The low flyer

It passes so close to the snowfield that the drifts melt in a line behind it.

The wind comes from the north the way it always does, flat and patient, carrying snow that never quite lands. On the parapet the sentries stamp their feet and talk about anything except the cold. Below them the ice drops seven hundred feet into the dark.

The first watch

Nobody on the wall has ever seen what the wall is for. That is the point of it, the old wardens say. A wall that works is a wall nobody remembers building.

Then the beacon four miles to the west goes up in a column of orange light, and the bells begin.