Chapter 64: Unusual Activities
The Wall’s quiet ended on a Tuesday, at the eleventh mile, an hour before dawn.
Encrid heard about it because of an emergency requisition request that came to the Quartermastery for approval.
At first, he thought nothing of it.
The Wall had been quiet for too long, and a small roamer attack was hardly anything unusual.
By noon, however. There were six different versions of the story circulating all around.
And he heard the original story from Fennick, who had gone out with the party that recovered what was left of the bodies.
"Reevers," he said, standing beside the office brazier, warming his hands while his restless eyes remained fixed on the flames.
"A pack hit the stakes in the dark. That’s normal, my lord. That’s just another Tuesday on this stone."
Encrid continued writing.
"But?"
Fennick hesitated.
"But there were forty of them."
Encrid’s hand stopped, and he slowly looked up.
"Forty?"
Fennick nodded.
"Nobody has ever seen forty Reevers together. They’re territorial creatures. They kill each other over hunting ground and deer trails. Twelve is already considered a large pack."
He held his hands close to the coals.
"But that wasn’t the strangest part."
Encrid’s expression became serious.
"The Strange part was that they attacked in three groups."
Fennick looked toward the closed office door before continuing.
"The first two groups rushed the stakes and drew the tower fire. The third group went straight for the drainage grate."
Encrid frowned.
"It’s like they were coordinating with each other for the attack."
Encrid didn’t know why, but that sounded like a very big problem. If low-ranked roamers who act like mindless beasts start coordinating with each other to attack the wall - they he couldn’t think about the consequences.
He wasn’t worried about forty, fifty, or even hundreds of roamers, but the Thousand Beast calamity Horde?
"What about the damages?"
"Nineteen Reevers were killed, but they got one on the Watch and dragged him into the green."
Encrid frowned at that part.
Reevers were roamers who usually eat where they kill, for them to drag away their prey was definitely unusual.
Encrid looked at the requisition request lying on his desk.
Javelins, Lamp oil, bandages - everything that came after an ordinary roamer attack, but this doesn’t seem normal.
It felt more like Someone, or something, had sent forty Reeves against the Wall.
The thought was absurd.
Roamers could not be ordered around.
At least, that was what everyone believed.
But Encrid had spent enough time reading the novel to know that the Great Green Forest was full of things people believed they understood.
And some of those beliefs had turned out to be very wrong.
His eyes moved toward the window.
The forest beyond the Wall was quiet again.
Far too quiet.
’Is this meant to distract us?’ Jin thought.
The missing roamers.
The strange silence.
And now, suddenly, forty Reevers are attacking the Wall.
It felt less like the beginning of an attack and more like someone knocking on a door.
A reminder.
A distraction.
Something designed to make everyone say, Good. The roamers are back. Everything is normal again.
Encrid’s expression darkened.
"Fennick."
"Yes, my lord?"
"Tell the scouts not to treat this as an isolated attack."
Fennick looked at him.
"Then what should we treat it as?"
He stared toward the Great Green Forest.
"I don’t know yet."
His fingers tapped once against the desk.
"But someone wanted us to notice the Reevers."
He looked back at Fennick.
"And I think they wanted us to stop looking at everything else."
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Encrid found the other thing three days later.
As usual, he found it by reading something nobody else considered important enough to read.
It was a ration reconciliation.
It was probably the dullest document the Third Office produced.
Every far-watch party that went beyond the stakes was given enough food and supplies for the length of its patrol. The provisions were recorded against the party’s roster, and when the party returned, whatever they had not used was returned to the stores and the record was closed.
Encrid was going through the old records when one entry caught his attention.
The Eleventh Far-Watch party had drawn enough supplies for twenty-eight days during the second week of winter.
But nothing had been returned.
The record was still open.
It had been open for nine weeks.
Jin stared at the entry for a while.
Then he closed the ledger and walked down to the Far-Watch hall.
He found the duty sergeant and asked the question in the calmest voice he could manage.
"This is an open supply line, Sergeant. I am not accusing anyone of anything. I simply want to close the record, but I cannot close it without a return."
The sergeant became uncomfortable.
"There isn’t going to be a return, my lord."
Encrid paused, and then he understood.
"...I see."
"The eleventh party. There were four men and a woman. Ansel Corr was leading them."
The sergeant said the name carefully, as though he had spent the past several weeks trying not to think about it.
"They went out for a special mission - left for twenty-eight days. That was nine weeks and four days ago."
Encrid understood what that meant - they weren’t returning anymore. There were too many cases in the Far Watch where the party went out into the great green and never returned.
Usually, after two weeks, the quartermastery would receive a notice to close the request, but for this - they hadn’t - that’s why Encrid was even here.
"Is that unusual?"
The sergeant looked at him as though Encrid had just asked whether water was wet.
Then he remembered that Encrid had come from the south and had only spent four months on the Wall.
So he answered properly.
"My lord, Corr went out into the great green - four hundred and eleven times."
The sergeant’s voice became quieter.
"He wrote a third of the Far-Watch mandate himself. He refused promotion three times because he didn’t want to sit behind a desk."
He paused.
"Corr always came back. That was what he did."
Encrid listened carefully.
"Other men came back because Corr had noticed something they had missed. Half the time, he was the reason they returned alive. He was the best man we had on the far watch."
Encrid was not aware of the name nor the fame of this man called Ansel Corr, but now that he was hearing it from the Sergeant’s mouth, he felt saddened that the Wall had lost such a good resource.
"What was his patrol area?"
He asked carefully.
"North-east."
Encrid stiffened.
"There’s no report," the sergeant continued. "No bodies. No equipment. Nothing."
He shook his head.
"We sent two parties looking for them. They found their third camp, but there was nothing beyond it."
"What does that mean?"
"We don’t know."
The sergeant looked toward the window.
"Whatever Corr found, he found it somewhere nobody has been willing to search."
Encrid closed the ration book.
’Five men,’ he thought. Nine weeks ago. North-east.’
And suddenly, the strange silence of the forest felt much heavier.
’Nobody reported it because Far-Watch parties disappear sometimes.’
He looked down at the closed ledger.
’And there is no procedure for reporting something that simply isn’t there.’
He returned to the Third Office.
He opened his private ledger and wrote down the date and the direction in his own cipher.
He wrote it on the same page where he had already recorded the strange reports coming from the valley.
Then he hesitated.
He had never done this for someone whom he hadn’t personally appraised before.
But he wrote the man’s name too.
Ansel Corr.
’Whatever you found out there, Corr,’ Encrid thought, ’I would have paid a great deal to know it.’
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