The Wallwardens

The Wallwardens are the soldiers of House Ravenfeather of the Mute March, handed down from generation to generation. In the south few people remember they exist, and pay and supply always arrive last — winter grain sent out from Ironhold has often reached the Mute March by Grey Moon, three-tenths of it lost on the road, and what is left goes through the city of the Mute March before the wall's turn comes. The rule on the wall is simple, then: store whatever can be stored, save whatever can be saved, halve the ration in winter. No one complains, and complaining would do no good.

They hold the 400 watchtowers of the Mute Wall, one every 5 kilometres, worked in three watches. A new soldier goes up onto the wall at sixteen and is not allowed to sleep his first night; he stands at a merlon from dark until daylight, with an old soldier beside him who does not say one word. Get through that night and he counts as a man of the wall.

The way of holding the wall was ground out over several hundred years. An iron chain hangs from the top of the tower down to the oil cauldron, and when the catch is let go the whole vat of animal fat mixed with pine resin pours down the face of the wall and coats the foot of it all round. Fire-oil barrels are ranged along the corner of the tower; when the fuse has burned halfway they are thrown down and lit. If that is not enough there are the longbows and the great crossbow, and the neighbouring tower carries a stone-dropper as well. The oil has to be hot and must not boil; boiled too long it goes down as nothing but a streak of white smoke and will not coat the face of the wall — a thing that cannot be written into standing orders and can only be taught by an old soldier, hand to hand.

The wall has horn signals of its own. One long note is the change of watch, two short notes mean something moving beyond the wall, a quick run of notes means they are coming up. When a man has died the tower sounds three long and two short. The horn carries very far across the icefield and can be heard two towers away, and the men who hear it do not stop what they are doing, they only do it a little faster.

Every watch leaves a shift note when it hands over, in a form that has not changed in several hundred years:

Tower No. 47  Frost Moon, day 11  Third watch
  Came 22   Killed 19   Fled 3
  Lost 2: Stonehall (merlon), Little Pei (tower stair)
  Oil left 4 barrels  Bowstrings replaced 6

The men who live write the names of the dead into their own little ledgers. The ledger is private property and does not belong to the muster roll; when it is full it goes to the bottom of a chest, and when the man dies someone from the same tower keeps it after him. There is a saying in the Mute March: In the south they record the king's name; in the north we record our own.