Chapter 130: Preparations (1)

Aside from the preparations themselves, there was one other major matter discussed during the Council meeting.

Whether they should publicly announce the threat approaching the Wall.

There had been fierce opposition.

Four of the Watch commanders had argued against making the information public. They believed that announcing the existence of a ten-thousand-strong horde would cause panic among the people of the Wall before the enemy even arrived.

They were not entirely wrong.

But Lord Commander Ulrich Vance made the decision against them.

And it was Encrid’s opinion that had influenced him.

The argument was simple.

Eleven thousand people were going to find out within a week regardless of what the Council decided.

In fact, the information brought back by the Far-Watch had probably already spread to a few people. Those few would speak to others, and those people would speak to more.

That was how the Wall worked.

A secret held by fifteen people could remain a secret.

A secret involving the Far-Watch, the Watch commanders, the healers, the supply offices, and emergency preparations could not.

Even if the Council decided to remain silent, everyone would eventually learn that something was wrong.

The only thing the Council could decide was where they heard it first.

From their officers.

Or from rumours.

And between the two, Encrid believed rumours were far more dangerous.

A frightened man who knew nothing would imagine the worst.

A frightened man who was given the truth could at least be told what to do next.

So the decision was made.

The information was passed through the Wall section by section on the morning of the second day.

The reaction was immediate.

More than fifty men left the Wall within a single day.

Most crossed the Darwen Span and went south, avoiding the eyes of the Watch as much as possible. A few others hid themselves among mercenary cargo and left through routes that were not meant for ordinary civilians.

Nobody was sent after them.

That was unusual.

Under normal circumstances, abandoning the Wall without permission would have consequences.

This time, there were none.

It was an order from the Lord Commander himself.

No man who left was to be named in any official report.

No charges.

No investigations.

No punishment.

Encrid did not know whether that was mercy or discipline.

Eventually, he decided that Ulrich Vance had probably never distinguished between the two.

On the night the news became public, the Shambles erupted.

There were arguments in the streets.

Fights broke out in more than one tavern. Several people were arrested, and for a few hours it seemed possible that the unrest would spread further.

By the next morning, every one of them had been released.

The only condition was that they had calmed down.

Then, gradually, the entire situation began to change.

It was not courage.

Encrid understood that clearly.

People did not suddenly stop being afraid because they had learned that more than ten thousand Roamers were coming toward them.

They were still afraid.

They had simply finished being frightened without direction and started paying attention to what they could do.

A man who was afraid that the Wall would fall could do nothing about it.

A man who was afraid that his own section’s stake line was too thin could go outside and make it thicker.

So they thickened it.

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Ten days was not a long time to prepare a fortification for an attack by more than ten thousand Roamers.

Even so, the amount of work being carried out each day was greater than anything the Wall had seen in decades.

Every storehouse along the inner face was opened.

Then emptied.

There were weapons inside those buildings that had not seen daylight for years.

Javelins.

Spearheads.

Whole racks of old-pattern bills that nobody had drawn from storage in decades.

Everything that could still be used was carried upward.

The weapons were taken onto the Wall and laid out along the parapet in bundles, positioned at intervals of fifty paces.

Encrid had the complete tally within two days.

That was partly because he had rebuilt the store returns himself more than a year ago. He knew where the records were, which warehouses had been properly accounted for, and which officers had a habit of forgetting what was stored in the corners of their buildings.

It turned out to be one of the most useful things he had ever done.

The oil came next.

It was moved upward in two different ways.

The first was ordinary.

Every available barrel was filled and placed along the outer walk behind the parapet. They were arranged in rows, with sand stored beside each one.

Because a barrel of oil catching fire on the Wall was worse than having no oil at all.

The second arrangement was different.

That one was Encrid’s idea.

It also made every worker involved curse his name.

Encrid had shallow channels cut along the top of the outer parapet across the entire northern face of the Wall.

Then he had lead lined through them.

The channels connected to small, lipped spouts placed at intervals of twenty paces.

It was slow work.

It was unpleasant work.

And considering that the Wall stretched for two hundred kilometres, it was a great deal of work.

But once the oil was poured into the channels, it could be directed and released where it was needed instead of relying entirely on men carrying burning barrels through crowded defensive positions.

The workers cursed Encrid throughout the entire process.

Encrid considered that reasonable.

Then the archers were repositioned.

That was Ysolde Marr’s work.

It took her four days.

What she did was simple in theory and difficult in practice.

She stopped treating the bastions as individual strong points.

Instead, she began treating the entire northern face of the Wall as a single continuous defensive line.

Two hundred kilometres of stone.

One line.

Nobody had ever organized the archers that way before.

Nobody had ever needed to because the roamers had never attacked the entirety of Wall at once.

Ysolde moved units between sections, reassigned officers, calculated overlapping fields of fire, and ensured that no part of the northern face would be left entirely dependent on a single Watch.

By the end of the fourth day, the archers knew exactly where they were supposed to stand.

The rotation schedule tightened.

Then it tightened again.

Eventually, it was barely a rotation at all.

Men began sleeping in their own sections.

Officers slept where their men slept.

Nobody wanted to waste time travelling back and forth across the Wall when every hour could be used for preparation.

And the Watch commanders did the same.

All nine of them began standing guard personally in their own sections for at least one watch out of every three.

Not one of them had been ordered to do it.

Garrick Dane started on the fourth day.

The other eight followed within the week.

Encrid was fairly certain that Dane had never intended it as an example.

He was simply incapable of sitting in an office while thousands of Roamers were marching toward the Wall.

The others followed because, eventually, it became impossible not to.

And it was the same for everyone else.

The Wall was changing.

People worked when they could.

They slept when they were allowed.

And whenever they woke, there was always something else that needed to be carried, repaired, sharpened, counted, or reinforced.

Nobody spoke much about what would happen when the horde finally arrived.

There was no need.

Everyone already knew.

The Roamers were coming.

And until they did, the Wall would keep preparing.

It did not matter whether a man was brave or frightened.

There was still work to be done.

And it did not seem like anyone would be able to sleep for a long while.

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