Chapter 001| Watchtower No. 47

The 23rd of the Cold Moon, after dark. Sergeant Gorm sniffed the air and said, "Tonight isn't clean."

Kael said nothing. Sixteen years old, third watch, his turn to roll the oil drums.

Watchtower No. 47 stood at the middle stretch of the Mute Wall. The whole wall ran 2,000 kilometers, the East Sea to the West Sea, one tower every 5 kilometers, 400 towers in all. From Kael's tower you could not see the top. The Mute Wall stood 100 meters high. At night the ancient glyphs of dead kings' names, cast into the wall's face, gave off a dim blue light, like a constellation hung upside down across the sky. The wind came in from the Silent North, and the blue light shivered now and then under it, like breathing.

Kael did not like the breathing comparison. A wall should not breathe.

"Northwest, two hundred paces. The first one," Soren said.

Soren was fifty-five, twenty-seven years on the wall, a joint gone from his right ring finger. The way he drew the longbow now was not like drawing a bow, more like bracing his own shoulder. He did not look up, did not look northwest, only stood there with the bow strung, and the words came out as if he were reporting a gust of wind from the northwest, not the first of the hounds.

Kael could not see it.

"Don't look at the face," Gorm said. Gorm was the sergeant, thirty-five, a strip of black cloth over his left eye, eleven years on the wall. "Look for the gleam in the shadow."

Kael looked.

The foot of the wall was all black, no moonlight on the snow. In the dark two hundred paces below the tower, two tiny points of reflected light, like wet stone.

Stone does not move. The two points moved.

"Here," Gorm said.

Soren's bow gave a little. The arrow went out. The two points of light dropped. No sound. Too far.

Then Kael heard the howl.

It was flat, low, one note from start to end, like a man with a hand pressed over his throat made to sing a long time without drawing breath. A wolf's howl rises and falls. This one did not. Nothing he had ever learned was any use here. He could only hold onto this: flat, low, no breath.

"Seven to eight. First wave," Soren said.

Gorm had already rolled the first cauldron to the wall's edge. Kael hurried over to push the second.

The oil cauldron was rigged to an iron line from the tower top, the line ending in a catch. Loose the catch and the oil poured down the wall, a whole drum, sixty kilograms of rendered fat mixed with pine resin, running down the face to the ground, enough to cover ten meters around.

Four fire-oil drums, set at the corner. Three longbows, three at the top, two below, two crossbow slots inside. The trebuchets were at Towers No. 46 and 48, not at this one. They were not anything Kael's hands could touch.

Kael touched his short sword. The name "Kael" was darkly carved into the scabbard, cut four years ago by the third elder of a Ravenfeather cadet line, with his own hand. The elder had died the year Kael was twelve. Kael did not remember the elder's face. He remembered the elder's letters.

"Kael," Gorm said.

"Here."

"Take the first cauldron."

"Yes."

Kael stood at the first cauldron, his hand on the catch.

Gorm swept his eye over the three on the tower top. Soren, himself, Kael. "Soren bow, me bow, Kael oil. On my word."

"Yes," Kael said.

The first hound came out from the foot of the wall.

Three meters long, on all fours, its skin black-gray scale, lapped row over row like tiles, the snowlight not getting into it, like a patch of dried blood that would not reflect. The center of its face had no eyes, only a hollow. The hollow was not like a wound. A wound scabs, goes crooked. This one was dug clean, as if it had been born with a trough cut inward where the eyes should be. It ran and it howled, but its mouth did not move. The sound seeped out of that hollow at the center of its face.

Kael felt his palm shaking.

"Loose oil," Gorm said.

Kael loosed the catch. The drum tipped, sixty kilograms of fat running down the wall's face, covering the line of the hound's advance.

"Fire," Gorm said.

Soren never let the bow leave his hand. With his left he threw down a fire-oil drum. It turned in the air, the bung dropped, the fuse half burned, it struck the ground and burst into a sheet of orange flame.

The oil caught.

The hound charged into the fire. It did not pull back, did not stop. It went straight into the fire. The scales began to char, the flesh began to redden, and still it came on. Half a foot already burned away, and still it came on.

It went down two meters from the foot of the wall.

The fire did not kill it. It only went down after Soren's arrow drove into the third vertebra behind its neck.

Kael had not seen when Soren loosed. He only saw the arrow already in the back of the hound's neck, at the third vertebra, sunk in halfway, and the hound going down.

"Third vertebra," Gorm said to Kael, his eyes not leaving the foot of the wall. "Anywhere else won't kill them."

Kael remembered it.

The second and third charged together. The fourth and fifth fifty paces behind.

"Loose oil."

Kael loosed the second cauldron.

"Loose oil."

The third. The oil on the tower top was all gone.

"Fire, fire, fire."

Soren threw down three fire-oil drums. The second hound died in the fire. The third ran out of it, threw itself at the foot of the wall, and began to climb.

The hounds could climb the wall. No one had told Kael this.

Kael drew the short sword from its scabbard.

"Kael. Don't go down," Gorm said.

