Chapter 173: The Center Gate

The morning bread reached the Fifth Bastion at the eighth hour, exactly as ordered.

Encrid met the porters at the foot of the inner stair. Two of them carried the sacks up to the platform, and the men of Holt’s section sat down along the parapet to eat, the way every section on the Wall was sitting down to eat at that same moment.

Ellis Cavel was sitting on the bottom step with his head against the wall.

He had not gone to sleep in the quarters Vess had found for him. He had stayed on the bastion all night, and when Encrid left to walk the gates, he had come down the stairs and sat there instead, as if he did not know where else to go.

He looked up when Encrid stopped beside him.

"Any word, my lord?"

"Not yet."

Ellis nodded slowly.

"I keep thinking I should ride south," he said. "Tell my father the iron arrived. Tell him about the Ironbacks. But then I think, what if something happens here while I’m on the road, and I don’t know about it?"

"The road will still be there tomorrow."

"Will it?"

Encrid did not answer that.

"Go and sleep," he said instead. "Vess has a bed for you. You’ve been awake longer than I have."

"That isn’t possible."

"It’s close."

Ellis almost smiled. He stood up, brushing the dust off his grey cloak, and started down the inner road toward the Quartermastery.

Encrid watched him go.

Then he turned and started up the stairs.

Sleep. Trask had told him the same thing. Gus had been telling him the same thing for three days.

He thought about it seriously for the first time.

The gates would be braced. The ballistae were loaded. The strike team was either coming back or it was not, and nothing Encrid did on this stair would change which.

An hour, he decided. Perhaps two. On the cot in the signal room below the platform, where Corr could wake him if anything happened.

Encrid was halfway up the inner stair of the Fifth Bastion when he heard the bell.

It was not a large bell. Every gate tower on the Wall had one, hung under the eaves of its roof. They were rung for the change of the watch, or to warn of Roamers climbing, or, very rarely, for fire.

This one did not ring the way a bell was supposed to ring.

It rang three times, quickly.

Then once more.

Then it stopped, halfway through a fifth stroke, as if someone had grabbed the rope.

Encrid stopped on the stair.

The sound had come from the east.

From about a mile away.

He took the rest of the stairs two at a time.

When he reached the top of the Fifth Bastion, everyone on the platform was already looking east. Corr had turned his chair around. Gus was standing at the parapet with one hand on his sword.

"What was that?" Gus asked.

Encrid did not answer.

He went to the eastern edge of the bastion and looked along the Wall.

A mile away, the two squat towers of the Center Gate stood against the morning sky.

Nothing seemed wrong.

The flags on the gate towers were still. The parapet was still lined with men. The horde was still out on the killing ground, two hundred paces from the stone, the way it had been all night.

Then Encrid noticed the horde.

It was moving.

Not toward the Fifth Bastion. Not toward the parapets.

Toward the Center.

It was not a charge. It was something stranger than that. The whole front of the horde in front of the Center Gate was turning, the way water turns when someone pulls the plug from the bottom of a basin. Grinners and Reevers and Talljacks, hundreds of them, then thousands, all turning at once and flowing toward the same point.

Toward the base of the Center Gate.

"Glass," Encrid said.

His voice sounded very far away.

Corr handed him the glass.

Encrid raised it and looked.

He looked at the Center Gate’s northern face. At the arched opening at the bottom of the Wall, where the gate passage began.

The portcullis was rising.

Slowly. Steadily. Its iron points had already cleared the ground. A foot. Two feet. Three.

Behind it, the great doors were standing open.

Encrid watched the first Grinner reach the gate and squeeze under the rising points without slowing down.

Then a second.

Then a dozen.

Then the portcullis was high enough for a Reever, and the Reevers went in.

For a moment, Encrid could not think.

It was the strangest feeling. He had spent a year and a half thinking. He had thought about the trenches, the Boxes, the oil, the sheets, the Rookwings, the Ironbacks. He had thought about everything that could happen to this Wall.

He had never once thought about this.

The Center Gate was open.

And it had been opened from the inside.

[ ✦ ✦ Emergency Quest ✦ ✦ ]

[ The Center Gate has been breached from within. The horde is entering the Wall’s interior. ]

[ Objective: Close the Center Gate, Eliminate the traitors and clear the inner courtyard before the horde spreads through the Shambles. ]

[ Time Limit: None. Every minute costs lives. ]

[ Reward: Narrative Relevance increase / Appraisal proficiency increase ]

[ Failure: The central section of the Wall is lost. The fall of the Wall accelerates. Narrative Relevance decrease. ]

The window broke Encrid out of it.

He lowered the glass.

"Corr. Rise the breach signal towards the center Gate. Use every flag on the chain."

Corr was already turning to the signalers.

"Gus."

"Young master."

"The Gleaning’s hall at the fifth mile. It’s four streets from the Center courtyard." Encrid did not look at him. "Wren and the children are there. Get them into the cellar. Bar the door. Don’t let anything in."

Gus opened his mouth.

"Go."

Gus went.

Encrid turned to Holt.

"Sergeant. Half your section with me. The rest hold the Fifth."

Holt did not ask where they were going.

He was already shouting names.

Encrid went to the rack and took down his crossbow. He slung the quiver over his shoulder. His hands were steady. He noticed that with some surprise.

Then he stopped at the top of the stair, just for a moment, and looked east again.

The bell on the Center Gate tower had stopped ringing.

Then, from the Shambles beyond the Center courtyard, where kitchens, taverns, laundries, and bathhouses crowded together along narrow streets, came the first scream.

As Encrid heard it, an uncontrollable rage began to rise within him.

✦ ✦ ✦