Korrin walked the north ridge at night with six of the Hard Hands, because the Chamber had forbidden him to strike it and a forbidden thing was always easier to watch when someone was watching it with him.
He moved the way he always moved, straight and close and without a sound he had not decided to make. The wet grass on the spine was cold through his boots. Davo walked at his left shoulder, carrying the Watch’s shuttered lamp, which was dark. Behind them the others came in a loose file, one after another, each man’s hand on the belt of the man ahead, so that no one would be lost if the ridge gave way in the wind. The ridge did not give way. It had never once given way in the Hold’s memory, though it had come close, as a friend comes close to lying to you and then does not.
Across the valley, the gilt lanterns were moving.
They moved in a slow line along the Caul’s edge, twenty-six of them, a little brighter where the wind caught a hood and a little dimmer where it did not. They came together and went apart. Sometimes three would stop and two would walk on, and sometimes the whole line would stop at once, and then one lantern would go out, and then another, and Korrin, who had been counting them since dusk, would have to start the count again.
