Chapter 159: Rael & His Company (2) [BONUS]

The first bull struck the Wall a little after midnight.

-Kwoooong!

The sound did not travel through the air.

It traveled through the stone.

Encrid felt it in his feet, then in his knees, then in his teeth. A deep, heavy blow that made the parapet beneath his palm shiver like a struck bell.

All along the section, people grabbed the edge to keep their balance.

"Again," Rael said quietly.

The bull backed away.

It was the size of a hay wagon, older and heavier than any Gorehorn that had come to the Wall in the last two days. Its skull-plate was yellow with age and marked with a hundred old cracks. Its two horns had grown so long that their tips nearly touched the ground.

It lowered its head and charged the sally port again.

-Kwoooong!

This time, Encrid heard metal scream.

He leaned over the parapet and looked straight down.

The old sally gate sat at the bottom of the Wall’s face. It was a low iron door set into a short tunnel that ran through the stone to the inner yard on the other side. It had been built so that four-person crews could slip out before dawn.

It had not been built for this.

The iron had bent inward. A long crack had opened in the granite above the frame.

Behind the first bull, three more were waiting their turn.

"The gate will break in three more hits. Maybe four. If it does, the bulls will come through the tunnel into the inner yard. The yard opens onto the fifth-mile road." He paused. "And the fifth-mile road leads straight to the Shambles."

Rael was already pulling his greatsword out of the stone.

"Then I’ll stand in the tunnel."

"Alone?"

"The tunnel is two paces wide." Rael settled the sword onto his back. "It doesn’t fit more than one."

Encrid looked at him.

There were a dozen things he could have said.

That Rael was only twenty-two. That no one could stop a Gorehorn bull head-on in a two-pace tunnel.

But none of those things would stop the bulls.

And more than that - Rael was someone who is destined to be one of the protagonists of this story. The Wall and this horde is his place to shine. Encrid would be doing more harm to him by stoping him.

"Hask," Encrid said. "Take two crews down to the inner door. Tell the Works to bring every loose stone block they can carry from the fifth-mile repair stack and pile them in the yard behind the tunnel."

Hask waited for the rest.

"If Rael comes out, we fill the passage behind him. If he doesn’t come out, we fill it anyway."

Hask looked at Rael.

Rael nodded once.

"Ilse, you hold the top," Encrid continued. "Nothing climbs this section while he’s down there."

"I wasn’t planning to let anything climb it," Ilse said.

But she was already moving.

Encrid went down with Hask.

✧ ✧ ✧

The inner end of the sally tunnel opened into a small cobbled yard between the back of the Wall and a row of storehouses.

Someone had hung a blue lamp above the tunnel mouth. Its cold light made everyone’s face look pale and lifeless.

Rael walked into the tunnel without looking back.

Encrid stood at the entrance and watched him go.

The passage was short, perhaps fifteen paces from the inner door to the iron gate. It was so narrow that Rael’s shoulders nearly brushed both walls, and the ceiling was so low that he had to hold his greatsword angled forward instead of up.

At the far end, the bent gate shuddered as the bull struck it again.

-Kwoooong!

Dust fell from the ceiling. A rivet shot out of the frame and rang off the stone like a thrown coin.

Behind Encrid, Works men ran into the yard with stone blocks on their shoulders. Hask shouted at them to stack the blocks in rows.

No one spoke to Encrid.

He did not want them to.

Through Attunement, he could feel everything inside the tunnel. Rael, standing very still. The iron gate flexing. And beyond the gate, the bull, backing up for its next charge, its enormous weight rocking from foot to foot.

"Rael," Encrid called. "Next one."

"I know."

The bull came.

This time, the gate did not hold.

It tore out of its frame with a shriek and flew down the tunnel end over end. Rael turned his shoulder, and the gate glanced off him and crashed into the wall.

Behind it, the bull’s skull-plate filled the far end of the passage like a moving door.

