They were still arguing when Halvern left the map room.
Not with words. Not loudly. The Watch learned early that loud things wasted heat. The arguing lived in faces and shoulders, in the way Renn held his chin too high, in the way the ranger's jaw worked as if chewing a bone.
Halvern did not soothe it.
The Watch was not a family. It was a line of men pretending to be stone.
Outside, the corridor air was colder than the map room, and the cold carried the smell of the Wall itself: wet stone, old ice, stale wool, a faint sourness of too many men living too close for too long. Castle Black was a place that fed on its own leftovers.
Halvern walked with measured pace, because pace was the only thing he controlled some days. His cloak snapped behind him when the wind found the corridor mouth. A gust threw spindrift across the steps like white ash.
He paused at a slit-window and looked out.
The Gift lay below, a sheet of snow stretched tight over dirt and grief. From up here you could pretend it was empty. That was the danger of height. Height made you stupid.
He turned away before the view could lie to him longer.
In the yard, men moved in slow routines: hauling water from a half-frozen cistern, splitting wood that was already too small, rubbing down horses whose ribs showed through winter coat. A few brothers were clustered near the smithy, hands out toward its heat, faces pinched. A steward carried a basket of stale bread like it was treasure.
Halvern saw the way eyes tracked him as he crossed. Not reverence. Appraisal.
Commanders were measured the way meat was measured. Not by words. By whether they kept you alive.
He found Bowen Marsh near the stores; Marsh was not First Steward here, not in name, but the Wall made stewards out of any man who could count without lying to himself. Marsh had a round face that winter had not yet carved thin, and hands that were always ink-stained or flour-dusted. He looked like a man who belonged in a warm counting house and had been punished by the gods for it.
"Commander," Marsh said, stiff.
"Bowen," Halvern replied.
Marsh's eyes flicked to the parchment in Halvern's hand. "Trouble?"
"Smoke," Halvern said. "And ash."
Marsh's mouth tightened. "Another village?"
"Not 'another,'" Halvern said. "One. Hollow. The raiders didn't leave clean. We found blood and an iron point."
Marsh absorbed it with the grim calm of a man who knew numbers killed as surely as swords. "How many?"
"Thirty tracks," Halvern said. "Maybe more. But they scattered."
Marsh's gaze went past Halvern, out toward the Gift as if he could see through stone. "Then we'll have refugees."
"Or bodies," Halvern said.
Marsh flinched at the flatness. "We can't feed refugees."
"We can't feed our own," Halvern said.
Marsh's lips pressed thin. He hated hearing it spoken plain. He would rather count in silence and pretend the numbers were only numbers.
"Two men are going," Halvern added. "Eyes only."
Marsh nodded once. "Who?"
"Lannick and Toren."
Marsh's brow furrowed. "Together?"
Halvern didn't explain. Commanders who explained too much invited bargaining. "Together," he said.
Marsh hesitated, then said, "If there's a pattern--"
"If there's a pattern," Halvern agreed.
Marsh swallowed. "Then we'll need to report to Eastwatch. And Shadow Tower."
"And then they'll report to their own needs," Halvern said. "Which will not be ours."
Marsh's eyes sharpened. "You think this will turn political."
Halvern looked at him. "Everything at the Wall is political," he said. "It's just politics with fewer words and more hunger."
Marsh didn't like that answer. Halvern saw it in the slight shift of his shoulders, as if he wanted to argue that the Watch was above such things.
Above was where men froze.
Halvern left him and crossed toward the armory.
Lannick was there, as Halvern expected, leaning against a rack of spears like he owned it. He was a lean man with a narrow face and eyes that made you think of a fox circling a chicken coop. He smiled too easily. He laughed too quickly. He was the kind of man you kept close because men like him did not belong far out in the dark where you couldn't see what they were doing with their hands.
Toren was opposite him, checking the edge of a short sword with a whetstone. Toren's hands were scarred, his expression plain. There was no quickness in him. That was why Halvern wanted him. Honest men were slow, but they were solid.
"Commander," Toren said, and rose.
Lannick did not rise at once. He tilted his head. "Halvern," he said. Not disrespectful. Not respectful either. Just familiar enough to be irritating.
Halvern let it pass. "You're riding," he said.
Lannick's smile widened, showing teeth. "Am I?"
Toren frowned. "Where?"
"Hollow," Halvern said.
That word changed the air.
Even Lannick stopped smiling for half a heartbeat.
Toren's eyes narrowed. "Burned?"
"Yes," Halvern said. "Thirty tracks, maybe more. Scattered north."
Toren's jaw tightened. "Wildlings."
"Free Folk," Lannick corrected lightly, as if the correction mattered more than the ash.
Halvern looked at him. "Call them what you like," he said. "They left blood. They left an iron point in a dead ."
Lannick's gaze flicked, quick. "Iron point?"
"A knife piece," Halvern said. "Not bone. Not stone."
Toren swallowed. "So Hollow fought."
"Someone did," Halvern said again, because words mattered, and if you let the wrong word stand it grew roots. "Your job is eyes only."
Toren nodded. "We don't engage."
Halvern watched Lannick. "You don't engage," he told him.
Lannick lifted both hands, palms out. "I am the picture of restraint."
"You are the picture of hunger," Toren said, flat.
Lannick's smile returned. "And you're the picture of virtue. That's why they send us together, isn't it? So if I steal a chicken you can lecture it back into its coop."
Halvern cut through it. "You go to the site. You track north until you find where they scattered. You note numbers, direction, sign of survivors. If you find living villagers, you learn where they fled. You don't bring them back unless it costs nothing."
Toren's mouth tightened at that. "Costs nothing," he repeated.
Halvern met his eyes. "If you die to save them," he said, "you are not a hero. You are a fool. And fools leave the Wall weaker."
Toren held the stare. Then he nodded once. "Understood."