Chapter 186: The Elder returns

The ninth day of the siege began with the ground shaking.

The Elder had not moved for the whole of the eighth day. The single tusk had stayed below the canopy from dawn to dusk while the horde threw itself at the Wall and the Third Legion took its place on the parapets. Some of the men had begun to hope that it was dying.

Encrid had not let himself hope.

He felt the ground shake before he was fully awake. He had fallen asleep sitting up on the cot in the signal room below the Fifth Bastion, sometime in the middle of the night, with his crossbow across his knees.

The rhythm woke him.

Slow. Heavy. Far apart.

He was on his feet and climbing the stairs before he had decided to move.

The platform was grey in the first light. Corr was in his chair at the northern edge. Gus was standing beside him. Sir Gareth Varus stood a little apart from them, with his hands resting on the parapet.

None of them turned when Encrid came up.

They were all looking north.

The single tusk was rising above the forest.

It was closer than it had been two days ago. Much closer. It rose above the canopy perhaps a mile beyond the treeline, and with every rise, the ground shook, and with every fall, it came a little nearer.

"When did it start?" Encrid asked.

"An hour before dawn," Corr said. "It woke up and started walking. It hasn’t stopped."

Encrid raised his glass.

He did not need to raise it for long.

As the sun came up behind the eastern clouds, the treeline at the edge of the killing ground began to move.

The trees did not fall all at once. They leaned. One after another, in a line more than a hundred paces wide, the tall dark trunks at the forest’s edge tilted slowly outward, their roots tearing out of the ground. The sound of it came across the killing ground a moment later. A long, deep cracking, like a river breaking up in spring.

Then the trees fell.

And the Slumbering Elder walked out of the forest.

✧ ✧ ✧

For the first time, the Wall saw it whole.

Rael had said it looked like a hill. Rael had been right, and Rael had been wrong.

A hill did not move.

It was grey-green, the color of old stone covered in lichen. Its hide hung in great folds over its shoulders and flanks. Moss grew in the folds. Young trees grew out of its back, taller than a man, and as it walked, they swayed.

It walked on four legs as thick as the towers of the Wall. Each step took a long time. Each step shook the ground so hard that loose stones fell from the parapet.

Its head was low. It hung almost to the ground, heavy and long. On the left side of its jaw, where a tusk should have been, there was only a jagged stump, black with old blood.

On the right side, the remaining tusk curved up and over its head, pale and enormous.

Its right eye was closed and crusted with blood.

Its left eye was open.

It was the size of a door. It was dull and yellow and very old, and it was looking at the Wall.

On the Fifth Bastion, no one spoke.

On the parapets below, no one spoke.

Along the whole northern face of the Wall, as far as Encrid could see, the men had stopped moving. They stood where they were, with their spears in their hands and their mouths open, and they looked at the thing that had walked out of the forest.

Encrid had been afraid many times since arriving at the Wall.

He had been afraid on the first day, when the horde’s dust had covered the horizon. He had been afraid on the stair at the Fifth Bastion, with a Rackhorn coming at him. He had been afraid in the Council chamber, when the pressure came down.

This was different.

This was not the fear of dying.

It was the fear of being very small.

Beside him, Gareth let out a long, slow breath.

"In thirty-one years," Gareth said quietly, "I have never seen anything like that."

"Neither has anyone else on this Wall," Encrid said.

The horde parted for it.

The Roamers on the killing ground, still wild and berserk from the day before, scrambled out of its path. Grinners and Reevers and Talljacks pushed and climbed over one another to get out of the way. A lane opened in front of the Elder, wide and clear, running straight across the killing ground.

It pointed at the Wall.

Encrid raised the glass to the Elder’s head and opened Appraisal.

He had been waiting to do it since the moment it came out of the trees. He did not expect much.

He got less than that.

[ Name: The Slumbering Elder ]

[ Classification: Elder of the Great Green ]

[ Level: ▮▮▮ ]

[ Traits: ▮▮▮▮▮▮ ]

[ Weakness: ▮▮▮▮▮▮ ]

[ Condition: Left tusk severed. Right eye destroyed. Left foreleg joint fractured. Compelled. ]

[ WARNING: Target far exceeds the appraiser. Most information cannot be displayed. ]

Encrid read the Condition line slowly.

The tusk was Ulrich Vance. The eye was Rael. The fractured joint was Garrick Dane, who had hit the leg again instead of running. It limped because of him. No one on the Wall would ever have known that, if not for this window.

And at the end of the line, the same word he had seen on every Roamer yesterday.

Compelled.

Even the Elder.

Encrid lowered the glass. Something colder than fear settled in his chest. Whatever had driven the horde mad was not standing beside the Elder.

It was standing above it.

At the stretch of stone between the Fifth Bastion and the sealed Center Gate.

"How long will it take?" Encrid asked.

Corr was already calculating.

"At that pace? Four hours. Perhaps five."

✧ ✧ ✧

The Council came to the Fifth Bastion again.

It came faster this time. No one needed to be told why.

Coris Danel stood at the parapet and looked north for a long time. Dael stood beside him. Ostrand. Bree. Lund. Vask. Fold. Ryn.

And Ysolde.

"We fight it from the Wall," Danel said finally. "Every ballista. Every Box. Every catapult."

"The ballistae may hurt it," Encrid said. "They won’t stop it. The Lord Commander walked up to it with the strongest sword on the Wall and couldn’t stop it."

"Then what do you suggest?"

Encrid did not answer.

Because someone else already had.

"I’ll go," Ysolde said.

Everyone turned toward her.

She was standing at the parapet with her sword on her hip, looking at the Elder. Her face was calm.

"The Lord Commander took one tusk," she said. "I’ll take the other. Without the tusks, it can’t break the stone. The Lord Commander said so."

"Ysolde," Danel began.

"I am the strongest person left on this Wall," Ysolde said, still without looking at him. "He said that too."

No one spoke.

Encrid looked at her.

He thought about what would happen if she went.

She would go down the Wall and across the killing ground, through a horde that had been driven half mad by something in the forest. She would reach the Elder. She was a peak Grandmaster. She might even take the tusk.

She might.

And then she would die.

And while she was out there, the sections of the Wall that she held together by running from one to the next would have no one running to them.

The Eighth Watch would break. Then the Fourth.

And the berserk horde would come over the parapets while the Elder walked toward the stone.

It did not matter whether Ysolde took the tusk.

If she went, the Wall would fall.

If she stayed, the Elder would reach it.

And the Wall would fall.

Encrid looked at the Elder walking across the killing ground.

He looked at the Wall. At the men standing on it. At the Shambles behind it. At the Gleaning’s hall, and the Healers’ Hall, and the Watcher’s Office, and every street and every house where nine thousand people were waiting for someone to tell them what would happen next.

He thought about the last thing Ulrich Vance had said to him in the dark.

It’s for the people behind it. That’s all.

"No," Encrid said.

Ysolde turned and looked at him for the first time.

"No?"

"You’re not going," Encrid said. "No one is going."

He turned to face the Council.

"We are leaving the Wall."

✦ ✦ ✦