Chapter 175: The Hunt

"The Commander sent you down?" Encrid repeated.

"To eat." The soldier’s face was grey. "At the eighth hour. The bread came. The Commander said your order. Every man sits down and eats. Every man and even the winch crew."

Encrid’s hand went still on the man’s shoulder.

"He said the gate was barred and the portcullis was down, so there was no harm in it," the soldier went on. "He said his own guard would watch the winch. There were six of them. His own men. They’ve been with him for years."

"And then?"

"And then Olen." The soldier’s voice broke. "Olen went back up for his knife. He’d left it on the winch bench. He came down the stairs shouting that the doors were being unbarred. He ran for the bell."

The bell.

Three strokes in quick succession. Then one more. Then half of a fifth before the ringing stopped.

"They killed him," the soldier whispered, tears running down his face. There was something deeply unsettling about watching a grown man break down like this, and Encrid found it difficult to look away.

"On the bell rope. I saw them. The Commander’s men."

His breath hitched.

"And then the portcullis started going up. We tried to get back up the stairs, but the Grinners were already coming through the passage."

He let go of Encrid’s sleeve.

"We didn’t open it."

Encrid didn’t have any words to console the man.

A healer from one of the Shambles cookshops had come running out with a bag. Encrid moved aside to let her work.

He stood up.

For a moment, he did not move.

Wilm Trask.

The big, cheerful man with flour on his coat. The man who apologized for everything. The man who had voted for Encrid when nobody expected him to. The man who had slapped his shoulder three hours ago and told him to go and get some sleep.

The man who had said, I’ll brace the gate. I’ll have it done by the evening bread.

He had not been lying about the bread.

That was the part that made Encrid’s stomach turn.

The bread came up at the fourth and eighth hours of the morning. Every section on the Wall knew it. Every man sat down to eat it, by order.

By Encrid’s order.

Trask had not needed to invent a reason to send his winch crew away. He had not needed to sneak or bribe or lie.

Encrid had given him the reason. In writing. With Ostrand’s name on the bottom.

"Watcher."

It was Ysolde.

She was standing ten paces away in the middle of the courtyard, with three dead Roamers at her feet. She had heard every word the soldier had said.

Encrid looked at her.

She was not looking at him. She was looking up.

At the Center Gate’s eastern tower. At the narrow windows of the winch room above the gate passage.

"Ysolde," Encrid said.

She was already gone.

✧ ✧ ✧

Encrid had never seen anyone move that fast.

One moment, Ysolde Marr was standing in the courtyard. The next, she was at the base of the gate tower. She did not use the door. She went up the outer wall, one hand on a window ledge, one foot on a stone, the next hand on the next ledge, as if the tower were a ladder.

She went through the winch-room window without slowing down.

Encrid ran for the tower door.

The stair inside was narrow and steep and dark. Twice he had to step over bodies. Sixth Watch men, lying where they had fallen trying to get back up. One of them was very young.

Halfway up, he heard the fighting start above him.

It did not last long.

There were six men in the winch room. Trask’s own guard. Men he had trained, men who had been with him for years. They were not weak. They were soldiers of the Wall.

It did not matter.

Encrid heard a sword clash once. Twice. He heard a man shout. He heard something heavy hit the wall.

Then he heard the only sound that kept going.

A dull, repeating thud.

He reached the top of the stair and stopped in the doorway.

The winch room was a small stone chamber above the gate passage, with a great iron drum in the middle of it. Chains ran from the drum down through slots in the floor to the portcullis below. A long iron bar had been driven through the drum’s spokes and wedged against the wall, so that the drum could not turn.

The portcullis was jammed open.

Six men lay on the floor around the drum. None of them were moving.

And in the far corner, Ysolde Marr was kneeling on Wilm Trask’s chest.

She had put her sword down.

She was using her fists.

Encrid had seen violence on the Wall for a year and a half. He had seen men thrown off the parapet and pulled apart by Grinners. He had seen what a Rackhorn’s horns did to a man.

This was different.

She was not trying to kill him quickly. She was not trying to kill him at all, yet. She was hitting him the way a person hits a door that will not open, again and again, harder each time, and every time her fist came down, she said something.

"Nineteen years."

-Thud.

"Nineteen years on this stone."

-Thud.

"I have buried hundreds who stood to protect this wall."

-Thud.

"I remember each one of their names."

-Thud.

"Every one of them died so that this door would stay shut."

-Thud.

"And you opened it."

Her voice was not loud. It was very quiet. It was the most frightening thing Encrid had ever heard.

"You opened it for what?"

Trask’s face was barely a face anymore. His nose was broken. One eye was swollen shut. His big hands lay limp on the floor on either side of him.

But he was still breathing.

And he was smiling.

Ysolde saw the smile. Her fist rose again. Red light gathered along her knuckles, the same red light that ran along her sword when she fought. Encrid felt it through Attunement. It was not a punch anymore. It was a blow that would take a man’s head off his shoulders.

"You made all of it nothing," she said.

Encrid stepped into the room.

"Ysolde."

She did not stop.

"Ysolde, if he dies now, we will never know who else is with him."

Her fist stayed in the air.

Encrid did not move closer. He did not reach for her arm. He was not a fool. If she decided to finish the blow, there was nothing in his body or his realm or his weapon that could stop her.

He only spoke.

"Who sent him," he said. "Who told him when. Who else is on this Wall, holding another door, waiting for another bell."

The red light on her knuckles flickered.

"There are three more gates," Encrid said. "And an Elder walking toward us."

For a long moment, the only sound in the winch room was Trask’s breathing. Wet and slow.

And, from the courtyard far below, the screaming.

Ysolde’s fist did not come down.

It did not lower either.

It stayed exactly where it was, shaking, with the red light fading and brightening, fading and brightening, as if she could not decide.

✦ ✦ ✦