The Wall's Broken Contract

The dwarf cornered Lord Garrick at his son's engagement party over concessions agreed on a previous visit that never reached the rank and file. Soldiers are sleeping in spartan quarters with no personal space, their promised liquor rations are short, and watches are running too long to be safe. His argument was practical as well as moral: unhappy men desert, fall asleep on watch, and report sick.

Garrick did not deny any of it. He said the kingdom has been cutting the wall's budget across fifteen years of peace and that he is quite literally paying out of his own pocket to keep thirty thousand men on the line, because he expects the Abyss to come back and would rather have a large disgruntled garrison than a small contented one. He promised to see what he could do with whatever the Montclair marriage brings in.

Given what came up out of the Abyss that same night, the question of whether those men will stand when it matters is now urgent.