Harrow woke on the road with his count still in his mouth.
He had been counting when the leash let go at the crest, and he had been counting when it began to draw him back, and somewhere between the last stone of the crest and the first stone that rang under his boot, the number had slipped out of his grip. He could feel the gap where it had been. It was the feeling a Mason has when a course of stone goes wrong under his hands, and he has to stop and find the line again before he can lay the next block true. He stood still on the frost-white road with the flakes falling soft and wet on his cap, and he did not know what the number had been.
He did not panic. A Mason did not panic over a lost line. He started from the stone he stood on.
It was a flat grey paver, set without iron, and it had a heave on its left side and a settle on its right. He knew it by both. He had known it since the first winter he ever walked the Caul road, with the goats in front and the Lash behind and the frost on every stone. He put his boot on the paver and felt the stone take his weight, and he said, aloud, in the slow careful voice he kept for the Mason’s Yard, “One.”
