The gate on the Lamentine road was not a grand thing. It was two posts of Foundation stone, a crossbar of black oak as thick as a man’s thigh, and an iron bar set in brackets on the Hold’s side of the posts, which a single Hand could lift if the Hand was strong enough and angry enough. Korrin had been strong enough and angry enough for most of his life. He had lifted the bar against the marsh-men in his first year in the body, and he had lowered it on the Lessaran Hunt-Wardens in the spring, and he had never once in all that time been asked what the bar was for.
He stood at it now with his back to the oak and his hands on his hips, and he watched the road.
Two Hard Hands stood with him, one on each side of the bar, with their lanterns hung from the posts. Ysra stood a little apart, at the foot of the gatehouse steps, counting the nails in the iron brackets. She had been counting them since the bell. There were forty-one in the left bracket and forty in the right, and she had told Korrin this twice, and he had not asked her to tell him a third time.
