Chapter 261: The Inquisitors at Maren (2)

"Ansel Corr," Grane said. "Bring him in next."

There were two reasons for that choice.

The first was that Corr had been the one to find the horde. Months before the siege, he had led a patrol two hundred miles into the Great Green and come back with the news that tens of thousands of Roamers were gathering in the north. Without his report, the Wall would never have known what was coming.

The second was that, not long after, the Strategist had made Corr his personal assistant. If anyone on this ridge knew how the Strategist thought, it would be him.

Two masons carried him in on a chair and set it down across the table.

Corr was still far from recovered. His left sleeve was pinned up and empty, and a black patch covered his right eye. It would be a long time before he could walk any distance on his own. But he sat straight, with a tally board resting on his knees and his one remaining hand laid flat on top of it.

Before Grane could ask anything, Corr spoke.

"Seven thousand, nine hundred and forty-one," he said. "That’s how many people made it out alive."

Varne wrote it down.

"And three thousand, four hundred and eighty-two dead. If you want their names, they’re on the stone. Every one of them."

Grane looked at him steadily. "I’ll read them, if it becomes necessary."

Then he tilted his head slightly, as if a small, curious thought had just occurred to him.

"Does your count include the lord you serve?"

It was a deliberate question. Grieving men often snapped when you pressed on the wound, and a man who snapped usually said more than he meant to.

But Corr’s composure was better than Grane had expected.

"The lord I serve isn’t dead," he said evenly. "He’s missing. If you have questions about him, you’ll get better answers from him than from me."

Grane felt a small flicker of disappointment. He had not managed to shake the man at all. He set the thought aside and moved on to what he had actually come for.

"I’m told you were the first to see the horde," he said. "Far to the north. Is that true?"

"Dorn saw it first," Corr said. "He didn’t make it back to say so."

"Dorn?"

"One of my patrol."

He did not say anything more. But for a moment, his face changed. It was not anger. It was something much closer to regret.

Grane had spent thirty years watching people pretend to feel things. He knew what a false expression looked like. This was not one of them.

"I’m sorry," he said, and found that he meant it.

He let Corr steady himself before he went on. This time, he decided to be direct.

"In the capital, they say the horde was forty thousand strong. Some say more. How much of that is true?"

"When I saw them, I couldn’t count them," Corr said. "There were too many, packed into a valley two miles wide. I told the Council ’tens of thousands’, because that was the honest answer I had. Later, on the walls, the Watcher worked it out from what we killed and what was still coming. Close to forty thousand. I believe him. He’s never once given me a number he couldn’t explain."

"And the Elder?"

"Real. I saw its tusks over the trees from four miles away."

Varne’s pen moved quickly. Grane let her finish before he asked the next question.

"When did the Strategist send his warning to the capital?"

"About two weeks before the first Roamers reached our trenches," Corr said. "He wrote five letters that night. One to his father. One to the capital. Others I wasn’t told about."

Grane said nothing, but he made a note of his own in the margin of his file. The Crown had always said that the Wall’s warning came too late to act on. Two weeks was not too late. Not for a company of knights already on the road.

He would look into that later.

"Here is what troubles me, Master Corr," he said. "The Steward’s ledgers show the Strategist asking about grain stores and siege supplies long before you came back from the forest. Long before anyone knew a horde existed. How did he know to prepare?"

Corr looked at him for a moment with his one good eye.

"He asked about everything," he said. "Grain. Drains. Javelins. Lamp oil. He asked about things nobody had counted in forty years. Half the Wall thought he was mad. The other half thought he was trying to steal from the stores." He shrugged with one shoulder. "Then I came back from the Green, and suddenly everyone wanted to know why he’d been right."

"And why had he been right?"

"Because the forest had gone quiet," Corr said. "He was the only one who asked why. If that’s a crime, Inquisitor, then I’m guilty too. I wrote a third of the Far-Watch’s rules, and every one of them says the same thing. You don’t survive the forest by seeing more. You survive by noticing what has changed."

Grane did not write that down. He did not need to. He would remember it.

He turned a page in his file.

"One more matter. The Center Gate was opened while its winch crew was away eating bread at the eighth hour. I’m told that bread was served by the Strategist’s own order."

The room went very quiet.

It was the sharpest question Grane had, and he had saved it for a man he thought might be honest enough to answer it properly.

Corr did not flinch.

"The order went to every section on the Wall," he said. "Bread and water at the fourth and eighth hours, so that men who’d been fighting for three days didn’t fall over on the walk. It wasn’t even his idea. He took it from Commander Ostrand, who’d been doing it on the Eastern Gate. It’s written in the Council minutes, with Ostrand’s name beside it."

He laid his hand flat on the tally board again.

"Trask used a good order to do a bad thing. That’s what traitors do. They don’t need bad orders. They just wait for good ones they can twist."

Grane looked at him for a long time.

Then he closed his file.

"Thank you, Master Corr. You’ve been more helpful than you know."

"I doubt it," Corr said. "But you’re welcome."

The masons lifted his chair and carried him out.

When the door had closed, Varne looked up from her notes.

"He defended the Strategist on every point," she said.

"He did," Grane agreed. "But he didn’t lie. Not once. He gave us numbers, dates, and a record we can check." He stood and went to the narrow window. "Liars give you feelings, Varne. Honest men give you things to look up."

"Who’s next?" Varne asked.

Grane was quiet for a moment.

"I heard the young master’s sister is still here."

? ? ?