Chapter 161: Day Four

The fourth day did not bring anything new.

That was what made it the worst day so far.

There were no Rookwings. No old bulls. No sudden flood of Talljacks. The horde simply kept coming, the same way it had come on the second day and the third.

And the Wall kept killing it.

And the Wall kept bleeding.

Encrid spent the morning counting.

The Boxes had fired twenty-one volleys since the siege began. Eleven thousand arrows had been prepared for them.

Four thousand two hundred were left.

The ballistae had not been fired many times. Nothing large enough to justify a bolt had come within range except the bulls, and the bulls had come at night.

The catapults had nothing left to throw but stone.

The javelin stacks along the parapet had already been refilled twice. There would not be a third time. The storehouses were empty.

The oil in the channels had been refreshed every twelve hours. There were forty barrels left.

"How long will everything last?" Encrid asked.

Vess had come up to the Fifth Bastion himself to deliver the numbers. He had never done that before. He looked as though he had aged ten years in four days.

"Arrows, three more days if the Boxes keep firing at this rate," Vess said. "Food, twenty-eight weeks. Oil, two days."

He rubbed his face with both hands.

"Men, I do not know. That is not my ledger."

Encrid knew that and he also knew whom to ask that question.

✧ ✧ ✧

The Healers’ Hall stood on the inner face at the fourth mile. It was a long stone building with a slate roof, built to hold perhaps sixty patients.

There were more than six hundred inside it now.

They lay on cots. On straw. On blankets spread across the floor. They lay in the corridors and on the steps outside. The healers moved between them with bloodied aprons and grey faces.

The smell was so thick that Encrid had to stop in the doorway and breathe through his mouth before he could go in.

Most of them would live.

That was the part no one had prepared him for.

In the stories Encrid had read in his previous life, men in battle either died or got back up and fought again.

But the Healers’ Hall was full of men who would live and never fight again.

A soldier of the Fourth Watch with both hands gone at the wrist.

A levy boy whose knee had turned black from a Grinner bite. The healers had taken his leg off above the joint.

A sergeant blinded by a Rookwing’s claw, who kept asking everyone what time it was.

Elder Wode sat on a stool at the far end of the hall with his stick across his knees. He was not treating anyone. He no longer had the strength. Instead, he was telling the younger healers who to treat next, and in what order.

"Strategist." Wode did not look up. "If you have come to ask how many of them can return to the Wall, the answer is ninety."

"Out of six hundred."

"Out of six hundred and forty."

Wode finally raised his eyes. They were red-rimmed.

"Most of the rest will live," he said. "But they will never hold a spear again."

Encrid stood beside him for a while.

He did not say anything.

Then he took out a sheet of paper and a pencil.

"I need their names," he said. "All of them. And the names of the dead."

Wode looked at him strangely.

"The Watch captains keep those rolls."

"I know. I need them anyway."

Wode studied his face for a long moment.

Then he called one of the younger healers over and told her to bring the Hall’s book to the Strategist when she had a moment, and to let him copy whatever he wished.

✧ ✧ ✧

Ysolde Marr came off the stone at the fourth hour of the afternoon.

She did not come off it willingly.

Encrid had been following the flag chain reports all morning. She had gone to eleven sections since dawn. The eleventh had been the sixth mile again.

The men there said she had killed a Talljack with a cut that did not quite go all the way through.

They had never seen her do that before.

It was the end of her third day.

She had told Encrid herself what would happen after three days. She would still be walking. But she would not be fighting well.

And she had told him something else, standing on the inner steps of the fourth bastion with her back turned to him.

’You will have to tell somebody to stop me then. Somebody strong enough.’

So Encrid had climbed the two hundred and six steps to the Lord Commander’s rooms and told him.

Ulrich Vance had listened without interrupting. Then he wrote a single line on a scrap of paper, signed it, and handed it to a runner.

When the runner found Ysolde at the sixth mile, she read the note, crumpled it in her fist, and stood very still for about ten seconds.

Then she walked into the bastion room, lay down on the cot in her bloody coat, and fell asleep before the sergeant could even find her a blanket.

Encrid heard about it from Gus, who had heard it from the sergeant.

"Was she angry?" Encrid asked.

"The sergeant said she said something about you."

"What did she say?"

Gus looked uncomfortable.

"He wouldn’t tell me the exact words. He said they’d make me blush."

Encrid decided to leave it at that.

✧ ✧ ✧

That evening, Encrid did something he had not told the Council about.

He went to the Watcher’s Office, where Merta was still working by lamplight, and asked her for the evacuation order.

She looked up slowly.

"The one Vess and I spent six months writing so that it would never have to be used?"

"That one."

"May I ask why?"

"I want it checked against today’s numbers," Encrid said. "How many people can still walk. How many wagons are left. How many carts the Darwen Span can take in an hour if they cross four wide."

He paused.

"And I want it done quietly."

Merta held his gaze for a long time.

"You think the Wall is going to fall."

"No," Encrid said. "But if I wait until I think it will fall, it will be too late to check the numbers."

Merta did not argue.

She pulled the order out of a locked drawer and began to read.

Encrid sat at his own desk and began copying names from the Healers’ Hall book into his ledger. He did it slowly. One name at a time. The same way he had done it for the twenty-three trench workers and the four Far-Watch men.

He was still writing when Corr’s runner appeared at the door.

"My lord. Captain Corr asks you to come to the Fifth Bastion."

"What is it?"

The runner hesitated.

"The Roamers are pulling back from the stone, my lord. All along the northern face."

He swallowed.

"Captain Corr says they are not retreating."

Encrid put down his pencil.

"Then what are they doing?"

"He says..." The runner’s voice dropped. "He says they are making room."

✦ ✦ ✦