Snow was going off the Caul Ridge road in grey sheets. Where the ruts had held drift all winter, the melt ran brown and loud along the verges, and every culvert gurgled like a man who had waited a long time for permission to speak. Korrin hated the thaw. A thaw was the season when everything the cold had hidden came back to be a problem.
He walked at the head of the line with his spear on his shoulder and the Lash on his hip. Behind him twelve Hard Hands kept the ragged column he had drilled into them since the first frost. At the back Ysra walked with her head down and her lips moving. She was counting culverts.
“Nineteen,” she said.
“I know there are nineteen.”
“You knew there were nineteen yesterday. Today there are nineteen and a half.” She crouched by the bend, looked, and stood. “The one under the alder has been dug from the far side and filled again. The mud on top is the wrong colour.”
Korrin looked at the mud. It was the same grey-brown as every other mud on the Caul road, the kind that held a boot like an argument. He said so.
