Gaunt objected before he had reached the Caul road, and he went on objecting all the way there, which was the honest pace for a smith who had been told there were Hollowed in the reeds and had been asked to go and look at them with a hammer on his belt. He objected to the Watch’s boots, which were too heavy for the mud. He objected to the Hard Hands, who walked too close together. He objected to Korrin, who walked at the front without a word and did not turn round to answer. He objected to the thaw, to the sun, which was climbing in a thin yellow way over the ridge and gave no warmth, and to the wind off the marsh, which smelled of dead reeds and somebody’s cooking fire a long way off.
“I object to the whole morning,” said Gaunt. “I want that written in the Clerk’s book. Write it down with the range.”
“There’s no range for a morning,” said Korrin, not turning. “Shut your mouth and look at the verge.”
Gaunt shut his mouth and looked at the verge.
It was strung with cord. It had been strung in the night, Gaunt thought, by someone who had known how far a Watch-man walked before he turned back. The cord ran from peg to peg along the wall-foot of the east curtain, out across the causeway’s approach and down into the ditch, and each peg was driven into the mud at exactly the…
