Arthur had learned to recognize the difference between a patrol and a preparation for war.
Chapter 13 – The Long Wall
The orders came down three days after the spoiling raid.
Arthur read the sheet by lantern light in the barracks, Eoric looking over his shoulder. The script was neat, the words simple: full deployment along the eastern and northern stretches of the Rammas Echor, all available companies and captains to stand to at nightfall and hold until relieved.
"Feels different," Eoric said quietly. "They're not sending us out to hunt this time. They're telling us to stay and let it come."
Arthur folded the parchment and slipped it into his belt. "If they're gathering for a real push," he said, "we'd be wasted chasing shadows."
By late afternoon, the lower circles were humming. Smiths worked with a haste that showed in the uneven ring of hammer blows. Armorers handed out patched mail and spare straps. Cart wheels rattled as supplies were hauled toward the outer gates. In the markets, people bought salt, flour, anything that kept, then hurried home before the light began to fade.
Arthur walked George down to the main yard. The gelding tossed his head once, then settled, the familiarity of leather and steel around him as routine now as any drill. Men milled in small groups, checking kit, trading few words.
Lirael found Arthur near the hitching posts. She had her helm under her arm, cloak fastened tight, jaw set.
"You're assigned to the eastern spur," she said. "Between the old watch-ruin and the irrigation ditch. It's thin there, but the ground is bad. They'll have trouble massing without stumbling."
"Who's on either side?" Arthur asked.
"Torin to the north, Captain Daros to the south," she said. "You don't let anything through between them."
Arthur nodded. "Understood."
She paused. "Command is placing their steadier captains where they expect the worst," she added. "Take that how you like."
"I will," Arthur said.
They rode out before sunset, George at the head of Arthur's column, the horse's hooves steady on the stone road. As they approached the Rammas, the wall loomed higher than it did on patrol nights—a solid curve of pale stone thrown wide around the city's fields. From a distance, it was impressive. Up close, Arthur could see the patches: places where newer work met older stone with less grace, where hurried repairs left uneven lines.
The Rammas had been built as a shield for the Pelennor, not as a final bulwark. It didn't have the age or the deep foundations of the city's own walls. It was, for all its reach, a ring of stone that could be broken if pushed hard enough.
On the wall-walk near the eastern gate, a man with the badge of the Rammas command stood with Torin and a knot of officers. Lanterns and the last of the sun lit their faces from different angles, throwing sharp shadows.
"You all know why you're here," the commander said. "Scouts report more bands out there than any of us like, and larger things behind them. You hold your sections. If the line has to bend, it bends toward the city, not away from it. No one breaks and runs without orders. Understood?"
A low murmur of assent went around the group.
"Arthur," Torin said, turning to him. "Take your men down to your post and set them. You'll have torches along the wall and a few in the field. Use them carefully. The enemy already knows we're here; no need to show them more than we must."
Arthur nodded. He led his company through a postern gate and along the inner base of the wall until they reached the stretch Lirael had marked.
The ground here was uneven. A shallow irrigation ditch cut across their front at an angle, half-full of dark water. Beyond it, the land dipped and rose in small, irregular humps, remnants of old earthworks and a long-collapsed stone outpost whose low foundation still ringed a patch of higher ground.
Arthur looked it over, then turned to Eoric.
"We put the main line just behind the ditch," he said. "If they rush us, they have to stumble on the bank before they hit shields. We leave a small knot on the ruin to our right. Anyone who slips past the ditch runs into steel there."
Eoric nodded, already seeing it. "I'll take three men to the ruin," he said. "We'll watch for anyone trying to squeeze through in the dark."
"Do it," Arthur said. "Stay close enough to fall back to the main line if you have to. No heroics on the island."
They set torches at intervals along the wall above, leaving the ground itself mostly in shadow, save for a few shielded lamps near the ditch and the ruin. The last of the light drained from the sky, turning the fields into a flat, grey expanse.
As full dark fell, horns sounded along the Rammas—not in alarm, but in a pattern of readiness, a long note passed from station to station. Arthur listened, feeling the sound settle in his chest.
He let Spirit Vision rise, just a little.
The city behind the wall was a mass of soft lights—thousands of small auras clustered together. On the wall itself, the soldiers' spirits burned brighter, tighter. Out beyond the ditch, the fields were mostly dark. Mostly. Far away, like a stain spreading slowly outward, something moved.
He didn't try to separate individual shapes; that way led to headaches and disorientation. It was enough to know the dark wasn't empty.
"Ser," Eoric called from near the ruin. "Can you see anything yet?"
"Not with eyes," Arthur said. "But they're out there."
