Chapter 188: We Die Here

Coris Danel gave the order from the courtyard below the Fifth Bastion.

He did not give it from the parapet. He came down the stairs and stood on an overturned cart in the middle of the courtyard, where the runners and the porters and the soldiers coming off rotation could all see him.

Word spread along the Wall before he had finished speaking.

It spread faster than any flag.

Encrid stood at the foot of the stair and watched it spread.

He watched men stop what they were doing and turn to each other. He watched them understand what they were hearing. He watched their faces change.

Some of them looked relieved.

Not many.

Most of them looked as though they had been struck.

"No."

It came from the parapet above the courtyard. An old voice, rough and loud.

Encrid looked up.

It was the old sergeant from the sixth mile. The one who had served the Wall for twenty-two years. The one who had taken off his helmet and held it to his chest when the tusks first appeared.

He was standing at the edge of the parapet, looking down at Danel.

"No," he said again. "I’m not going."

Danel looked up at him.

"Sergeant-"

"Twenty-two years, Vice-Commander. My father was on this Wall. His father. My brother’s buried at the seventh mile." The sergeant’s voice did not shake. "I’m not walking away from it. If it’s going to fall, it falls with me on it."

Along the parapet, other men were stepping forward.

"Same," someone said.

"I’m staying."

"We die here."

The words spread along the Wall the same way the order had. Section by section. Man by man.

We die here.

Encrid heard it from the fifth mile. From the sixth. From somewhere far to the west, where the First Watch stood.

Dael had come down to the courtyard. He stood a few paces from Danel’s cart with his helmet under his arm.

"The First Watch is staying at Commander Dane’s gate," he said. His voice was very quiet and very firm. "He held it for twenty-six years. We’re not leaving it for the Roamers to walk through."

Neriah Fold had come down too. She had knelt on the cobblestones and was praying out loud, and several of her men had knelt around her.

And along the parapets, men of the Second Watch were looking toward the Fifth Bastion.

Toward Ysolde.

Waiting to see what she would do.

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Encrid climbed onto the cart beside Danel.

He did not know what he was going to say. He had thought about it on the way down the stairs and had come up with nothing.

So he said the truth.

"I don’t want to leave either," he said.

It was the truth.

The Narrative quest he received from the system was ranked at seven stars. The rewards for the quest must be amazing and the quest itself was so important that - Encrid didn’t know what would be the penalty for failing it.

But still he was making this choice.

His voice was not loud. The courtyard went quiet anyway.

"I’ve been on this Wall for a year and a half. And I know most of you have been on it for longer. Your whole lives, perhaps," he paused and looked around. "I’m not going to stand here and pretend I know what it means to you."

He looked up at the old sergeant.

"But I know what it means to me. I’ve written down the names of every man who died on it since the horde came. There are over four thousand of them."

He paused.

"And every one of them died so that the people behind this Wall would live. Not the stone the Wall is built with but the people. If we stay here and die with the stone, and the people behind us die anyway, then every one of those three thousand lives means nothing."

The old sergeant stared down at him.

For a moment, Encrid thought it might be enough.

Then the sergeant shook his head.

"You’re young, my lord," he said, not unkindly. "You’ll understand one day. Some things, a man doesn’t walk away from."

He turned back to the parapet.

And all along the Wall, the men who had said we die here stayed where they were.

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It happened ten minutes later.

Encrid felt it before anyone else, the way he had felt it in the Council chamber.

The pressure.

It came from the north again, the same way it had come the day before. The feeling of being seen by something enormous. But it was stronger this time. Much stronger.

It came down on the Wall like a hammer.

All along the parapets, men dropped to their knees.

And the horde went mad.

It did not come at the Wall in waves this time. It came all at once. Every Roamer on the killing ground turned toward the stone and ran at it, faster than Encrid had ever seen them run. They hit the base of the Wall and climbed each other and climbed the dead, and they did not stop.

On the eighth mile, the Talljacks came over the parapet in a line.

Not one. Not two.

Dozens.

Encrid saw it through the glass. The Eighth Watch’s section simply disappeared under a mass of long grey arms. Gareth’s men-at-arms were there, fighting, but the Talljacks came over the edge faster than anyone could kill them.

The eighth mile broke.

Ysolde was already running.

Encrid watched her go. She went along the parapet like a red streak, faster than anyone could follow, and she reached the eighth mile and threw herself into the mass of Talljacks.

Encrid lost sight of her.

For a long, terrible minute, he could not find her at all.

Then the Talljacks began to fall.

One after another. Then several at once. A line of red light cut across the parapet, and a whole row of them went over the edge together.

It took her a quarter of an hour.

When it was over, the eighth mile was held again.

Barely.

Ysolde walked back along the parapet toward the Fifth Bastion. She walked slowly. Her coat was soaked with blood. Her sword was dragging on the stone behind her.

She did not stop at the Fifth Bastion.

She stopped at the sixth mile, where the old sergeant was standing.

The men of the Second Watch gathered around her. Encrid could not hear what she said. He saw the old sergeant’s face change. He saw him look at the eighth mile, where more than a hundred men lay dead on the stone. He saw him look north, at the Elder, walking steadily across the killing ground.

He saw him look at his own hands, which were shaking.

Then Ysolde turned and looked down into the courtyard.

She found Encrid.

For a long moment, she looked at him.

Then she raised her voice. It carried across the courtyard and along the parapet and down the whole length of the Wall.

"Second Watch," she said. "We leave."

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