Ysra counted through the net. It was the only thing she could do. The tarred cord lay over her face and shoulders like a fisherman’s catch, close and stinking of pitch, and the lead weights at its corners had dropped onto the causeway stones with a sound she felt in her heels. She lay on her side with one cheek against the wet grey stone and her eyes open, and through the mesh she could see the causeway’s edge, and the reeds beyond it, and the north bank, and she began to count.
Twelve men on the net’s near side, who had come running out of the toll-house with the cords in their hands, and who were already dragging the mesh tighter as they tried to pull it off the Warden’s horse. Eight at the bow-line, but the bow-line had come down the bank at a run and stood now in a ragged half-circle at the causeway’s north end, their bows up and their strings pulled, and their eyes on the saddlebag. Four at the gate. One of them, the one with the bolt across his knees, was still staring at the bag as though it had called his name. And the captain, who counted as two, because he was the one who spoke.
