He looked back down at the map. One burned village was nothing. A tragedy. A winter story. But three in a season was a pattern. Patterns were what commanders watched for.
"How far from Castle Black?" Halvern asked.
The ranger answered without thinking. "Two days if the weather's kind. Three if it isn't."
Halvern nodded. Close enough for fools to say why didn't the Watch stop it.
Far enough for men who had ridden the Gift to know better.
"And do you know what else is two days from Castle Black?" Halvern asked, and his voice was quiet, dangerous in its calm.
Renn swallowed. "The Wall," he said uncertainly.
Halvern looked at him. "The next breach," he said. "The next deserter. The next ranging that doesn't return. The next sickness in the barracks. The next time we send men into the woods and lose them and pretend it was necessary."
He leaned closer to the map. "You want to ride out and play hero," he said. "And I understand it. But every time we leave in strength, the Wall becomes blind. And when the Wall is blind, men die who never even heard the name Hollow."
Renn's jaw clenched. "So we abandon them."
Halvern held his gaze. "We abandon ash," he said. "We do not spend brothers to avenge what is already dead."
The ranger's voice was rough. "What then?"
Halvern's eyes moved over the map, over the thin lines of patrol routes. There were too many empty spaces now. Too many places where villages existed and the Watch pretended they did not because pretending cost less than caring.
"Two men," Halvern said. "Light gear. Eyes only. They go to the site. They track north until they find where the raiders scattered. They don't engage. They don't get brave."
Renn opened his mouth.
Halvern cut him off with a look. "If they find survivors," he said, "they learn where those survivors went. They do not bring them back unless it costs nothing."
Renn's face flushed. "That's--"
"Competence," Halvern said. "Cold competence. You will learn it or you will die warm and stupid."
The words hung in the room.
Then Halvern added, quieter, "And I want names."
The ranger frowned. "Names?"
Halvern tapped the map near Hollow. "Someone saw smoke and sent a raven," he said. "That means a brother was close enough to see, and close enough to report, and still Hollow burned."
Renn blinked. "You think--"
"I think," Halvern said, "that some brothers grow comfortable. Some take gifts. Some trade a little protection for a little food and tell themselves it is harmless because the Gift is big and the Wall is far."
He looked at both of them. "And then a village burns, and suddenly the 'harmless' thing has teeth."
The ranger's face tightened. He understood. The Watch was not only fighting wildlings and winter. It was fighting itself.
Halvern rolled the map tighter, then unrolled it again, forcing it flat. He placed two stones at the edges so it would not curl.
"Send Lannick and Toren," he said.
Renn's eyes widened. "Lannick is--"
"A liar," Halvern said. "Yes."
The ranger's mouth twitched, almost a smile. "And Toren?"
"Too honest to be bribed," Halvern replied. "And too stubborn to die quietly."
Renn frowned. "You're sending them together?"
Halvern's gaze was flat. "If Lannick lies to me, Toren will hear it," he said. "If Toren gets sentimental, Lannick will drag him back by the cloak."
The ranger nodded, approving despite himself.
Halvern stepped toward the doorway. The cold in the corridor hit him immediately, a reminder that even inside the Wall's stone, winter owned everything.
"Commander," Renn said behind him, voice smaller now. "What if the wildlings keep coming?"
Halvern stopped.
He thought of the word burned on the parchment. He thought of patterns. He thought of the long history of men at the Wall telling themselves that small things didn't matter until the small things became an avalanche.
"We watch," Halvern said. "We count. We don't flinch at smoke, but we don't ignore it either."
He turned his head slightly. "And if this keeps happening," he added, "then something is pushing them south. Something big enough that they're willing to bleed for mud huts."
Renn swallowed. "What could push them?"
Halvern looked back out toward the yard, toward the white beyond the Wall, toward the dark line where forest began.
"Winter," he said.
He did not say the other possibilities.
Old things.
Hungry things.
The kind of pressure that turned people into raiders and commanders into accountants of death.
He walked on.
Behind him, the map lay flat under stones.
Hollow marked as ash.
And somewhere out in the Gift, men with no banners and no songs moved through snow like a problem that did not care about anyone's ideals.