Chapter 113: The Watcher’s Attendant (2)

Encrid visited Corr the following morning.

The scout was sitting beside a narrow window with a blanket over his legs, looking out across the eastern side of the Wall. He had been cleaned up since the Council had seen him, although the effort had done little to restore the man who had once walked into the Great Green Forest without hesitation.

The left sleeve of his shirt hung empty.

His right arm rested carefully against his side.

A black patch rested on his right eye.

There was a walking stick beside his chair.

Corr turned when Encrid entered.

"The Watcher, what a pleasure."

"The Strategist, apparently."

Encrid pulled out the other chair and sat without waiting to be invited.

"Nobody has worked out what to call me yet."

Corr gave him a faint smile.

"I have heard - It seems the Wall likes to call you as the Watcher."

"Unfortunately."

Corr looked back toward the window.

Encrid placed the discharge papers on his lap.

"I have read your assessment."

"Then you have read more of it than I have."

"Your captain tells me you are being discharged."

"I am."

"And you know what happens after that?"

Corr’s expression did not change.

"I receive a pension and a room in the Shambles."

"And then?"

Corr looked at him.

"Then I suppose I find out whether six silver is enough to make a man forget nineteen years."

Encrid studied him for a moment - multiple thoughts were filling his head on how to bring up the matter but he abandoned them all and decided to be direct.

"I want to offer you a position."

Corr was taken aback as he stared at Encrid for a few seconds before actually laughing.

The laugh became a cough, and he had to turn away until it passed.

When he finally looked back, there was amusement in his remaining eye.

"My lord, I cannot walk two miles and I cannot lift my own arm above my shoulder. Whatever position you have in mind, I suspect you are speaking to the wrong man."

"I need an attendant."

Corr blinked.

"An attendant?"

"For the Strategist’s Office."

"You want me to carry papers?"

"No."

"Carry messages?"

"No."

"Then what exactly does an attendant do?"

Encrid leaned back.

"At the moment, I am still deciding."

Corr stared at him.

Encrid continued before the man could object. ℯℯ𝑙.

"I have a seat on the Council and almost nothing else. I have no command, no stores, no troops, and no authority to order anyone to do anything. What I do have is the right to speak in that room, and the only thing that makes that right useful is whether what I say is worth listening to."

Corr’s expression became more attentive.

"I need someone who can read the reports that come through my office and tell me when they do not make sense or when they do make sense."

Corr frowned.

"I can read."

"I know."

"I can also write."

"I know."

"But I can no longer go into the forest."

"I know that too."

Encrid leaned forward.

"And that is exactly why I am offering you the position."

He tapped the discharge papers.

"You have been beyond the stakes four hundred and eleven times."

Corr said nothing.

"You have spent nineteen years studying the forest. You know what a normal patrol report looks like. You know how many tracks should be in a particular area, how long a patrol should take to cross a certain stretch of ground, how animals behave when something has disturbed them, and what a man leaves out of a report when he has seen something he does not understand."

Corr’s remaining eye narrowed slightly.

"I need someone who can look at a page of numbers and recognize when the numbers are wrong because the world behind them does not fit."

He paused.

"Every report that reaches the Council was written by somebody who saw one part of the Wall and decided what that part meant. I have never spent a night beyond the stakes. You have spent nineteen years doing exactly that."

Corr looked down at his remaining hand.

"You have looked at my records."

"Your captain told me how many times you went out."

"And you remembered?"

"Four hundred and eleven is hardly a number I can forget."

For the first time, Corr looked genuinely uncertain.

"What would I be paid?"

"Your pension."

Corr raised an eyebrow.

"That is not a wage."

"You would keep the pension."

The scout considered that.

"And?"

"An equal amount from my office."

Corr looked at him carefully. He considered the offer for a few seconds before he asked a question.

"Why?"

"Because I need you."

The answer came so plainly that Corr seemed to have no immediate response.

Encrid continued.

"You will also have quarters in the granary. Ground level with no stairs."

Corr glanced toward the walking stick beside him.

"You have thought this through."

"I tend to."

There was a long silence.

Corr looked out through the window again.

Beyond the Wall, the forest was hidden beneath the morning mist.

"I am not much use anymore."

Encrid shook his head.

"You are not useful in the way you used to be."

Corr looked back at him.

"That is different."

"It is."

Encrid picked up the discharge papers.

"I am not offering you charity, Corr. I am hiring a three-Star Master-realm scout with nineteen years of experience and four hundred and eleven journeys beyond the stakes."

He folded the papers once.

"At the price of an ordinary clerk."

A faint smile appeared on Corr’s face.

"If anyone at the Council finds out, they will think you have lost your mind."

"They probably already do."

That earned a quiet laugh.

Corr looked toward the window again.

He was silent for long enough that Encrid thought he might refuse.

Then the scout finally asked, "When do you want me?"

"Tomorrow morning."

"That soon?"

"There are two hundred pages of Far-Watch returns on my desk."

Corr sighed.

"Tomorrow, then."

Encrid stood.

"Tomorrow."

He reached the door before Corr spoke again.

"My lord."

Encr turned.

"Thank you."

Encr shook his head.

"Do not thank me."

Corr looked puzzled.

"You are not doing me a kindness," Encr said. "You are going to work, and I plan to squeeze every bit of your potential."

Corr stared at him for a moment before nodding.

"Then I suppose I had better be ready."

"You better be."

Encr left him there.

Neither man understood what the appointment would eventually become.

At the time, it was only a practical arrangement between a strategist who needed an additional eye and a wounded scout who had been given no reason to believe his useful life was over.

But that was how it began.

Ansel Corr became the Attendant of the Strategist.

And in the years that followed, the Wall would come to know him by another name.

The one-handed, one-eyed Watcher’s Attendant.

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