Chapter 163: Two Tusks (2)

The news moved along the Wall faster than any flag.

By the time the sun had cleared the clouds, every man on the northern face had seen the tusks.

Most of them did not need to be told where to look. Someone would glance north, freeze, and point. Then the man beside him would look.

Then the man beside him.

No one shouted.

That was the first thing Encrid noticed as he walked east along the parapet from the Fifth Bastion.

On the first day, when the horde’s dust had covered the horizon, the men had shouted. They had cursed, argued, and asked each other questions no one could answer. On the second day, when the trenches had filled, the Wall had been full of noise.

Now it was quiet.

A spearman of the Fifth Watch had sat down against the inner parapet with his spear across his knees, staring at nothing. His captain stood beside him and did not tell him to get up.

Farther along, two archers leaned on the stone side by side. Neither of them spoke. Their bows hung loosely from their hands.

At the sixth mile, Encrid passed the old sergeant who had served twenty-two years on the Wall.

He was the same man who had lowered his spear on the first day, after the Boxes fired their first volley, and muttered ’that clerk’ without finishing the sentence. Encrid had heard about it later from Corr.

He had never spoken to the man.

Now the sergeant was staring north with his mouth slightly open.

Then he did something Encrid had never seen a soldier of the Wall do.

He took off his helmet, held it against his chest, and bowed his head.

He was not praying. Encrid did not think so.

He was doing what men did at a graveside before the grave had been filled.

"Sergeant," Encrid said.

The man looked up. It took him a moment to recognize who was speaking to him.

"My lord."

"Put your helmet back on."

The sergeant looked down at the helmet in his hands, as if he did not remember how it had gotten there.

Then he put it back on.

"Twenty-two years," he said quietly, as though Encrid had asked. "I’ve seen things come out of that forest my whole life. My father saw things. His father too. There are stories on this Wall about things the old men swore they saw. I never believed half of them."

He looked north again.

"There’s a story about five of them. The five the Wall wasn’t built for."

"I know the stories too."

The sergeant swallowed.

"Is it true, my lord?"

Encrid did not lie to him.

"Yes," he said. "I think it is."

✧ ✧ ✧

Captain Odrin Kass was already on the Fifth Bastion when Encrid returned.

He had come running from the Far-Watch hall at the fourth mile. The men said he had not run anywhere in ten years.

He stood at the parapet with the long Far-Watch glass pressed to his eye, and he did not lower it for a long time.

Corr sat beside him in his chair.

"It’s the same one," Corr said. "The one from the basin. I would know those tusks anywhere."

Corr’s voice was steady. But his one hand was gripping the arm of his chair so tightly that his knuckles had turned white.

"I thought it was asleep."

"Slumbering," Kass said.

"Yes."

Kass finally lowered the glass.

"The tips of the tusks stand at a hundred and forty feet," he said to no one in particular. "Maybe more. The canopy there averages eighty."

He was quiet for a moment.

"I can’t see its body yet. The trees still cover it."

"Speed?" Encrid asked.

"Slow. Very slow. A man walking quickly could outpace it."

Kass raised the glass again.

"But it doesn’t stop. It hasn’t stopped once since dawn. At this pace, it will reach the edge of the forest by evening. And the Wall..."

He did not finish.

He did not need to.

✧ ✧ ✧

Ulrich Vance came onto the Fifth Bastion a quarter of an hour later.

He came alone, without an aide. He climbed the inner stair the way he climbed everything. Without hurrying. Without stopping.

The soldiers on the platform straightened as he passed.

He did not look at any of them.

He walked straight to the parapet and looked north.

For a long time, he said nothing.

Encrid had seen the Lord Commander look at many things. Ledgers. Maps. Trenches filling with bodies. The burning Gorehorn wedge. Forty thousand Roamers stretching to the edge of sight.

Through all of it, the old man’s face had remained exactly the same. Like the granite he had stood on for forty-eight years.

It did not remain the same now.

It was not fear. Encrid would not have called it fear.

It was something older than that. Quieter.

It was the face of a man who had been told all his life that a certain day would come, and who had spent all his life half-believing it would not come while he was still alive.

"When I was nineteen," Ulrich said at last, "my first commander brought me up onto this bastion and pointed at that forest. He told me the Wall had been built to stop everything in it."

He paused.

"Then he told me the rest. Everything except five things. And if one of those five ever came, the Wall would no longer be a wall. It would just be a line of stone lying on the ground."

No one on the platform spoke.

"I asked him what we were supposed to do if that day ever came."

Ulrich’s hands tightened on the parapet.

"He said he didn’t know. He said no one had ever needed to know."

On the horizon, the tusks rose.

Beneath their feet, the ground shivered.

Ulrich turned away from the parapet.

When he spoke again, his voice had changed back into the voice of the Lord Commander of the Wall. Flat. Clear. Carrying.

"Captain Kass. Raise the council flag. I want every Watch commander on this bastion within the hour. The Vice-Commander. The Steward. The Chief Healer, if he can walk, and his deputy if he cannot."

"Yes, Lord Commander."

"The Head of the Lampwrights as well."

Kass paused for the briefest moment.

Then he nodded.

Ulrich turned to Encrid.

"And Strategist."

"Lord Commander."

"You once told me that you had prepared this Wall for both a plan and no plan." The old man’s eyes were steady. "Start thinking about which one we are going to need."

✦ ✦ ✦