"It's coming up."

"I said don't go down."

Kael did not go down. He stood at the tower top and watched the hound climb, claw over claw. The basalt of the wall's face had its own ridges and pits. The hound's claws could hook into them, hooked in slowly, but every hold was higher than Kael had reckoned.

Kael had never seen a hound this close. The hollow at the center of its face was not deep, like a filled-in eye socket, a ring of very fine markings around its edge. The markings were letters. Kael knew at one glance they were letters.

He could read the word.

He did not know how he could read it.

The hound climbed to two meters below the tower top.

Gorm drew his blade.

"I'll do it," Kael said.

"I said——"

The hound came up over the tower top.

Kael's left calf was seized.

He did not know what had happened. He only knew there was something on his left leg, cold and heavy, and it was dragging him off the tower. He was going to be pulled down.

Gorm's blade swept past over Kael's head and cut into the hound's neck, at the third vertebra, in halfway, deeper, deeper, and when the blade came out the whole of it was stained black.

The hound let go. It fell, half its body hung over the tower's edge, sliding down slowly.

Kael dropped to sitting on the tower top. His left calf was all wet.

"Soren," Gorm called.

"Four at the foot. The fifth pulled back."

"Kael. Up."

Kael got up. His left calf took seven stitches before it stopped, but that came later. Now he only knew the leg was still there, the foot still there, the sword still in his hand, that he had not fallen.

The fourth and fifth hounds burned at the foot of the wall, the third hung at the tower's edge, the sixth, seventh, eighth were gone, pulled back toward the Silent North.

Gorm stood, braced, did not ease. Soren held the bow strung, did not ease.

A long time passed. To Kael it felt long. In truth it may have been only a moment. Then Gorm set down the blade.

"Done," he said.

Kael did not know what done meant. He only knew he was shaking, that his left leg was bleeding, that there was an iron tang in his mouth, though he had not bitten it.

The sky began to lighten.

---

The third watch ended at dawn.

The surgeon came over from Tower No. 46 and cleaned Kael's wound with grease taken from a hound's underbelly.

"Hound grease?" Kael said.

"Nothing else," the surgeon said.

Kael said no more. He let the surgeon put in seven stitches. Needle through skin, flesh, skin, knot. Kael counted every one. He did not know why he had to, but he did.

Gorm dragged the three hound carcasses to the burning pit at the foot of the wall. The pit was a hundred paces downstream of Tower No. 47. The whole Mute March Wallwardens burned their hound carcasses here. The fire was large, burned through the night and on into the afternoon.

Soren did not go to the pit. Soren stood on the tower top, looking at the wall.

When Kael came up, Soren did not turn his head. "Come here," he said.

Kael came.

"Look there."

Kael looked along Soren's pointing finger. On the stretch of wall directly facing the tower top, about twenty meters from where they stood, there was a king's name. Kael did not know which generation the name belonged to, but he could read that they were letters, four strokes.

At the end of the third stroke, a very fine crack had appeared.

Weathering is coarse, flakes off in plates. This crack was not that. It was fine, a single line, like a needle thrust out from inside the wall, leaving the hole it made.

"It wasn't there last night," Soren said.

Kael stared at the line.

He could read the word.

The word was far older than modern Ironhold script. So old Kael could not say how old, and still he could read it. What the word was called, he did not know. What it meant, he did not know. But what the word looked like, that he knew, clear and exact. Where each stroke started, where it ended, he knew. Give him a pen now and he could write that word out.

"The wall is forgetting again," Soren said.

"Forgetting what?" Kael asked.

Soren did not answer. He only stood, his shoulders braced, looking at the wall.

After a while Soren said, low, "Forgetting itself."

Kael did not understand.

---

In the afternoon, the beacon signal of the king's death came up the chain of watchtowers from the south.

This signal was not like the others. "The king is dead." Last night, from the direction of Ironhold, tower after tower, it had burned through the whole night, crossing 800 kilometers to the Mute Wall. The one who brought it to the foot of Tower No. 47 was a courier rider of the Mute March border garrison, on a black horse run to foam over its whole body. He did not stop at the foot of the tower, only shouted one line up at it and rode on north, to carry the signal to Watchtower No. 1 Command.

That line Kael did not catch.

Gorm caught it. Gorm came down the tower, and as he came into Kael's sight the strip of black cloth over his left eye was a little wet. Kael did not know if it was sweat or something else.

"The old king. Dead," Gorm said.

"The old king?" Kael did not take it in.

"Of Ironhold. The 105th. Passed. Yesterday. The beacon carried it."

Kael did not know the old king of Ironhold. Ironhold was 800 kilometers from the Mute Wall. The farthest Kael had been in his life was Tower No. 12, 175 kilometers from here.

But Kael knew what the old king's death meant. The garrison would be cut back, fewer men on the Mute Wall, and the hounds at the foot of it would not grow fewer to match.

Kael did not ask Gorm what they would do. Gorm had stood eleven years. Kael knew Gorm would not say. Gorm only stood, looking at the road to the south, where the horse had already run to the edge of sight.

