Korrin took six Watchmen to the causeway’s inside-reach end on the morning after Ysra’s count, and he did not tell the Regent he was going. He told the gatehouse. He told Tallow, who wrote it down, and he told Harrow, who said that the stake was sound and that the Watch should stand on the stone and not in the reeds. He did not tell Gaunt, because Gaunt would have objected, and would have come, and would have been in the way.
They walked out at first light. The six were the best of the Hard Hands who were not yet on the stone-carrying shift: Edwy, who had a broken nose from a Lessaran lance in the spring and had never once complained about it; the two Coldharbour brothers, who did not talk; old Ansel’s grandson, who was fourteen and tall for it; a Lowgate man called Cass with a bad leg; and a woman named Rud who could throw a stone further than any Hand in the Hold and had been asked not to by the Chamber on three separate occasions. Korrin did not carry the Lash. He carried a stout ash staff with an iron foot, which Harrow had given him and which he had said he would use only to knock on doors.
