Chapter 131: Preparations (2)

The work outside the Wall was the part that cost the most people, and it was the part Encrid cared about the most.

What upset him even more was that he could not do any of it himself.

The killing ground was four hundred paces of open, scraped earth between the foot of the stone and the treeline. It had been designed hundreds of years ago for exactly what the Wall was built to do.

It was flat and clear.

And every part of it was covered by the towers.

That was what Encrid had pointed out during the Council meeting.

"Flat ground lets the Roamers reach the foot of the Wall at speed. We need to reduce their speed before they reach it."

That one sentence had given work to nine hundred men.

The Works went out on the third morning with every gang the Wall could spare and around nine hundred men from the levy. They worked beneath the watch of the tower archers, and they dug.

They dug three trenches across the northern face.

The first was twelve feet deep and eighteen feet wide. It was cut in a broken line rather than a straight one, so that anything running toward it could not see the far edge until it was almost upon it.

The trench stretched for thirty miles before they ran out of time.

The second was nine feet deep and sat forty paces behind the first.

The third was shallow.

It was filled with stakes.

That one was meant for anything that managed to cross the other two.

The stake lines between the trenches were placed at angles.

That part had been Encrid’s idea.

Explaining it was another matter.

Encrid could draw the lines. He could explain what he wanted them to accomplish. But when it came to standing in the dirt and showing hundreds of workers exactly where each stake needed to go, he was nearly useless.

Bree stepped in and took charge of the instructions himself.

Volk, the former bandit leader, helped with the workers’ coordination as well. He had spent enough of his life organizing men who did not particularly want to listen to orders, and Encrid quickly discovered that this made him surprisingly useful.

There was one part of the design that almost everyone struggled to understand.

The stakes did not point toward the enemy.

They pointed inward.

The lines formed long, shallow funnels.

The purpose was simple.

A running animal that turned away from one line would not escape the obstacle. It would be guided toward the next one.

Then the next.

Every turn would carry it farther along the face of the Wall and closer to one of the trenches.

Encrid was not trying to stop the Roamers.

Stopping them with mere stakes was impossible.

He only needed to slow them down.

And if slowing them was not possible, he needed to steer them.

Every second mattered.

Every change in direction mattered.

If even a few hundred Roamers were forced to turn instead of running directly toward the Wall, the towers would have more time to fire.

The drawings Encrid had presented to the Council were not even his.

He had asked a draughtsman from the Works to make them from his description.

Vess had asked him twice where the description had come from.

Both times, Encrid had given the same answer.

"I read it somewhere."

He had.

That was entirely true.

It had been in a Chapter about a siege on the southern front against the savage barbarians. The author had spent an unreasonable amount of time explaining the construction of defensive trenches and angled stakes because the man clearly loved that sort of thing.

Encrid had read those pages carefully because he liked knowing the details too. Now he was counting on the same principles working against Roamers.

He was also counting on something else.

The trenches would fill.

They had to.

A Roamer that fell into the first trench would not be able to climb out easily. The ones behind it would keep coming.

They would fall on top of the ones already trapped.

Within a quarter of an hour, the trenches would stop being trenches.

They would become ramps made from bodies.

And that would not mean the plan had failed.

That was how the plan had been designed.

Every Roamer in a trench was one Roamer that was not climbing the Wall.

Even if the creatures eventually stopped falling, the ones behind them would push the bodies forward and walk over them.

A trench that stretched across two hundred kilometres could hold thousands of Roamers.

Probably more.

It was a tactic that would work only once.

But once was more than enough for men who were grasping at every possible advantage.

The work was not without cost.

Nineteen men died digging the trenches over eight days.

Two packs of Reevers reached one of the work parties on the sixth day. The tower engines could not fire into a fight that close to the Wall, so the Far-Watch went out to deal with them.

They cleared the Reevers.

Four Far-Watch men died doing it.

Encrid wrote all twenty-three names down that night.

✧ ✧ ✧

Ansel Corr had been doing far more as Encrid’s attendant than Encrid had expected.

During the crisis, he had become one of the most useful people in the entire office.

At the second hour of the morning, Corr was in the Third Office, working through the preparations and checking their current status, when Encrid came through the door.

"Is it ready?"

Ansel Corr sighed.

It was a long sigh, the kind that came from a man who had spent the last four months managing something on Encrid’s behalf without ever fully believing that it would actually be needed.

"The blacksmiths have worked day and night on it since autumn," he said. "Every forge on this Wall, and two in the Shambles. I have kept them on nothing else since the Council session."

"And?"

"Twenty of each."

Encrid waited.

Corr looked down at his notes.

"That is what we have. Twenty of each type. The last four will not be finished before the day after tomorrow. I have three smiths who have not slept in a bed since the second day."

"And the rest?"

"Still working."

Encrid sat back in his chair and smiled.

Corr had watched him work for eight months.

He did not entirely like the look on his face.

"Mount them," Encrid said.

Corr looked up.

"All sixty of them?"

"Yes, all sixty."

Corr waited for the rest.

Encrid gave it to him.

"I want them mounted within five days, and I want the crews drilling with them from the hour the mounting is finished."

Corr nodded and wrote it down.

Twenty of each type.

Sixty in total.

Spread across two hundred kilometres of Wall, that meant roughly one every three and a half kilometres.

It was nowhere near enough.

It was going to have to be enough.

And that was the uncomfortable truth behind almost everything they were doing.

They did not have enough men.

They did not have enough time.

They did not have enough weapons.

They did not have enough of anything.

But they had ten days.

So they would use all ten.

✦ ✦ ✦