They waited.
Time stretched in the way it always did before fighting. Men shifted their weight, adjusted grips on spear shafts, briefly checked the same buckle twice. George stood tethered just behind the line, head lowered, ears flicking at every odd sound. The smell of damp earth and old water hung over the ditch.
The first sign came as a change in the wind.
It brought with it a smell Arthur had come to recognize: sweat, old leather, the faint rot of unwashed bodies and uncleaned blades. Then, faintly, the scratch of feet on soil not aligned with the wind, the low grind of stones displaced by careless steps.
"Shields up," Arthur said quietly. "Eyes ahead."
A few heartbeats later, shapes emerged from the dark. Orcs, moving in loose groups, hunched silhouettes that caught and lost the torchlight from the wall as they came. They spread wider than a simple raid, testing along the ditch, gauging where men were and where the ground might favor them.
"Archers," came a call from above. "Loose when you see steel."
Arrows hissed down from the wall, flickering briefly in the light before plunging into the darkness below. A few orcs cried out and fell. The rest broke into a run.
They hit the ditch unevenly. Those who saw it in time tried to leap it; others plunged in, splashing up muddy water, scrambling for footing as they clawed toward the bank where Arthur's line waited.
"Hold until they're on the rise," he said. "Then forward."
Orcs scrambled up, their momentum broken by the climb. When they reached the lip, they met a wall of wood and iron. Arthur's shield took the first impact, then he stepped into the press, sword thrusting between shield edges, cutting at exposed limbs. The men beside him did the same, the line jolting but not breaking.
Eoric's voice carried from the ruin. "Right flank, three coming through!" he called, then his words cut off in the clash of steel.
Arthur risked a glance. Figures were trying to slip around the ditch by hugging the higher ground near the old stones. He saw Eoric's small group there, holding narrow space, shields wedged against rock, blades flashing in tight arcs.
"Left, hold," Arthur said. "Right, keep them off the ruin. No one crosses behind us."
The first wave broke after a few minutes of hard, close work. The orcs fell back, dragging wounded, leaving bodies tangled in the ditch and along the bank. Men breathed hard, mist on the cold air.
"They'll come again," Arthur said. "Reset. Check straps. Don't chase."
They did. The second wave came with more arrows, orc archers using the dips and rises of the ground for cover. Two of Arthur's men took shallow cuts as they lifted shields to intercept; one grunt on the wall went down with a shaft in his shoulder.
Arthur dipped into Spirit Vision briefly, enough to see the knot of orc auras gathering further to the left.
"They're shifting," he said. "Left section, tighten. They'll try to push there."
They did. The left-hand men took the brunt, shields hammering under a heavier shove. Arthur angled his own position slightly, letting a bit of the pressure slide toward him, easing the worst of it from the farthest man.
"Step into them," he called. "On three. One, two—now."
They moved together, taking a half-step forward as the next rush crested. The timing disrupted the orcs' momentum just enough to send a few off-balance. In the close crash that followed, Arthur's sword and those around him found more flesh than iron.
Again the attack faltered, then faded. Again, they reset.
The night wore on like that. Not a single great crash, but a series of hard pushes, each testing a different part of the line, each leaving a few more bodies in the ditch and a few more men along the wall clutching bandaged arms or legs.
Under it all, Arthur's body did what it always did. His heart beat steady. His arms burned only as far as effort demanded, never tipping into the weakness he saw in others' shoulders as hours passed. His breathing stayed even. What tired was not muscle, but something less easy to name.
Between waves, he let Spirit Vision flicker on when he could afford it. He saw where men's auras thinned, where fear brightened and then dimmed as they steadied themselves. He used that knowledge quietly—placing steadier men near those who wavered, sending Eoric to speak a word or simply stand beside someone who looked too close to stepping back.
At one point, just before another wave, Eoric came down from the ruin to drink from a waterskin and roll his shoulder.
"They keep trying the same gap," he said. "They're not clever, but they're stubborn."
"That's enough to cause trouble," Arthur said. "Any sign of anything larger?"
"Nothing I can see," Eoric said. "Just more of them."
"Stay sharp," Arthur said. "If something big comes, it won't use the same path they've already bled on."
Eoric nodded and went back to his post.
Sometime past midnight, the pattern changed. The orcs stopped coming in small waves. The sounds from the dark shifted—less individual shrieks, more a dull, steady noise, like many bodies moving all at once.
"Something's wrong," one of the wall-archers muttered.
