Chapter 179: The Return

The moon was high over the killing ground, and the two figures were still four hundred paces from the Wall.

Four hundred paces was not far.

On any other night, a man could walk it in a few minutes.

But between the treeline and the Wall lay the horde. It had pulled back from the stone the night before, and most of it was still gathered in a vast dark mass along the eastern half of the killing ground. The western half was thinner. Scattered groups of Grinners and Reevers moved across it, sniffing at the dead.

And the two figures were walking straight through them.

Encrid lowered the glass.

He observed and ran his cold thoughts without meaning to.

The one who was staggering was falling every twenty or thirty paces. The one who was carrying the body was walking steadily, but slowly. At that pace, it would take them a quarter of an hour to reach the Wall.

The nearest group of Reevers was two hundred paces to their east.

A Reever could cross two hundred paces in less than a minute.

He raised the glass again and looked at the nearest of them. A long grey runner, head low, sniffing at a dead Grinner.

A window opened.

He had not called it.

[ Name: Reever ]

[ Classification: Level Two ]

[ Traits: Pack runner. Attacks first. Follows the loudest movement. ]

[ Weakness: Soft throat beneath the split jaw. ]

[ Condition: Compelled. ]

Encrid almost dropped the glass.

In a year and a half, Appraisal had never once worked on a Roamer. He had tried it on the first day he reached the Wall, on a Grinner’s corpse, and nothing had happened. He had tried it on living ones from the parapet and nothing had happened.

But now it did and Encrid didn’t need to think why.

Appraisal’s proficiency had reached D as the reward for the emergency quest.

’So that’s what it does’

He thought and pushed his urge to test the limits of it later.

Then he looked at the last line. Compelled. He did not know what it meant, and there was no time to think about it now. Two men were walking across the killing ground, and the Reevers were beginning to lift their heads.

He closed the window.

"The Box," Encrid said.

The crew chief at the fourth mile turned toward him.

"My lord?"

"Aim east of them. A hundred paces east. Fire when I say, and keep firing along that line. I want a wall of arrows between them and the horde."

"My lord, if we miss short-"

"Then aim long."

The crew chief did not argue. He shouted at his men, and the carriage began to turn.

Encrid turned to the section’s captain.

"Open the Far-Watch door."

"The door? With Roamers on the ground?"

"There are two men out there," Encrid said. "One of them is carrying a third. They will not be able to climb a rope."

The captain hesitated for a single heartbeat.

"Who’s going out to them?"

"I am," said a voice behind Encrid.

Ysolde Marr stood at the top of the stair.

She did not wait for anyone to answer. She was already going down.

✧ ✧ ✧

The Box fired four times.

Each volley tore a line through the killing ground east of the two figures. Grinners died in the dirt. Reevers turned away and ran back toward the mass of the horde. The ones that did not turn away did not live long enough to reach the figures.

And through the gap between the arrows and the Wall, Ysolde ran.

Encrid watched her through the glass. She came out of the Far-Watch door with a dozen Second Watch men behind her, and she left them behind within the first fifty paces. She ran low and fast across the broken ground, and the few Roamers that came near her simply stopped existing.

She reached the staggering figure first.

It was Kass.

Encrid knew it by the way he moved, even from four hundred paces. The Far-Watch captain had fallen again, onto his hands and knees, and he did not get up when Ysolde reached him. She knelt beside him for a moment.

Then she stood up and looked at the other figure.

The one who was still walking.

He did not stop when she reached him. He did not slow down. He did not even look at her.

He just kept walking toward the Wall.

Ysolde stood very still.

Then she turned, picked Kass up off the ground as if he weighed nothing, and walked beside the other figure all the way back to the Far-Watch door.

✧ ✧ ✧

Encrid was waiting in the passage when they came through.

The Second Watch men came first. Then Ysolde, carrying Kass.

Kass was barely conscious. His left arm hung wrong from the shoulder. His face was grey under the soot he had blackened it with. The front of his coat was soaked through with blood, and in his right hand, gripped so tightly that his knuckles were white, was a long pole with a cloth-wrapped head.

Garrick Dane’s poleaxe.

He had been using it as a crutch.

Ysolde laid him down on the stone floor of the passage. Helsa, Wode’s deputy, was already there with two healers. They knelt over him.

Kass’s eyes opened. They found Encrid.

"Watcher," he whispered.

"Don’t talk."

"Dane." Kass’s lips barely moved. "Dane stayed back."

"I know," Encrid said, though he had not known until that moment.

Kass’s eyes closed.

Then the last figure came through the Far-Watch door.

It was Rael.

He was bent almost double. He was covered in blood from his hair to his boots, some of it red, most of it black. His greatsword was gone. His strapped ribs had bled through the bandages.

And across his back, held there by his arms locked behind him, was a man in a plain dark coat.

Rael walked three steps into the passage.

Then he knelt, slowly, and let the man slide off his back onto the stone.

He laid him down carefully. Straightened his coat. Moved his arms to his sides.

Ulrich Vance’s eyes were closed. His face was calm. There was a long wound across his chest that had stopped bleeding a long time ago.

In his right hand, he still held the hilt of his sword.

The blade was broken off a hand’s width above the guard.

Encrid’s eyes rested on it for a moment, and a window opened by itself.

[ Name: Longsword (Unnamed) ]

[ Grade: ▮▮▮ ]

[ Maker: ▮▮▮ ]

[ Condition: Broken. ]

Encrid closed it without a word.

No one in the passage said anything.

The healers kneeling over Kass had stopped moving. The Second Watch men stood against the walls with their heads bowed. Somewhere up the stairs, someone had started crying and was trying very hard to stop.

Ysolde looked down at the Lord Commander.

She did not kneel. She did not cry. She stood there with her hands at her sides and her face perfectly still, and she looked at him.

Rael sat back on his heels.

He looked up at Encrid. His eyes were red. Not from crying. From three miles of forest and a night without end.

"He cut it off," Rael said.

His voice was hoarse.

"The Elder’s tusk. He cut it off at the root. With one stroke. I watched him do it."

Encrid knelt beside him.

"Rael."

"It screamed," Rael went on, as if he had not heard. "And it ran. It turned around and ran back into the forest. We thought it was over."

He looked down at Ulrich.

"It isn’t over," he said. "It’s still alive. And when it comes back, there’s nobody left who can do that again."

✦ ✦ ✦