It did not slow down.

Rael set his feet and met it.

Encrid had watched Rael fight six Reevers through a glass from six hundred paces away. He had watched him fire the arrow that burned the Gorehorn wedge.

He had never seen him do this.

Rael did not swing. There was no room to swing. He placed the flat of the greatsword against the bull’s skull-plate, braced his entire body behind it, and pushed.

The Golden Star lit up inside him.

Encrid could feel it. A hard, bright pressure in the center of Rael’s chest, like a fist made of sunlight.

Rael’s boots slid backward on the stone.

One pace.

Two.

Then he stopped.

And the bull stopped.

For a long moment, the two of them stood locked together in the narrow dark. A six-ton animal and a lean young man. Neither of them moved.

Then the bull twisted its head.

Its horn swung around, caught Rael across the ribs, and slammed him into the side of the tunnel.

Encrid heard the air leave Rael’s lungs.

He heard something crack.

The bull pushed forward another pace.

Rael was pinned between the horn and the stone. His sword arm was trapped. His feet had left the ground.

Hask started toward the tunnel.

"Don’t," Encrid said.

"He’s-"

"If you go in, the bull has two of you. Wait."

Encrid did not know why he said it.

He only knew that something was happening inside Rael. Something he had felt once before that night, on a stair at the Fifth Bastion.

The pressure in Rael’s chest was no longer steady. It was surging, the same way Gus’s had surged when the Rackhorn’s horns had been against him. It pushed against its limits and fell back. Pushed and fell back. Like a flood beating against a dam.

Rael made a sound.

It was not a scream. It was a long, low breath forced out through clenched teeth.

Then the dam broke.

The Golden Star did not grow brighter.

It grew deeper.

Encrid felt it sink through Rael’s body like a stone dropped into a well. Everywhere it passed, the channels opened wider than they had any right to.

And at the bottom of that opening, the second Star answered.

The Vermilion Star flared at the base of Rael’s spine, caught the current rushing down from above, and rose to meet it.

Heat poured out of him.

His trapped arm came free. He did not pull it free. The bull’s horn simply softened wherever it touched him, the same way the Rackhorn’s horns had softened against Gus.

But this was not Ember Veil.

This was Cinder Grasp.

And Rael was not holding the heat against his skin.

He was pushing it into his sword.

The greatsword turned a dull red from hilt to point. Then orange.

Then a color that hurt to look at.

Rael took a single step forward and drove the blade into the center of the bull’s skull-plate.

A Gorehorn’s skull-plate was the hardest part of its body. Encrid had once read in the bestiary that even a ballista bolt at close range could glance off it.

Rael’s greatsword sank in all the way to the crossguard.

The bull stopped moving.

It did not fall. There was no room for it to fall. It simply sagged against the tunnel walls with smoke rising from its head, and became a plug of dead meat six feet high, sealing the outer end of the sally.

Behind it, the second bull slammed into the carcass and bellowed.

The carcass did not move.

Rael pulled his sword free. He stood there for a moment with one hand braced against the tunnel wall, breathing hard. Blood ran from his mouth where he had bitten the inside of his cheek.

Then he turned and walked back into the blue lamplight.

Encrid opened Appraisal.

[ Name: Rael ]

[ Age: 22 ]

[ Realm: Master ]

[ Star Level: Golden Star - Master | Vermilion Star - Master ]

[ Talent: ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ ]

[ ERROR: Value exceeds display parameters. ]

Rael looked at the stone blocks piled in the yard.

Then he looked at Encrid.

"You were going to seal me in."

"Only if you didn’t come out."

Rael thought about that for a moment.

Then, for the first time since Encrid had known him, he laughed.

"Fair," he said.

And he sat down on the cobblestones.

✦ ✦ ✦

Bonus Chapter for reaching 50+ Golden Tickets~

Thank you - Vesuvy, Stingdragon, Nievena & Nagii344