Chapter 193: The Last Look [BONUS]

The sun was going down when Encrid reached Harlow’s Hill.

The column had been walking for six hours. It stretched out along the southern road ahead of him as far as he could see. Wagons. Carts. People on foot. Children holding hands. Soldiers marching in silence. A long, slow river of people moving south through the golden evening light.

At the ford below the hill, the wagons were crossing one at a time, just as Harun’s riders had said they would. Gareth’s knights stood in the water on both sides of the crossing, holding the wagons steady against the current.

It was slow.

But it was moving.

Encrid had ridden at the very back of the column all afternoon, with Harun’s twenty knights around him and Gus on a borrowed horse at his side. He had watched the road behind them. He had watched the sky. He had counted.

Now he turned his horse off the road and rode to the top of Harlow’s Hill.

Gus followed him.

Harun and the knights stopped at the bottom of the slope and waited.

At the top of the hill, Encrid stopped his horse and turned around.

And looked north.

From the top of Harlow’s Hill, he could see the Wall.

It was very far away now. Almost twenty miles. A long, dark line across the northern horizon, black against the fading orange sky. From this distance, it did not look like two hundred kilometers of granite, sixty feet high and forty feet thick.

It looked small.

It looked like a line someone had drawn across the world with a single stroke of a pen.

And along it, in the middle, there were blue lights.

Not two hundred of them anymore. Not the long, steady line of blue that had burned every night for two hundred years.

Only a few.

And as he watched, they went out.

He watched another light disappear - he knew what it meant but he kept his hopes.

He did not look away.

Somewhere beneath those lights, the Lampwrights were still fighting. Two hundred and twelve of them had gone over the parapet at noon. They had been fighting for six hours.

Vire had said a few hours.

They had given more than that.

Now, a little more than thirty remained.

Beside the blue lights, rising above the dark line of the Wall, Encrid could see something else. Something pale and curved, catching the last of the sunlight.

The Elder’s tusk.

It was not moving.

It was standing against the Wall.

He looked at the Wall for a long time.

He thought about the first time he had seen it.

More than a year and a half ago. Riding north with Harun and Berrick and Gareth. Fat and frightened and uncertain of what would happen. He had come over a rise in the road, much like this one, and there it had been. Stretching from one edge of the world to the other.

He had thought then that it was the most enormous thing he had ever seen.

He thought about the names in his ledger.

Three thousand, four hundred and six of them now. Not counting today. Not counting the Lampwrights. Not counting the old sergeant from the sixth mile, or Dael’s forty at the Western Gate, or the wounded that Elder Wode had not pointed at.

He thought about Berra, with her back against the laundry door.

He thought about Olen, dying on a bell rope.

He thought about Wilm Trask, who had cried at every one of his men’s funerals and meant it.

He thought about Garrick Dane, who had hit the Elder’s leg again instead of running.

He thought about Ulrich Vance, standing between the tusks, waiting.

He thought about a folded piece of paper in his coat, written in careful, crooked letters by a boy who had only recently learned how.

Please come back.

Encrid looked down at the road below the hill. At the long river of people moving south. At the wagons crossing the ford one by one. At Wren, walking at the front of the Gleaning’s children, turning around every few steps to count them.

He looked back at the Wall.

The system window was still there, in the corner of his vision, where it had been since the morning. He had not closed it.

[ THE WALL AND THE UNSEEN ]

[ Primary Objective: Prevent the fall of the Wall. ]

[ Completion rate: 0% ]

Zero.

More than a year and a half, and it was still zero.

He closed the window.

Then he reached into his coat and took out the small blue-glass lamp Iolan Vire had given him. He held it up against the northern sky, so that he could see the Wall through its empty glass.

"Young master," Gus said quietly beside him.

"I know."

Encrid lowered the lamp. He put it back inside his coat, next to Arthur’s letter.

He looked at the Wall one last time.

Then he turned his horse around.

He had not gone ten paces down the hill when he heard hoofbeats on the road below. A single rider, coming fast from the north. From the direction of the Wall.

It was Berrick.

Harun had sent him north an hour ago with two riders, to watch the road behind the column. Only Berrick had come back.

He pulled up at the bottom of the hill, his horse lathered and blowing. His face was white.

"My lord," he called up. "Roamers. On the road behind us."

Encrid’s hands tightened around the reins. He had expected this. That was the entire reason he had sent them.

No matter how hard the Lampwrights and the remaining men fought, holding the entire length of the Wall by themselves was impossible. There were simply too few of them, and the horde was too large.

The moment the evacuation began, Encrid had known that some sections would fall, and the roamers would chase them.

And they had.

But Encrid could not allow those creatures to reach the people retreating from the Wall.

"How many of them?"

"I don’t know. They came around the western end of the Wall. They’re following the column." Berrick swallowed. "And they’re fast."

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Bonus Chapter for 100 power stones weekly~