Chapter 184: White Griffins [Bonus]

The Mouth was full of horses.

They filled the barbican town from wall to wall. They filled the long tunnel. They stood in rows along the southern road outside the open gates, stamping and blowing in the cold dawn air, their breath rising in white clouds.

And on every saddle cloth, on every shield, on every pennant, was the same shape.

A white griffin on a field of blue.

Encrid stopped at the inner end of the tunnel and looked at them.

He had seen the knights of House Gannon before. On the morning he left the estate, perhaps fifty of them had stood in the courtyard to watch him go. They had looked at him the way men look at something unpleasant they have been ordered to be polite to.

This was not fifty.

This was more than a thousand.

A knight on a tall grey horse saw him and rode through the tunnel toward him. He was a broad man in his fifties, with a short grey beard and a plain, weathered face. His armor was scratched and dusty from the road. He swung down from the saddle and landed lightly, the way a much younger man would.

"Young master," he said.

It was Sir Gareth Varus.

Encrid had not seen him for a year and a half but he looked exactly the same. The same calm eyes. The same slight stoop in his shoulders that did not match the way he moved.

"Sir Gareth."

Gareth looked at him for a long moment. His eyes went from Encrid’s face to his hands, to the calluses, to the bandaged forearm, to the crossbow slung over his shoulder.

Something in his expression changed.

"You’ve grown thin, young master" he said.

"The food on the Wall isn’t very good."

"No. I don’t imagine it is."

Two more knights had dismounted behind Gareth. Encrid knew them both. Harun, tall and quiet, who knew the northern road better than anyone. And Berrick, broad-shouldered, with his heavy crossbow on his back.

They both bowed.

Encrid did not know what to do with that. The last time these men had seen him, they had been escorting a disgraced fourth son to what everyone expected to be his death.

"How many are here?" he asked Gareth.

"Twelve hundred," Gareth said. "The Third Legion of the White Griffin. Four hundred knights. The rest are men-at-arms and archers."

Twelve hundred.

It was more than Encrid had hoped for. It was more than he had dared to ask for.

It was not enough after what they had just experienced yesterday but he did not say that out loud.

"I should properly thank my father when I am back, shouldn’t I?"

Gareth agreed. "The morning your letter arrived. I have never seen his grace, the Duke, give an order so quickly."

He paused.

"He gave me one more order after that."

Encrid waited.

"He said, ’Keep my son alive no matter what.’"

Gareth said it plainly, without any weight, the way a man repeats instructions. But he was watching Encrid’s face as he said it.

Encrid did not know what his face was doing.

For a year and a half, he had thought of the Duke as the man who had tried to disown him. The man who had looked at his fourth son and seen something to be thrown away.

No matter what.

The feeling of experiencing the parental love, which Encrid should have been feeling didn’t show on his face.

"I see," Encrid said.

It was all he could manage.

✧ ✧ ✧

They walked north along the inner road together while the Legion began to move through the tunnel behind them.

Encrid told Gareth everything.

He did not waste time on the parts that did not matter. He told him about the horde, the trenches, the Boxes, the Rookwings, the Ironbacks. About the Elder, and the strike team. About Ulrich Vance and Garrick Dane. About Wilm Trask and the Center Gate.

And about the pressure that had come over the Wall the day before.

Gareth listened without interrupting. When Encrid finished, he was quiet for a while.

"The Lord Commander is dead," he said finally.

"Yes."

"I met him once. Twenty years ago. He beat me in a sparring match so badly that I couldn’t lift my arms for a week." Gareth shook his head slowly. "I didn’t think anything in that forest could kill him."

"Neither did anyone else."

They reached the foot of the Fifth Bastion’s stair. Gareth stopped and looked up at the Wall. At the parapets. At the bodies still being carried down on stretchers.

"Where do you want us?" he asked.

Encrid had already thought about it.

"The Eighth Watch lost two hundred men yesterday. They have fewer than four hundred left for twenty kilometers of Wall. Put half your men-at-arms there."

"And the knights?"

"The Main Gate," Encrid said. "As a reserve. If any section breaks, they go to it."

Gareth nodded. It was, Encrid thought, what Gareth would have suggested himself.

"And one more thing," Encrid said.

"Tell me."

"A hundred riders. Harun’s choice. I want them on the southern road, all the way to the Darwen Span. Every bridge, every ford, every narrow place where a wagon could get stuck. I want to know how long it would take nine thousand people to walk it."

Gareth looked at him sharply.

"Nine thousand people?"

"Yes."

"That’s the whole Wall."

"Yes."

Gareth did not ask the question. Encrid saw him decide not to ask it.

Instead, he turned to Harun.

"You heard the young master."

Harun bowed once and walked back toward the Mouth.

"There is one more thing," Gareth said, when Harun had gone.

He reached into his coat and took out a small folded piece of paper. It had been folded many times, and the edges were soft with handling.

"Arthur asked me to give you this."

Encrid took it.

"He’s well?"

"He is very well." Something like a smile crossed Gareth’s face. "He’s too well. He broke a training sword on a knight twice his age a month ago. Your father watched it happen. Your father has been paying attention to him ever since."

"He’s at the estate?"

"Yes. He made a fuss saying that he wanted to come, but I beat him up and rejected it," Gareth’s smile faded. "Given what you’ve told me, I’m glad I did."

Encrid unfolded the paper.

The handwriting was careful and crooked, the handwriting of a boy who had only recently learned his letters.

I have been practicing every day, my lord. Sir Gareth says I am getting better. I want to show you when you come back. Please come back.

-Arthur.

Encrid folded it carefully and put it inside his coat, beside Ellis Cavel’s list and the sheet with the nine names on it.

"Sir Gareth," he said. "On your way north. Did you pass the Crown’s relief?"

"The Order of the Silver Crane." Gareth’s voice went flat. "We passed them four days ago. At Merrowford."

"How far along the road were they?"

"They weren’t on the road," Gareth said. "They were in camp."

He looked north, at the Wall.

"If they march at all," he said, "considering their speed, they are ten days away."

✦ ✦ ✦

Bonus Chapter for 50 Golden Tickets~