Chapter 204: The Northern Edge

The line withdrew across the Span in the last light of the day.

It went in good order. Encrid had worried that it would not. Twelve hundred men of the Third Legion, four hundred knights of the Fifth Order, the Gleaning’s fighters, and the last soldiers of the Wall, all turning their backs on a horde and walking away from it.

It should have been a rout.

It was not.

The barrier still stood between them and the Roamers. It was cracked from top to bottom now, flickering like a lamp running out of oil. But it held. And behind it, the soldiers walked backward onto the Span in ranks, shields still raised, as if they did not quite believe the golden light would last.

The Gleaning went across near the end.

Rael stopped at the northern end of the Span as the last of his crews filed past him. He stood there with the Cavel spear in his good hand, and he looked at Encrid.

Hask and Ilse stopped beside him.

"You’re really doing this," Rael said.

"I’m really doing this."

Rael looked at him for a long moment. His face was grey with exhaustion. His burned hand was strapped against his chest.

"You promised my people would leave first," he said. "They did. Every one of them."

"I know."

"You didn’t have to keep that."

"Yes," Encrid said. "But what would be left of men who can’t even keep their words."

Rael was quiet. Then he did something Encrid had never seen him do. He held out his good hand.

Encrid took it.

Rael’s grip was very hard.

"Come back - the Northern Free company will need its backer in one piece," Rael said.

Encrid almost smiled.

"I always do," he said.

Hask made a sound in his throat. It might have been a laugh. It might not.

Then the three of them turned and walked onto the Span, and did not look back.

? ? ?

Gus did not go.

He was standing at the northern end of the Span with Encrid’s things held against his chest, and he did not move when the last of the Gleaning walked past him.

"Gus."

"Young master."

"When you told me you would follow me to the Wall at the Gannon Estate," Encrid said, "I told you something."

Gus’s jaw tightened.

"You said, if you tell me to go, I go." His voice cracked. "You said you won’t wait for me."

"I’m telling you now."

For a long moment, Gus did not move. Encrid could see the Ember Veil flickering around his knuckles, white-gold, burning brighter and dimmer with every breath.

Then Gus turned and walked onto the Span.

He did not run. He walked. And every few steps, he looked back.

Ysolde was the last to go.

She had stayed in the center of the line until every other soldier had passed her. Now she walked toward the northern end of the Span, alone, with her sword sheathed at her hip and her coat still black with old blood.

She stopped in front of Encrid.

"I struck you once," she said. "On the sparring yard. With everything I had. You should have died from that attack."

"I remember." It wasn’t something he could forget.

"You didn’t." She looked at him. "I never asked how."

"No."

"I’m not going to ask now. Ysolde’s voice was very quiet. "I’m going to assume that whatever you did then, you’re about to do again."

Encrid did not answer.

Ysolde looked at him a moment longer. Then she nodded once, sharply, the way a soldier nods to another soldier before a battle.

"Don’t die, Watcher, I can’t stand to lose another friend to this damned horde," she said and walked onto the Span.

And then Encrid was alone.

? ? ?

The northern end of the Darwen Span was wide and flat.

The deep-folk had made it that way. The arch of the bridge rose gently out of the rock at the edge of the gorge, and for the first thirty paces, it ran level with the ground, like a paved road. Then it began to curve upward and out over the Riven.

Encrid walked to the very edge of it, where the smooth grey stone met the ordinary rock of the road.

He stopped there.

In front of him, a hundred paces away, the barrier flickered.

Behind it, the horde.

He could see it clearly now, through the failing golden light. A grey-brown mass that filled the road and the hills and the whole northern horizon. Reevers and Grinners and Talljacks and Lopers, pressed so tightly together that they climbed on each other’s backs. Their eyes caught the last of the sunset. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands.

And in the middle, pressed against the barrier with its blind face, the Elder.

Its single tusk rose over everything, black against the red sky.

Encrid looked at it.

Behind him, far across the Span, he heard a voice. The Grand Magus. He had walked out onto the southern end of the bridge, where he could see the whole arch, and he was standing there with his walking stick planted on the stone.

His voice carried across half a mile of gorge as though he were standing beside Encrid.

"Ready, brat?"

Encrid did not turn around.

He looked at the horde. He looked at the Elder. He thought, very briefly, about the room he had woken up in on his first morning in this world. The unfamiliar ceiling. The stranger’s hands. The system window floating in front of his face, telling him he had two minutes to avoid being disowned.

Two minutes.

He had been so afraid then.

Now he had to hold the horde.

For one minute.

And he was afraid now too.

It was a different kind of fear.

"Ready," he said.

He did not raise his voice. He did not need to. He knew the old man heard him.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then, behind him, the Grand Magus began to speak.

Encrid could not understand the words. They were not in any language he had ever heard. They were low and slow and heavy, and each one seemed to sink into the stone of the Span and settle there.

In front of him, the barrier went out.

It did not crack. It did not shatter. The golden light simply stopped, all at once, like a candle blown out.

For a single heartbeat, the horde did not move.

Then it came.

? ? ?