Korrin woke with a voice like gravel in a bucket and a Hand that wanted to hit something, and he knew before he sat up that both would last until the drill was done.
He went down to the north yard in the grey before the first bell. The Hard Hands were already there, eight of them, stamping their feet against the cold in a loose line along the wall. Some of them had slept in their boots. Two had been up all night on the Watch’s rota and had the look of men who had counted the same stones so often that the stones had started counting back. Korrin did not blame them. He had counted nothing but doors for two nights and his own breath was loud in his ears.
“Form up,” he said, which came out as a croak. He cleared his throat and said it again, shorter. “Form up.”
They formed up. They did it badly, then less badly, then the way he had taught them in the first winter, when the Hard Hands were a handful of marsh-men with bruised ribs and no idea what a line was for. He walked down the row and pushed a shoulder here and an elbow there. He kept his eyes off their faces, which he had found was easier on both of them.
