The Lessaran sappers came back at dusk under a volley of reed-arrows, and Gaunt was on the far bank with his hand on the chain when they reached the wheel.
He had not moved from that place since the afternoon. He had stood with his boots in the wet stone and his good hand round the iron links and his left arm hanging at his side, strong and whole, while the flood came down the marsh-passes in its small mean steps and the light went out of the Caul ridge. He had not sat down. He had not eaten. The men on the bank had brought him bread and he had given it to the boy with the spear, who had eaten it in three bites and looked at him with the solemn respect of someone who has been given a thing he was not sure he deserved. Gaunt had been watching the chain. It was the only thing on the sluice that could fail in a way he had not foreseen, and so he had watched it all afternoon, link by link, for the first sign of a crack in the iron.
He had seen the sappers’ saws come out of the mist.
