Chapter 169: Bolts for Giants

Encrid went to the parapet and looked north.

At first, he could not see anything different.

The horde still covered the killing ground from one edge of sight to the other. It still kept its distance from the Wall, holding back two hundred paces from the stone as it had since the night before.

Then he saw it.

The mass was parting.

Not everywhere. In a few places, spread along the northern face, long lanes were opening in the horde. The smaller Roamers were pressing themselves out of the way, crowding to either side, as if something was coming through that they did not want to be near.

Encrid counted the lanes.

Five.

Two of them pointed toward the central bastions. One toward the Fourth Mile. One toward the Main Gate.

And one toward the Center.

"Glass," Encrid said.

Corr handed it to him.

Encrid raised it to his eye and looked down the nearest lane.

Something was walking up it.

It was the size of a small house. It moved on four thick legs, each as wide as a barrel, and its back was covered in overlapping plates of dark grey hide that looked exactly like old, rusted iron. Its head was low and blunt, almost hidden under the front edge of its plates.

It did not run. It did not charge.

It walked.

Slowly and steadily, the way the Elder had walked all day.

"What is that?" Gus asked.

Corr answered before Encrid could.

"An Ironback," he said. "I’ve only seen them twice. Always deep in the forest. They don’t come near the Wall."

"How dangerous?"

"Level Four," Corr said. "The Far-Watch doesn’t fight them. We go around."

Encrid lowered the glass.

He understood what was happening.

The Elder had lain down. And the things that had been walking beside the Elder all day, things too large and too slow to keep up with the rest of the horde, had finally caught up.

Now they were coming to the Wall.

Encrid looked at the five lanes again.

They did not point toward the weakest sections of the Wall. They did not point toward the body ramps.

They pointed toward the places where the stone was already broken. Toward the gates, and toward the sections where the Rackhorns and Talljacks had climbed.

"They’re going to push," Encrid said quietly. "Like the bulls at the sally."

"Can the stone take it?" Gus asked.

"Against one? Maybe. Against five, at the same time, all night?"

Encrid did not finish.

He did not have to.

He turned to the ballista beside him.

It had stood on the Fifth Bastion since the preparations. For nine days, it had not fired a single bolt. Its crew had drilled with it for three weeks before the horde came, and then they had spent the siege watching the Boxes do the work while their own machine sat silent.

They were standing ready now. A fresh bolt lay in the groove, its dark Cavel head still faintly warm from Brannoc’s forge. And they were watching Encrid the same way the Box crews had watched him on the first day of the siege.

Waiting to be told whether their machine was worth anything at all.

"Load," Encrid said.

✧ ✧ ✧

A ballista was not a Box.

A Box threw a hundred and twenty arrows into the air and let the sky decide where they landed. A ballista threw one bolt, and it went exactly where the man at the trigger pointed it.

That made it more accurate.

It also made it far less forgiving.

Encrid had watched the ballista crews practice during the preparations. A good crew could fire one bolt every three minutes. A tired crew, every five.

Five lanes. Five Ironbacks.

And Encrid had twenty ballistae spread along two hundred kilometers of Wall.

Only six of them stood close enough to the lanes to matter. The rest were bolted into their beds miles away, and a ballista weighed as much as a loaded cart. There was no moving them tonight.

Six machines. Five Ironbacks.

He did the arithmetic.

The Ironbacks were walking at the speed of a slow man. It would take them eight or nine minutes to cross the two hundred paces of open ground.

That meant each ballista crew near a lane would get two shots, perhaps three, before the Ironback reached the stone.

If the bolts did not work, there would be no time to try anything else.

"Aim for the head," Encrid said to the crew chief. "Where the plates meet the skull. If the head is too low, aim for the front leg."

"Yes, my lord."

The crew chief put his eye to the sight.

The windlass creaked as the crew cranked the bow back. The heavy bolt settled into its groove.

The Ironback in the lane toward the Fifth Bastion was a hundred and fifty paces away now.

A hundred and forty.

"Fire."

-Kwong!

The ballista jumped in its bed. Encrid felt the recoil through the soles of his boots.

The bolt crossed the killing ground faster than his eye could follow.

It struck the Ironback just above its left foreleg.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the Ironback stopped walking.

It stood still, its great head swinging slowly from side to side, as if it could not understand what had happened. Encrid watched through the glass.

The bolt had gone in to half its length.

Cavel iron. Three-finned. Forged that very night by a smith who had spent his whole life making things that went through other things.

It had gone through plates that looked like rusted iron as easily as a knife through bread crust.

"Again," Encrid said.

The crew was already cranking.

The second bolt struck two hands’ width from the first.

The Ironback’s front leg folded.

It went down onto its chest with a sound Encrid felt more than heard, and it did not get up again.

On the Fifth Bastion, the crew stared at their machine.

Then someone shouted.

Then everyone was shouting.

Encrid did not shout.

He turned to Corr.

"Send the signal along the chain. Ballistae on the lanes. Head and front leg."

"The flag can’t carry that, my lord."

"Then send the runners. Now."

✧ ✧ ✧

It took most of the night.

The Ironback in the lane toward the Fourth Mile went down under three bolts from Garrick Dane’s section, even without Garrick Dane standing on it.

The one toward the Main Gate took five, because the ballista on the gate tower was set too high to aim down properly at something that close, and its first three bolts went over its back. But it went down forty paces from the gate, and Serapha Lund’s archers finished it where it lay.

The one toward the second central bastion reached the stone.

It put its blunt head against the Wall and pushed, and the whole section shook. But the ballista in that bastion had been firing down at it from almost straight above, and by the time the Ironback began to push, it had four bolts in its back. It pushed for less than a minute before it died.

And the one toward the Center never reached the stone at all.

Wilm Trask’s men put six bolts into it before it made it halfway across the killing ground. Encrid watched the last one through the glass. Then he watched a big, cheerful figure on the Center’s gate tower raise both arms in the air and shout something that made the men around him cheer.

It was not only the ballistae.

With the Ironbacks came the rest of the horde. Grinners and Reevers and Talljacks flowed in behind the great beasts as they walked, using them as cover, and when the Ironbacks fell, the smaller Roamers poured over their bodies toward the Wall.

But the Wall had arrows again. It had spears again. The Box crews were no longer counting how many volleys they had left.

The new spears came up from the Works still smelling of fresh wood and oil, and the men on the parapets used them the way men use something they had not expected to have. Without hesitation.

By the time the moon had crossed half the sky, the pressure along the northern face had eased.

Not ended.

Eased.

Encrid stood on the Fifth Bastion and looked at the five dark shapes lying on the killing ground, each one surrounded by a pile of smaller bodies.

For the first time since the tusks had appeared on the horizon, the men on the Wall were talking again.

Some of them were even laughing.

Ellis Cavel had come up to the bastion an hour ago and had not left since. He stood beside Encrid now with his arms wrapped around himself against the cold, looking at the dead Ironbacks.

"My father will want to know that the iron worked," he said.

"Tell him it worked."

"He’ll want to know how well."

Encrid thought about it.

"Tell him," he said, "that the Wall is still standing because of it."

Ellis nodded slowly.

Then, far to the north, beyond the killing ground, beyond the treeline, something flashed.

✦ ✦ ✦