Chapter 234: Maren Ridge

The column reached the Maren ridge on the sixteenth day after the bridge fell. A cold, grey rain followed them all the way.

Sir Gareth Varus rode at the front, he had assumed the lead position along with Ysolde.

He had led many columns in his life, but never one like this. Eight thousand people stretched along the Serpentine road for more than four miles. Soldiers, cooks, clerks, healers, and children walked beside carts loaded with everything they had managed to save from the Wall.

Twelve hundred soldiers of the Third Legion marched on either side of them, forming a protective line.

Nobody sang. Few people spoke.

They simply kept walking, because there was nowhere behind them they could return to.

Two days earlier, the Duke’s writ had reached them on the road. Gareth had read it twice by the light of a cook fire before handing it to Coris Danel without a word.

Danel, the acting Lord Commander of a Wall that no longer existed, had read the document, folded it carefully, and tucked it inside his coat.

"He’s giving us the ridge," Danel had said.

"He’s lending you the ridge," Gareth corrected. "Until the Crown decides what to do."

Danel had looked at him.

"Is there a difference?"

Gareth had no answer.

He wasn’t sure himself.

The Maren keep stood at the top of the ridge, overlooking the river.

It was an old, squat fortress built from grey stone. The keep had been abandoned since House Maren fell, and the commission had stripped it of everything valuable the previous year.

Its doors hung open. The banners were gone. Weeds grew between the stones of the courtyard, and someone had even stolen the lead from half the roof.

Gareth stopped his horse at the gate and looked at the fortress.

Two years ago, he had ridden along this same ridge on his journey north. The young master had ridden with him, struggling to stay in the saddle.

When they had passed beneath these walls, the young master had made a dry remark about the Maren family’s poor taste in architecture.

Harun had laughed so hard that he had nearly fallen off his horse.

Gareth had not laughed.

Back then, he had been too busy thinking about how much trouble the boy was and how long the journey ahead would be.

Now, sitting on his horse in the cold rain, he remembered that moment.

He remained there for a while, lost in his thoughts.

Then he dismounted and got to work.

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By nightfall, the camp had begun to take shape.

Surprisingly, the order did not come from Gareth. It came from two people he would never have expected to manage such a task.

Steward Vess, a round, exhausted man with ink stains covering his wrists, took control of the keep’s old granary within an hour of their arrival.

He began making lists.

Who knew a trade? Who could build shelters? Who could cook for a hundred people? Who was sick and needed help?

He never raised his voice.

People came to him with problems, and he wrote them all down. Somehow, seeing their troubles on paper made them seem a little easier to manage.

Merta handled everything else.

Standing in the middle of the courtyard with a ladle in her hand and rain dripping from her hood, she began assigning places for eight thousand people to sleep.

She did not try to manage everyone at once. Instead, she handled one family and one cart at a time.

She sent the sick to the keep’s great hall and the children to the stables, which still had solid roofs. She divided the soldiers among the villages along the ridge, assigning three hundred to each.

She also made one thing very clear.

If she heard that even a single chicken had been stolen, she would come down to the villages herself.

The wounded soldiers of the Fifth Legion were sent to the chapel. When a knight wearing a fine blue surcoat complained that he would prefer a room inside the keep, Merta simply stared at him.

A moment later, he went to the chapel.

Gareth watched her work from the steps of the great hall.

"She used to be a bandit," Danel remarked beside him. There was almost admiration in his voice.

"Yes."

"Around two years ago, the Watcher bought her debts from a fort full of bandits."

"I know," Gareth replied. "I was the one who beat them up."

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On the third day, they discovered the stone.

It stood at the highest point of the ridge, above the keep, where the land rose before descending toward the river.

It was an old boundary marker, tall and weathered, once used to separate the lands of one lord from another.

Moss covered one side of it. The other remained smooth and pale.

Merta was the one who found it.

She stood before the stone with her arms folded, studying it for a long time.

Then she went to find Corr.

By evening, the entire camp knew what she intended to do.

Corr had the list of the dead. More than three thousand names. Meanwhile, Vess had found two stonemasons among the Wall’s workers who could begin the task the following morning.

Every person who had died defending the Wall would have their name carved into that stone.

That evening, Gareth climbed to the top of the ridge to look at it.

The sun was setting behind the clouds, casting a reddish light across the stone’s pale surface.

Two of the masons carried Corr up the hill in a chair, with his tally board resting on his knees. Gus followed behind them.

"Sir Gareth," Corr said when they arrived. "There’s something we need to decide. About the last name."

Gareth already knew which name he meant.

He turned toward Gus.

The boy had not let go of his lamp in sixteen days.

He held it against his chest now, gripping it tightly with both hands. It remained unlit. His face had grown thin, and his expression had become hard and distant.

A faint, white-gold light flickered around his knuckles. It always appeared now when he held something too tightly.

Corr looked toward Gareth, waiting for an answer.

Gareth remained silent.

Instead, he looked past them, down the slope toward the northern edge of the ridge.

Zuri stood there alone.

Every evening, she went to the same spot, where the ground dropped away toward the river. She would stare north, toward the gorge and the broken bridge, though the Wall lay more than ten days’ march away and could not possibly be seen from here.

She stayed until darkness made it impossible to see anything.

Only then would she return to camp and sleep for a few hours.

And every morning, she went back.

Gareth watched her for a long moment.

"You heard the boy," he finally said. "The young master is not dead, so no - remove that name from the list."

Corr closed the tally board - he had never included the name there in the first place.

The stonemasons began their work at dawn.

Over the next nine days, they carved three thousand, four hundred and eighty-two names into the pale stone.

When they finished, they left a space at the bottom.

Nobody asked why.

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