Chapter 195: The Wall Has Fallen

The column did not stop that night.

It could not.

It walked through the dark, south along the road toward the Darwen Span, with torches at the front and the back and knights of the Third Legion riding up and down its length. People walked until they could not walk anymore. Then they climbed onto the wagons, and others climbed down to walk in their place.

No one spoke much.

Encrid rode at the back with Harun’s knights. He did not sleep. He did not think he could have, even if he had tried.

Somewhere around the fourth hour of the night, the ground began to shake.

It was not the Elder’s rhythm.

It was one long, low tremor. It went on and on, far longer than any footstep. The horses stopped and tossed their heads. The oxen bellowed. On the wagons, children woke up and began to cry.

Encrid pulled up his horse and turned in the saddle.

North.

There was nothing to see. Only the dark road stretching back the way they had come, and the dark hills on either side of it, and the stars.

The tremor stopped.

For a long moment, there was only silence.

Then the sound came.

It came from very far away.

Twenty-five miles. Perhaps more. So far away that it should not have been possible to hear anything at all.

But they heard it.

It was a groan.

It was the same groan the Wall had heard on the night the strike team went into the forest, when the Elder had woken. But it was not coming from the Elder.

It was coming from the stone.

It was the sound of something enormous and very old giving way. The sound of granite that had stood for two hundred years, sixty feet high and forty feet thick, breaking under a weight it had never been built to bear.

It went on for a long time.

It rolled across the hills in slow waves, one after another, each one quieter than the last. Encrid felt it in his chest. In his teeth. In the bones of his hands where they gripped the reins.

And then, over the top of it, there was another sound.

A cry.

It rose into the night sky, high and long and terrible. It did not sound like pain this time. It did not sound like anger.

It sounded like triumph.

It was the Elder.

All along the column, people had stopped walking.

Encrid could see them in the torchlight. Soldiers standing in the road with their heads turned north. Women on the wagons holding children against their chests. Knights sitting motionless in their saddles.

Nobody said anything.

Nobody needed to.

A soldier of the Second Watch, walking near the back of the column, took off his helmet and held it against his chest.

Then another.

Then all of them.

One after another, all along the road, the soldiers of the Wall took off their helmets and stood in the dark with their heads bowed, facing north.

Encrid did not take off his helmet. He was not wearing one.

He only sat on his horse and looked north into the dark, where the Wall had been.

On a wagon a little way ahead, a small voice spoke in the silence.

"Was that the Wall?"

It was Tam. He was sitting on the grain sacks beside his sister, with his wooden sword across his knees. Ilse had one arm around him.

"Yes," Ilse said.

"Is it gone?"

Ilse was quiet for a moment.

"Yes."

Tam looked north for a long time.

"What about the lamp people?"

Ilse did not answer right away. When she did, her voice was very steady, the way a person’s voice is steady when they are holding something heavy.

"They held it as long as they could," she said. "That’s why we’re here."

Tam nodded slowly, as if that made sense to him.

Maybe it did.

✧ ✧ ✧

Encrid waited for the window.

He knew exactly what it would say. He had known since the moment on the Fifth Bastion when he chose to abandon the Wall. He had known since the moment he closed the quest window on Harlow’s Hill and saw the zero.

The Wall had fallen.

The Primary Objective had failed.

He waited for the system to tell him so.

It did not.

No window opened. No message appeared. The corner of his vision stayed dark and empty.

Encrid frowned.

He opened his status window himself and looked at the quest list.

[ THE WALL AND THE UNSEEN ]

[ Status: ▮▮▮▮▮▮ ]

He stared at it.

The status line had not changed to Failed. It had not changed to anything. It had simply gone black, the way the system blacked out the things it did not want him to see yet.

As if the quest was not finished.

As if something was still left to happen.

Encrid closed the window slowly.

He did not know what that meant.

He did not like not knowing.

Somewhere ahead of him, a horse came trotting back down the side of the column. It was Ysolde. She had been riding near the front with the Second Watch all night.

She pulled up beside him and looked north for a long moment.

Her face was very still.

"Watcher," she said quietly.

Encrid did not answer.

"I used to think," Ysolde said, "that I would die on it. I was sure of it. Every morning, I walked up those stairs and I thought, maybe today. I didn’t mind. It seemed like the right place to rest."

She was quiet for a while.

"I never thought I’d have to hear it crumble from twenty-five miles away."

"I’m sorry," Encrid said.

Ysolde turned and looked at him.

"Don’t be," she said. "You were right. Those three hundred behind us are alive because you were right. I just need a little time to stop hating you for it."

She turned her horse and rode back toward the front of the column.

Encrid watched her go.

Then he turned south.

The sky ahead of them was beginning to turn grey.

✦ ✦ ✦