Chapter 166: Rael’s Price

Rael was asleep when Encrid found him.

He was lying on a pile of empty grain sacks in the tower at the ninth mile, with his greatsword across his chest and his strapped ribs rising and falling slowly. Hask was sitting on an overturned bucket beside the door with his glaive across his knees.

"Don’t," Hask said, when Encrid reached for the door. As expected, the news does travel fast and by how Hask seemed to know what Encrid was about to say - it seems like the Northern Company had their own intelligence network.

"I have to."

Hask looked at him for a long moment.

Then he stood up and opened the door himself.

Rael opened his eyes the moment the hinges creaked. He did not move anything else.

"So you’re here," he said.

"I need a favor," Encrid didn’t beat around the bush.

Rael sat up slowly, wincing when his ribs moved. Encrid pulled a stool over and sat down across from him.

He did not waste time. He told Rael everything. The Council. The four options. The plan to go at night while the Elder slept and about the strike team.

Rael listened without interrupting.

When Encrid finished, Rael was quiet for a while.

"You want me to guide them," he said.

"The Lord Commander wants a guide. Your name came up."

"Whose idea was that?"

"Commander Trask’s."

Rael nodded slowly.

"And you?" he asked. "What do you want?"

Encrid had been asking himself the same question all the way from the Fifth Bastion.

"I want you to stay on the ninth mile," he said. "I want you to hold your section and keep your ribs from getting worse. I want the strike team to find some other way through the forest."

Rael was someone destined to be one of the eight stars - someone who would go onto become a significant character in this world.

And now that he had a contract with Rael - his growth would also be relevant to him - which was his way to survive in this world.

Encrid didn’t want to risk such an important life.

"But."

Even when he knew all that - Encrid didn’t have a choice.

"But there isn’t another way," Encrid said. "Kass knows the Far-Watch paths. The horde knows them too. It has been walking on them for five days. The only ground the Roamers haven’t trampled is ground nobody on the Wall uses."

He paused.

"Except you."

Rael looked down at his hands and then at Encrid but he didn’t speak anything so Encrid continued.

"Could you get four people through the horde and near that colossal beast?"

"At night? Quietly?" Rael thought about it. "Maybe. If they walk where I walk and don’t argue about it."

"The Lord Commander won’t argue."

"The Lord Commander isn’t the one I’m worried about."

Encrid almost smiled.

Then Rael looked up, and his expression was serious.

"I’ll go," he said. "On one condition."

"Tell me."

"If the Wall falls-"

"It won’t."

"If it falls," Rael repeated calmly, "then my people leave first. Before the soldiers. Before the Watches. The Gleaning, and every child under the Shambles who eats from our table. They go out the Mouth ahead of everyone else."

Encrid did not answer immediately.

It was not a small thing Rael was asking for.

The evacuation order that Merta had pulled out of a locked drawer the night before had a sequence in it. Vess had spent weeks arguing about that sequence. Who went first, who went last, who held the road. The Far-Watch first, to scout and clear. Then the civilians. Then the wounded. Then the Watches, section by section.

A mercenary company was not on the list at all.

The Gleaning’s workers were fighters. By every rule the Wall had, fighters left last.

If Encrid agreed, and the Wall fell, he would be putting a hundred and fifty mercenaries ahead of soldiers who had given their lives to the stone for twenty years.

The soldiers would hate him for it.

Some of the commanders would never forgive it.

"You’re asking for a lot," Encrid said.

"I know."

"The soldiers will call it favoritism."

"Let them." Rael’s voice did not rise. "I’ve been feeding sixty people under the Shambles since I was sixteen. Nobody on this Wall ever gave them anything. Not a single commander. Not a single Watch. When the Lord Commander asked me to hold the ninth mile, I held it. When you asked me to fire the arrow at the Gorehorns, I fired it. Now you’re asking me to walk into the forest with an Elder at the end of the path."

He looked straight at Encrid.

"I’ll do it. But I want to know that if I don’t walk back out, Wren and Tam and the rest of them walk out of here instead."

Encrid thought about it.

Not for long.

He thought about Wren, thirteen years old, writing the returns in perfect, careful columns because she had decided the Gleaning was going to be the best-kept company on the Wall. He thought about Ilse’s brother, who could read because Rael had found someone to teach him.

He thought about the system window that listed Rael’s death as a failure.

And he realized the choice was not actually difficult at all.

"Agreed," Encrid said. "If the Wall falls, the Gleaning and its dependents leave ahead of the Watches but not first - I have my own promises to keep - but I’ll promise you their safety during evacuation if it ever happens - I’ll write it into the order myself."

Rael held his gaze a moment longer. Then he nodded once and stood up, carefully, one hand pressed against his side.

"Hask," he called.

The door opened immediately. Hask had not moved from beside it.

"I heard," Hask said.

"You hold the ninth mile."

"I heard that too."

"Ilse’s second. If anything happens to you, she holds it."

Hask’s jaw moved, as though he was about to say something. For a moment, Encrid thought he was going to argue.

Instead, he said, "Come back."

Rael picked up his greatsword and settled it on his back.

"I always do," he said.

✧ ✧ ✧

Encrid went back to the Watcher’s Office.

Merta was still at her desk with the evacuation order spread in front of her. She had not slept either. Her eyes were rimmed with red.

"I need to change the sequence," Encrid said.

She looked up at him.

He told her.

Merta listened. When he finished, she did not say anything for a long moment.

"Vess will hate this," she said at last.

"I know."

"The Watch commanders will hate this."

"They’ll only find out if the Wall falls," Encrid said. "I just have to make sure it doesn’t."

Merta sighed. Then she dipped her pen and began to write.

The Northern Free Company, and all persons dependent upon it, to leave the Wall by the Mouth immediately after the Far-Watch.

She signed it beneath the line.

Then she turned the order around and held out the pen.

Encrid signed beside her.

✦ ✦ ✦