Korrin ran the Hard Hands through the file-drill in the Mason’s Yard because it was the only thing in the Hold that did exactly what he said.
Four men. Lowgate men, all of them, who had taken the Lash’s oath in the second year of the Hold, when the Hold had had no bread and no walls and a great many reasons to be afraid of the marsh. They stood in two files of two with their practice-staves held at the same angle, and their boots were scuffed to the same grey, and they had not yet learned to breathe in the same rhythm, which Korrin considered a fault in the breathing and not in the men. He counted the rhythm out loud. He did it short, the way he did everything, because a long order gave a man time to think of a reason not to obey it.
“Left. Turn. Stop.”
They turned. They stopped. One of them, a big slow farmer’s son called Ned Sallis, stopped half a breath late, and his staff went into the stone of the wall with a crack that made the whole file flinch.
“Again,” said Korrin.
They went again. The yard was cold, and the cold came off the flags in a fine damp fog, and the men’s breath came out of them in short white puffs that hung and did not go. The mason’s sheds stood along the north side of the yard with their doors open, and the smell of…