Arthur turned his eyes outward and raised Spirit Vision once more, pushing it further than he had earlier. The fields beyond the immediate ditch were a churn of dim lights now, more numerous than before, pressing in a broad line he couldn't fully trace. And behind that line, further back, there was a sense of bulk. Not a clear shape, but a heavier smear, as if something larger moved among the smaller auras, driving them.
His head started to throb at the effort; he let the vision drop.
"How bad?" Eoric asked quietly.
"Enough that this wasn't the main push," Arthur said. "This was them stretching the wall."
From up the line, nearer Torin's sector, a new sound rolled across the fields—a deeper horn, harsher, answered by one further along. Then, faintly, the sound of something that didn't fit with boots or hooves: a heavy, dragging thud, spaced out but steady, like a giant heartbeat against the earth.
"Scouts report trolls to the north," came a shouted message along the wall. "Big ones, driven by whips. They're not here yet, but they're moving."
Arthur felt, rather than saw, the men around him shift. The word "troll" passed in low, hard breaths, never loud but enough to change the way hands tightened on spear-shafts.
"They'll test Torin's section first," Lirael's voice came from behind him; she had moved down the wall to see things for herself. "They'll want to break through near the crossroads."
"If that fails," Arthur said, "they'll look for the next weakest place."
Her gaze moved over the ditch, the ruin, his line of men. "This isn't the weakest place," she said. "But it's not the strongest either."
"That's why we're here," Arthur said.
She rested her hands briefly on the parapet, knuckles pale in the lantern light. "This isn't over tonight," she said. "Even if they pull back their trolls before dawn, they'll be back. Bigger, or with something worse alongside them."
"I know," Arthur said.
She studied his face for a moment. "You don't tire," she said. It wasn't quite a question.
"Not the way others do," he said. "That doesn't mean this is easy."
"No," she agreed. "But if one part of the wall is going to see three nights like this in a row, it will be yours."
Arthur said nothing. There was nothing to argue with there.
As the night crept toward its latter half, the attacks in his sector thinned. The orcs seemed more interested in the northern stretch now, drawn by the place where trolls and heavier forces were testing the stone. Torin's horns sounded more often in the distance, rising over the clash of steel.
Arthur kept his men in place. No one left, no one relaxed. When a few started to sag at the knees, he rotated them back a rank for a short while, bringing fresher bodies forward. George dozed with one hind leg cocked, waking fully only when another messenger passed or a horn sounded too sharp.
Between the stretches of quiet, Arthur listened.
He heard the Rammas complain under great impacts further up—stone shuddering in its foundations as something massive struck it. He heard men shouting, not in panic but in the rough, hoarse way of people fighting harder than they had breath for. He heard, distantly, an inhuman roar, followed by a crack that might have been timber or bone.
Eoric came back down from the ruin once more, this time with more dirt than sweat on his face. "They're throwing bigger ones at Torin," he said. "I saw one silhouette against their fires. Taller than the wall."
Arthur looked toward the north, where the glow of distant flames outlined a jagged piece of the Rammas against the sky. "If they break there," he said, "we'll feel it here."
"Do you think they will?" Eoric asked.
Arthur was quiet for a long moment. "Torin won't," he said. "The stone might."
A messenger from the wall ran up, breathless. "Captain," he said. "Orders from command. Your sector holds as is. If Torin calls for support, you send only what you can spare without opening a gap. No one abandons the ditch."
Arthur nodded. "Understood. Tell them this part stands."
The messenger nodded and ran on, boots ringing on stone.
Dawn felt far away still, but the sky had lost its pure black. A hint of lighter grey touched the eastern edge. The worst of the night's first part, at least in his section, seemed to have eased. But the deeper sounds from the north told him this was only one piece of a larger struggle.
He rested his forearms on the top of his shield, letting his muscles stay active without strain. Spirit Vision stayed dormant; he'd pushed it far enough for one night. The ache behind his eyes hummed quietly, a warning not to overdo it until he had to.
"We held," Eoric said softly, standing beside him. "So far."
"So far," Arthur agreed.
He thought of the men they'd lost in the last raid, of the ones lying now further up the wall under makeshift coverings, of the way Spirit Vision had shown him again and again the point where his hands could no longer reach.
Somewhere beyond their sight, something bigger was moving. He could feel its approach in the way the stone vibrated underfoot, in the way officers' messages grew shorter, more clipped.
When it came into his sector—whether tonight, or the next, or the one after—standing behind a ditch and counting the fallen afterward would not be enough. He would have to meet it, not as a man dividing his attention between the wounded and the line, but as a blade aimed at the source.
The idea sat in him like a stone dropped into water, sending out slow ripples. He did not yet know what it would ask of him. Only that when the moment came, he would not be able to look away.