The Village of Stillbranch

Stillbranch was once a small village deep in the Mute March, 320 kilometres from the Mute Wall — far enough that it ought to have been safe. There were fewer than 40 households. They burned charcoal, kept sheep, and in winter wove coarse wool blankets to sell southward, and from one year's end to the next they saw hardly an outsider.

Sixteen years ago the Mute Wall was breached. What came in from beyond it passed through the gap, went south the whole way, and flattened Stillbranch. Everyone in the village was gone in a single night, and not many bodies were left behind either. It was already light when the Wallwardens got there. The surface of the snow was unnaturally clean, the houses had fallen in, the ash in the hearths was still warm, and the porridge in the pots had not been touched. One thing was dug alive out of the ruins — an infant in swaddling, wrapped in wool, not crying.

The Wallwardens set a wooden board at the mouth of the village, uncarved, the wood only planed flat. By the custom of the Mute March the dead are given name-boards; whose names should have gone on this one, no one that day could answer, and the board stayed blank. Some years later it rotted, and no one replaced it.

The child was raised by the Wallwardens and entered into their ranks. He carries none of the family names of that village, because there is no longer anyone who can tell him what those names were. In the household register at the city of the Mute March a line has been ruled across the page for Stillbranch, and beneath the line is written “Deceased”, with no list of names — the clerk could not put a list together.

In the records of the south the thing does not appear. In the archives of the Bureau of Military Affairs at the capital, the northern entry for that year runs to one line: No incident on the border.

The people at the city of the Mute March know more, though only a little more. The breach in the wall was repaired quickly; where the stone for the repair was drawn from, who gave the order, which watch had been on the wall that night — none of it is in the files. Everyone who has asked has had the same answer: that year's records were lost.

Of Stillbranch there is now only a place-name on a map, and one soldier who never mentions where he came from.