The Lessaran herald came up the Lessary Road a little before midday, and Ysra counted him from the top of the gatehouse arch long before he could count her.
There were eleven riders behind him. She had counted the grey escort at Lantern Ford four mornings before and had written the number down, and she had watched the line break up and reform every day since, and she knew the tallies by heart the way Harrow knew his stones. Eleven riders. The herald rode at their head on a tall bay horse with a grey cloth over its saddle, and at his stirrup walked a man with a folded flag under his arm and a satchel on his back, and there was nothing else in the road but the mud and the thin sun and the cold white stripe of snow along the hedge-bank.
She climbed down the arch-stair to the gate-court, where the Watch had already gathered, and where Idrin was coming through the Hall’s side door with his coat buttoned crookedly, one sleeve shorter than the other, as though he had dressed in a hurry and then forgotten to finish. Tallow came behind him with the minutes-slate under his arm. Korrin came from the granary with grain-dust on his shoulders and the box with the grey ribbon held against his ribs, which he had not let out of his hands since the morning.
