Chapter 160: Rael & His Company (3)

They sealed the tunnel before the second bull could clear the carcass.

The Works men did it in a line. They passed the stone blocks hand to hand from the stack in the yard to the tunnel mouth, where Hask stood and slotted each one into place himself.

He did not let anyone else do it.

He built the wall inside the tunnel the way a man builds a wall he intends to trust his life to. He checked every block. He knocked every one of them tight with the butt of his glaive.

By the time he was finished, the old sally was solid stone from floor to ceiling.

Rael sat on the cobblestones through all of it while a healer from the guild wrapped his ribs. Two of them were cracked.

He said it did not hurt.

The healer told him to stop lying.

So he stopped talking instead.

Encrid stood by the tunnel mouth and let himself breathe for the first time in an hour.

That was when Ilse’s voice came from above.

"Hask! Up here! Now!"

✧ ✧ ✧

The bulls had not given up.

With the sally sealed, they had done something Encrid had not expected. They had turned their shoulders to the face of the Wall on either side of the tunnel and begun to push. Slowly. Steadily. As if they were trying to shove the stone itself over.

It did not move. Granite forty feet thick did not move for anything.

But it shook.

And while it shook, the Talljacks came up the body ramp.

There were five of them.

They had been waiting below, Encrid realized, while the bulls worked. They were taller than the ones at the Fifth Bastion, and they climbed with a strange, patient slowness, reaching for the edge one long grey hand at a time.

On the parapet, Ilse had eleven people and a wall of shaking stone.

Hask went up the inner stair three steps at a time. Encrid followed as fast as he could.

By the time they reached the walk, the first Talljack was already over.

It had caught a Gleaning crewman by the arm and swung him into the parapet. Now it was reaching for Ilse with its other hand.

She did not step back.

She swung one hatchet into its wrist. The weight fell onto the blade at the very last instant.

The Talljack’s hand came off at the joint.

It screamed and swung its other arm. She ducked under it. Her second hatchet came around low and bit into its knee. Again, the weight dropped onto the edge at the last moment, and the leg folded sideways with a crack like a snapping mast.

The Talljack fell against the parapet.

Hask’s glaive caught it under the jaw and levered it over the edge.

Four more were coming.

"Pairs," Hask said.

The crews moved into their fours without needing to be told twice.

For the next several minutes, Encrid did nothing but watch and call out what he could feel.

A Talljack coming up on the left.

A Grinner beneath the one in front.

Something heavy shifting on the ramp.

The Gleaning’s people listened to him the same way Gus had listened on the stair. Without question. Because there was no time for questions.

But it was not enough.

Talljacks were Level Three Roamers. They were strong and tall, and there were more of them than the section had fighters who could stand in front of them.

A crewman went over the edge.

Another went down with a crushed shoulder.

Then the fourth Talljack caught Hask by the haft of his glaive and lifted him off his feet.

Hask did not let go.

He hung there in the air, one hand wrapped around the haft, his three-fingered hand clawing at the Talljack’s arm.

And Encrid felt the Golden Star inside him grow bright.

Then brighter.

Then it did exactly what Rael’s had done inside the tunnel.

It dropped.

Encrid felt it clearly through Attunement. The Star sank through Hask’s body, and his channels widened all at once. Strength flooded into his arms. He pulled himself up the glaive hand over hand, drew his knees to his chest, and kicked the Talljack so hard that it let go and staggered back three paces.

Hask landed on his feet.

He set the glaive, swept the Talljack’s legs out from under it, and sent it off the Wall.

Behind him, Ilse was fighting two at once.

The Celestial Star inside her had been flaring for minutes. Encrid had felt it grow heavier with every swing. Now, as the last two Talljacks reached for her from both sides, something changed.

The weight in her blows stopped being something she added at the end of each swing.

It became something she carried all the time.

Ilse crouched and brought both hatchets down onto the stone of the walk.

The parapet groaned.

The air around her grew thick and heavy. Both Talljacks were dragged down onto their knees, as if the world had suddenly doubled its weight around them.

Ilse stood up and took their heads off.

One.

Then the other.

After that, there was nothing left on the section except the Gleaning’s people, breathing hard, and the dull rhythm of the bulls pushing against the stone below.

✧ ✧ ✧

Encrid appraised them both before either of them had caught their breath.

[ Name: Hask Morrow ]

[ Realm: Master ]

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

[ Name: Ilse Varn ]

[ Realm: Master ]

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

He read them twice.

Three people had broken into the Master realm.

On the same section. On the same night. Within an hour of one another.

Every cultivation book in the Wall’s library said the step from Apex to Master was where most cultivators stopped for good. Ansel Corr had needed nineteen years to get where he was. Garrick Dane had been stuck for eleven years below the realm after Master.

And now there were three of them at once.

Rael came up the stairs holding his ribs. He looked at Hask. Then at Ilse. Something passed over his face that Encrid could not name.

"You two as well?" he asked.

Ilse shrugged. Her hands were shaking.

"It felt like whatever happened to you in the tunnel was still hanging in the air," she said. "Like heat left in a room after the fire’s gone out. I was standing in it, and it got into me."

Hask said nothing.

He only looked at Rael for a long moment. Then he went back to the edge and began checking the section’s spears, as if nothing had happened at all.

Encrid watched the three of them.

And he remembered a line of text the system had shown him on this very Wall, a long time ago.

A rising tide lifts all boats.

[ Quest Progress: THE KING BEFORE HIS CROWN ]

[ Completion rate: 33% → 41% ]

[ Note: The tide has begun to rise. Those who stand closest to it rise first. ]

✧ ✧ ✧

The story reached the Fifth Bastion before Encrid did.

By dawn, it had reached the eastern gate.

By the time the sun had fully risen, men on every section of the northern face were telling each other about the mercenary who had killed an old bull in the sally tunnel with a single thrust and walked out a Master. And about the two who had followed him before the night was over.

Some of them said it was impossible.

The men who had been at the ninth mile said nothing.

They only told the story again.

Encrid heard it three times on his way back along the walk. Each version was a little bigger than the one before. In the third, Rael had killed four bulls.

He did not correct anyone.

By the end of the siege, a great many people on the Wall would know Rael’s name.

That was fine.

That was exactly what the name was for.

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