Chapter 176: For the Revolution

Slowly, Ysolde lowered her fist.

She did not get off Trask’s chest. She did not stand up. She simply lowered her hand to her knee and stayed there, kneeling on him, breathing hard.

"Ask," she said. "Quickly."

Encrid crossed the room and crouched beside Trask’s head.

Up close, it was worse. The big man’s face was swollen almost beyond recognition. Blood ran from his nose and mouth into his grey-streaked beard.

But his one open eye found Encrid.

And it was clear.

"Watcher," Trask said.

His voice was thick and wet, but it was still his voice. The same warm, apologetic voice that had said sorry about the mess three hours ago.

"Sorry," he said. "Sorry about all this."

Encrid did not answer that.

"Who sent you?"

Trask’s mouth moved. It might have been a laugh.

"You wouldn’t know the name."

"Try me."

"No." Trask coughed, and blood came up with it. "No, I don’t think I will."

"How long?" Encrid asked.

"How long what?"

"How long have you been waiting to open that gate?"

Trask’s eye moved to the ceiling.

"Twenty-three years," he said. "I came to the Wall when I was twenty-seven. I was told to wait. So I waited. I stood my watches. I ate the bread. I buried my men." He paused. "I did bury them, you know. I cried at every one. That part wasn’t false."

"Then why?"

"Because it was the job." Trask’s eye came back to Encrid. "Same as yours. Same as hers. We all have a job on the Wall, don’t we?"

Ysolde’s hand clenched on her knee.

"Who else is with you?" Encrid asked.

Trask smiled with his broken mouth.

"You’re a clever one, Watcher. Everyone says so. You work it out."

"There are three other gates."

"There are."

"Are there more like you?"

Trask looked at him for a long moment.

"You know what I thought," he said, "when you walked into the Council for the first time? That fat, useless fourth son everybody laughed at? I thought, that’s a good thing. The Council’s going to waste a month arguing about him. Nobody will be watching anything else."

He coughed again.

"Then you started digging trenches. Building boxes. Burning Gorehorns. And I thought, well. That’s not good at all." He made a sound that might have been a laugh. "You were the one thing nobody planned for. I’m sorry. I truly did like you. I voted for you. I meant it."

"Why?"

"Because I thought you’d make them waste their time." The smile widened. "And then you didn’t. So I had to."

Encrid stared at him.

"And the bread," Trask said softly. "Your bread came up at exactly the right time. I’d been trying to think of a reason to send the winch crew away and then there it was. In writing. With Ostrand’s name at the bottom."

Encrid did not move.

He felt the words land somewhere under his ribs and stay there.

Trask’s jaw moved.

It was a small movement. A chewing movement. Encrid almost did not notice it.

Then he did.

He opened Appraisal.

[ Name: Wilm Trask ]

[ Age: 50 ]

[ Realm: Master ]

[ Star Level: One Star - Golden Star (Master) ]

[ Condition: Poisoned (Fatal). Severe trauma. ]

"No!"

Encrid grabbed Trask’s jaw with both hands and tried to force his mouth open. It was like trying to pry apart a vise. Ysolde saw what he was doing and understood. She seized Trask’s head and pushed her thumb between his teeth.

But it was already too late.

Trask’s whole body began to shake. His back arched off the floor so hard that it lifted Ysolde with it. His one open eye rolled back and then forward again, and it found Encrid.

It was not warm anymore.

It was burning.

"The Empire," Trask gasped.

Foam gathered at the corners of his mouth.

"The Empire shall burn!"

His fingers clawed at the stone floor.

"For the revolution!"

His back arched once more.

Then it fell.

And Wilm Trask, Commander of the Sixth Watch, who had served the Wall for twenty-three years, lay still on the floor of the winch room with his eye open and his broken mouth still shaped around the last word.

✧ ✧ ✧

For a long time, neither of them moved.

Ysolde was the first. She took her thumb out of the dead man’s mouth. She wiped it on her coat. She stood up slowly and looked down at the body.

She did not say anything.

Encrid stayed where he was, crouched on the floor.

The revolution.

He knew that word. Everyone knew that word. It was the kind of word men muttered in taverns when the taxes went up. It was a word for students and poets and angry farmers.

It was not a word for a Watch commander with twenty-three years on the stone.

Encrid thought about the novel.

The Last Age of Radiance.

He had read every single Chapter release. He had read about the Wall. It had fallen. It had fallen before the first page of the story. It had been mentioned in a few lines of history, a tragedy that had happened years before the hero appeared.

The Wall fell to the Ten Thousand-Beast Calamity Horde. That was all the book had said.

It had never mentioned a gate being opened.

It had never mentioned a traitor.

It had never mentioned a revolution.

Encrid had spent a year and a half preparing for the horde. He had built trenches and machines and a school and a guild. He had written to his sister and to Lord Cavel and to the Crown. He had prepared for everything he knew was coming.

And he had never once asked why the Wall fell.

He had only asked how to stop it.

"Watcher."

Ysolde’s voice was flat.

He looked up.

"The gate is still open," she said.

Encrid looked at the iron bar jammed through the drum’s spokes. At the chains running down through the floor. At the portcullis hanging open above the passage, while below it, the horde was still pouring into the courtyard.

He stood up.

The questions would wait.

They would have to.

✦ ✦ ✦