far ends of the Wall. The flag chain could not carry something like this. But the nearest sections would have it within the hour, and that would have to be enough.

"And the nets," Encrid added.

Corr looked up.

"Nets, my lord?"

"There is still cloth left over from the sheets. There are fishing nets in the Shambles and grain sacks in every storehouse. I want anything that can be stretched on poles above the parapet sent to the sixth mile and the Fourth Mile."

"They will not stop the Rookwings."

"They don’t need to. They only need to stop them from diving straight down onto a man’s back."

Corr nodded slowly.

"The Quartermastery will want a signature."

"Then give them mine."

✧ ✧ ✧

The flock came back twice more before noon.

The second time, the Box hit it again.

The third time, the Rookwings did not gather above the sixth mile at all. They turned west and fell on the Fourth Mile instead, where Garrick Dane’s men were already waiting with a line of spears pointed at the sky. The Box at the Fourth Mile had been tilted up as well.

Encrid found that both terrifying and useful.

Terrifying, because the Rookwings had learned.

Useful, because they had learned the wrong lesson.

They had learned that the sixth mile was dangerous. They had not learned that every section of the Wall could now become the sixth mile.

But the damage had already been done.

When the report came back from the sixth mile, there were thirty-eight men still standing.

Out of the ninety who had started the morning there.

Encrid read the number and said nothing.

A little later, the flag chain signaled that Ysolde Marr had reached the section.

She came along the walk from the east, as she always did, without hurrying. Her coat was black with old blood. She stopped at the edge of the sixth mile and looked at the dead Rookwings scattered across the walk.

Then she looked west, toward the Fifth Bastion, where the tilted Box stood with its crew reloading.

She did not wave. She did not nod.

She drew her sword and went to stand among the thirty-eight men who were left.

And the thirty-eight men straightened, as if something heavy had been lifted off their shoulders.

Gus let out a long breath beside Encrid.

"What else is in there?" he asked. "What else is in that forest that was never supposed to come out?"

Encrid looked at the treeline for a long time.

He did not have an answer.

✦ ✦ ✦