"Orders will come tomorrow," Gorm said.

"Yes."

"First get the leg right."

"Yes."

"Kael."

"Here."

Gorm turned his head to him. Under the strip of black cloth over the left eye Kael could see nothing. The right eye was very quiet.

"Remember what Soren said just now."

"Remembered."

Gorm went.

---

Kael came down the tower, back to the barracks.

The barracks stood two hundred paces below the watchtower, half sunk into the ground, roofed with thick stone slab. It kept off the snow, kept off the wind. It did not keep off the hounds' howling. But the hounds only howled at night, and the men in the barracks only slept by day, so whether it kept it off made no difference.

Kael's bunk was at the far end, against the wall. Today he did not need to sleep. He had just come off the third watch and would not sleep until the next third watch. He only came in to take off his outer robe, hang the short sword on the wall peg, fold the raven-feather cloak and lay it at the edge of the bunk.

The raven-feather cloak was sewn from black feathers, standard issue for the Wallwardens. Kael's had been issued last year, the collar embroidered with the four characters "Kael Ravenfeather." His name was not Ravenfeather. "Ravenfeather" was a surname the army had made up. Sixteen years ago, when the Wallwardens dug him out of the ruin of a small village, there had been nothing in the swaddling, nothing left to say who he was. The Wallwardens made him a surname, made it from the surname of the house at their station, and used "Ravenfeather."

That small village was called Stillbranch, deep in the Mute March, 320 kilometers from the Mute Wall. Sixteen years ago, that one night, the whole village of Stillbranch vanished. Kael did not know how it had vanished. He only knew that when the Wallwardens dug him out of the ruin, the swaddling was wrapped in a cloth, and there was blood on the cloth, and it was not his blood.

Kael did not ask about the past. Asking did no good.

He sat at the edge of the bunk, spread his right palm open, and looked at tonight's scratch. A hound's claw, shallow, would not scar.

Then he spread his left palm.

There was a very faint mark on his left palm now.

Kael went still.

The mark was nothing like a scratch, a cut, a burn. It was fine, it was even, as if someone had taken a very fine needle and lightly drawn a line across his left palm. The mark was faint, faint enough that it took the noon sun to see it. There was no noon sun now, only a single oil lamp in the barracks. But Kael could see it.

He did not know when it had come. He had just been standing the tower top, just been watching the hounds at the foot of the wall, just had seven stitches put in by the surgeon. He had not looked at his left palm. He could not remember his left palm touching anything.

The shape of the mark was a little like a letter, but it was not complete. One stroke of a word. Maybe the beginning of a stroke.

Kael stared at it a long time.

Then he took the little ledger from under his pillow.

The little ledger was one to a man among the Wallwardens, for noting the watch, the gear, the wall's voices heard that night. But Kael's, besides this, noted other things too.

He turned to the first page. The first page was empty. He had started the watch records on the second page. Tonight he turned back to the first page, took up his pen, and wrote two names.

The first name was a second-watch patrolman who had died last night at Tower No. 51. Nineteen years old. Surname Lan.

The second name was a first-watch adjutant who had died the night before at Tower No. 38. Forty-two years old. Surname Kun.

Kael had never seen them. Word of their deaths had come on the night signal-calls between the towers. The call was three long, two short. It meant someone had died. Every time Kael heard the call, he wrote down the dead man's surname. The Wallwarden system had an official roll, sent south to be archived at the Royal Tomb. But Kael did not trust the roll. The roll was written by others. Kael would keep his own.

When he wrote on the first page, he set the names down in order of time. Tonight's call was three long, two short, from Tower No. 49, and it came in the middle of Kael's third watch, while he was counting the oil drums. He heard it, but Gorm said "finish counting first," so Kael finished counting the oil drums, and by the time he turned back the call had stopped.

Kael did not know who had died at Tower No. 49.

He wrote: "Tower No. 49, surname unknown, a quarter before dawn."

He set down the pen.

Closed the ledger.

Pushed the ledger back under the pillow.

Outside it was already afternoon. Sunlight came slanting in through the one high window of the barracks, and fell just on Kael's left palm.

The mark brightened in the sun, once.

Kael's eyes adjusted for a second——

The mark was giving off its own light, a very faint silver, not reflected.

The light was weak, not steady, like breathing.

Kael looked up at the barracks door. No one.

He turned his left hand over and moved it out of the slanting sunlight.

The point of silver light did not go out with it.

Kael closed his left hand.

He did not know what this was. He would not ask. He knew asking did no good. Of the things on this Mute Wall, asking did no good for most of them. Soren, twenty-seven years on the wall, had asked about the crack in a king's name and had only said "forgetting itself."

Kael closed his left hand and set it on his knee.

Below Watchtower No. 47, Gorm still stood where he had been, looking at the crack on the wall twenty meters up.

The crack had grown a little from dawn to noon.

Gorm did not note the time. He knew tomorrow it would be longer.

【Ch. 001 End · Watchtower No. 47 of the Mute Wall】