Ysra counted the escort, because counting was what she had been given the Watch to do, and because she had found that a king’s men were easier to bear if she could put a number to them.
There were forty. She counted them twice from the bridge-end, once by the banner and once by the horses, and both counts came out the same. Forty men on forty horses, sitting in a grey line along the far bank with their cloaks pulled up and their helmets streaming. There was the banner, which hung heavy from its pole and would not lift. There were the archers on the flanks with their strings wrapped in oilcloth, eight on the left and eight on the right. There was a clerk on a grey mule, a little apart from the rest, with a black box strapped to the saddle-bow and one hand inside his coat. Ysra counted the hand. It did not move.
She counted the bridge’s piers next, because the piers were a thing she could trust. There were nine of them, standing in the brown water under the long stone spine. Three were broken to the waterline, and their arches had gone down into the river and lay half-sunk under the current like the ribs of a drowned beast. The rest stood firm. She had counted them a dozen times since the winter, from the Watch-tower with her warning-book on her knee, and the number had never once changed. She found some comfort…
