Chapter 158: Rael & His Company (1) [BONUS]

Encrid reached the ninth mile a little before midnight.

Strictly speaking, he did not need to go.

Corr had been carried back up to the Fifth Bastion, and his chair had been set down well away from the corner. He was already reading returns to the signalers again. Holt had the section under control. Gus was sitting against the parapet with a blanket around his shoulders and a bowl of stew in his hands, trying very hard not to fall asleep.

But the last return from the ninth mile had come in half an hour late.

And it had been written in a hand Encrid did not recognize.

That bothered him.

The Gleaning’s reports never came in late. Wren would not allow it.

✧ ✧ ✧

During the siege, the ninth mile did not belong to any Watch.

That had been Encrid’s idea, and it had taken him most of a Council session to get it approved.

The Gleaning was not a part of the Wall. Its people could not simply be ordered around by Watch captains. And Rael had refused, politely but completely, to let his crews be split up and scattered across the nine Watches as extra spears.

So Encrid had done what he always did.

He had written a contract.

The Northern Free Company would hold eleven hundred paces of the northern face, from the ninth-mile tower to the old sally port Rael had used for six years, for as long as the siege lasted. The Wall would supply food, arrows, oil, and healers. The Gleaning would supply every fighter it had.

Some of the commanders had laughed.

A hundred and fifty mercenaries holding a section of the Wall by themselves?

But no one on the Wall knew the ground beyond the ninth mile better than the people who had spent years going out past its stakes.

And after the Gorehorns had burned, no one laughed at Rael anymore.

✧ ✧ ✧

The Gleaning’s section looked different from the rest of the Wall.

The Watch sections were orderly. Spears in racks. Men in lines. Captains shouting.

Here, people moved in fours.

Encrid noticed it immediately.

Every crew on the walk had four people, the same as every contract beyond the stakes had had four people since the guild was founded. One pair held the edge. The other pair stood a step behind them with javelins, watching the pair in front. When one of the front pair grew tired, one of the back pair stepped forward without a word.

It was the four-person rule.

Only now it had been turned sideways and placed onto a wall.

"The Watcher’s here," someone said, and heads turned.

A man came toward him along the walk.

He looked to be around thirty-five. Square-built, heavy through the arms, with a short grey-brown beard. A long hooked glaive rested on his shoulder. Two fingers were missing from his left hand, so he carried the glaive in his right.

Encrid knew him by sight. Everyone in the Gleaning’s hall did.

He appraised him anyway, out of habit.

[ Name: Hask Morrow ]

[ Age: 34 ]

[ Realm: Apex ]

[ Star Level: One Star - Golden Star (Apex) ]

[ Talent: Uncommon ]

"Hask," Encrid said. "Where’s Rael?"

"At the far end." Hask’s voice was low and rough. "The old sally. They’ve been trying the gate since the tenth hour."

"Your report came in late."

"Wren’s asleep. I made her sleep. Ilse wrote it."

That explained the handwriting.

Hask turned and started walking, and Encrid walked beside him.

Hask Morrow had once been a Far-Watch man.

Six years ago, his party had gone deep into the Great Green and run into something that killed four of them in a single night. The survivors ran. They left Hask behind in a hollow, with his leg broken and his left hand half chewed off, because carrying him would have gotten all of them killed.

The next morning, a sixteen-year-old boy who went out past the stakes alone had found him.

The boy carried him for two days.

Hask never went back to the Far-Watch. He never explained why to anyone. He simply began going out past the stakes with Rael, and when the Gleaning was founded, his was the first name on the roll after Rael’s own.

Encrid had once asked him, in the guild hall, why he had never taken the Far-Watch’s pension and gone south.

Hask had thought about it for a long time.

"Because they left," he had finally said. "And he didn’t."

That had been the whole answer.

✧ ✧ ✧

The far end of the section was loud.

Below the old sally port, the body ramp had been built up nearly as high as the one at the Fifth Bastion. Grinners and Reevers were climbing it constantly, and every few minutes, something heavier came up with them.

A woman stood at the edge of the parapet with a hatchet in each hand.

She was small and wiry, with short black hair tied back so tightly that it pulled at the corners of her eyes.

As Encrid watched, a Reever came over the edge in front of her. She stepped into it and swung one hatchet down onto its skull.

It was not a big swing. The hatchet was not a big weapon.

But the Reever’s head burst like a dropped melon.

Encrid had felt it through Attunement. The instant before the blade landed, its weight had changed. It had become heavy. Enormously heavy. As if a smith’s anvil had been fixed to the end of the handle.

[ Name: Ilse Varn ]

[ Age: 27 ]

[ Realm: Apex ]

[ Star Level: One Star - Celestial Star (Apex) ]

[ Talent: Uncommon ]

A Celestial Star.

The Star of light, size, and weight.

Ilse Varn had come to the Wall in chains. A magistrate in the south had sent her north for being a very good thief who had stolen from the wrong man. She had spent her first year acting as a cook.

During that year, her younger brother, Tam, had followed her north because there was no one else for him to follow. He had lived under the Shambles with sixty other people who had nowhere to go.

And Rael had fed him.

Ilse had not known until she got out. By then, Tam was eight years old and could read, because Rael had found someone to teach the children their letters.

She had walked into the guild hall on the day it opened and put her name on the roll without even asking about the pay.

"Watcher." Ilse did not turn around. "If you came here to tell us to fall back, the answer is no."

"I came because your report was late."

"It was late because I had to write it with one hand while I killed things with the other." She kicked a dead Grinner off the edge. "Your precious rules say the count comes in on time. Take it up with the Roamers."

Hask made a sound that might have been a laugh.

Then Encrid saw Rael.

He was standing on the walk directly above the old sally port, his greatsword planted point-down in front of him and both hands resting on the hilt.

He was not fighting.

He was watching the killing ground.

Encrid went to stand beside him.

"You can feel it too," Rael said without turning.

Encrid could.

He had felt it since the moment he stepped onto the section.

Out in the darkness, beyond the ramp, beyond the Grinners and Reevers, something heavy was moving. More than one.

They were not climbing.

They were gathering. Slowly. Deliberately.

The same way the Rackhorn had tested the ramp at the Fifth Bastion before it came up.

"Gorehorns," Rael said. "The big ones. The old bulls. They’ve been walking back and forth down there for an hour."

"Why?"

Rael was quiet for a moment.

"Because the sally is the only place in eleven hundred paces where the stone isn’t solid," he said. "The gate is made of iron. But the wall around it is thinner than anywhere else."

Down in the dark, the first old bull lowered its head.

Its skull-plate was as wide as a door.

✦ ✦ ✦

Bonus Chapter for reaching 100 Powerstones weekly~