The culvert had been built to carry the cistern’s overflow out under the wall, and Korrin had never once in his life wanted to walk its length, and that night he walked it at the head of three men of the Lash and eleven of the Watch.
He went first because he was the only one who had walked it before. He had been down it on the Hold’s second summer, when the cistern’s grate had jammed with weed and the Mason had sent him to clear it, and he had come up the far end with his arms scratched and his boots full of slime and a curse in his mouth that he had never repeated. He remembered the arches. He remembered the cold. He remembered that the water in the culvert ran toward the cistern and never away from it, and that the Hold had built the thing so that a man could walk it in the dark without a lamp, if he knew how many steps there were.
He did not know how many steps there were. He counted them.
“Lamps low,” he said. He said it in the voice the Lash used for sentries, short and flat, without any question in it. “Feet on the left wall. Keep your hand on the stone. Nobody talks. If you have to talk, talk to the stone.”
