Summoned to Carry His Bags, She Found Thank-Yous Beat His Sword novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Eleven Seasons

At the North Gate the porter Gerta Norwick gives Naho her spare bootlace, Naho names it truly and it turns Grand, and Alric claims he packed his own kit three times while his royal gear fails in front of the crowd.

At the North Gate of Highwell the next morning, Naho learned what the pack weighed, and the answer was more than she did.

She lifted it once for the soldiers, who wanted to see, and put it down for the soldiers, who wanted her to try again.

The column was thirty-two soldiers, three wagons and four oxen.

Each wagon flew a banner with Brant Mallow's name on it and a very small picture of the Chosen.

Behind the banners, half the city had come out to cheer.

A broad woman with a grey braid pinned around her head was checking the straps on the second wagon.

She did it with the flat of her hand, from the top of the load to the bottom.

It was how Naho proofread.

"You're the new Spare," the woman said, without turning. "Who picked your size?"

"Nobody. I'm Naho Kuroda."

"Gerta Norwick." She turned and looked at the pack on the cobbles, and then at Naho. "I'm the porter."

"I've carried that man's kit for eleven seasons," Gerta added.

It was the first time anyone had given Naho a full name on purpose.

She filed it where she kept the things she meant to get right.

"At the gate they just say the porter," Gerta added. "You asked."

A lace on Naho's sneaker had snapped when she knelt.

She was knotting the halves together when Gerta set a boot on the wagon wheel and bent to it.

"I carry a spare against the day," Gerta said. "It's never failed me."

It was a short brown bootlace, waxed, the ends sealed with tar.

Nobody was selling it and nobody was ordering her to take it, so Naho took it in her flat palm.

"This is Gerta's spare bootlace," she said. "She's giving it to me so that whatever I tie stays tied."

The lace went the color of new rope, and the tar smell turned to rain on a dry road.

Naho threaded it through her sneaker and pulled, and the knot sat there and would not move.

Then she was hungry, the way you are at four in the afternoon on a day you skipped lunch.

Gerta looked at the lace for some time.

"A champion's got one trick," she said at last. "Best learn which."

Before Naho could ask what she meant, a horn blew, and Alric Doveland came out onto the gate steps.

He wore the white tabard over his mail and Dawnbrand at his hip.

Brant stood two steps below him, so the crowd would think the picture was Brant's idea.

Alric told the city that the Gloam had come to Hollin Weir, a village ten days north.

It had started when the autumn quake cracked the Wake Bell in the village tower.

It drained the color and the sound out of whatever it touched, a field more each day.

Some of the crowd had cousins up there, and they listened.

Then Alric said, "I packed my own kit this morning, as I always do."

The strap holding Dawnbrand's scabbard parted with a small clean sound.

A soldier ran up the steps and knotted it.

"That strap was Grand," Gerta said under her breath. "It'll pay at dawn."

"Grand?"

"The Crown's smiths Hallowed his Set in the Naming Rite," Gerta said. "Sword, mail, cloak, boots, every maker's name sewn or stamped inside."

She ticked the grades off on her fingers. "Grand, Fine, Good, Plain, Poor, Ruin."

"It pays one grade a dawn, however much he's said. Eleven years it's been Grand. This is the first morning I've seen it fray."

Naho looked at the strap and then at Alric, who was using the cheer he had been saving.

"And I mended this cloak with my own needle," he told the street, "on the long nights before a march."

The clasp popped off and rolled down three steps, and a child picked it up and held it, unsure whose it was.

"He didn't," said Gerta. "The weaver's wife did that on Tuesday. I watched her thread it."

The crowd waited for more, and Alric gave them more.

He swept an arm at the wagons. "I loaded these myself before sunrise."

Nobody had seen him do it, but they clapped anyway.

His sword belt let go.

Dawnbrand slid out of the loose scabbard and rang once on the top step.

It went down every stair by itself, ringing each time, until it stopped at the feet of a baker who did not touch it.

Alric said the people were too kind.

Brant took a thick white stick of chalk from his belt and drew a mark on the side plank of the second wagon.

He drew a second and a third beside it, and nothing at all under the porters' side of the board.

"He's marking the planks," Naho said.

"Merit," said Gerta. "He's at fourteen marks, and it isn't yet noon."

"For what?"

"Standing near the champion."

Naho kept her eyes on Alric as he came down the steps to collect his sword with his chin high.

He had made three claims this morning and lost three pieces of his kit.

It was probably nothing, she told herself, and she put it in her head anyway, beside the porter's name.

Gerta's knee gave a small click as she shifted her weight, and she looked at the sky.

"Dry till the market town," she said. "Rain after. My knee's never missed."

"Never?"

"Eleven seasons."

She picked up the pack Naho could not lift and settled it on her own shoulders.

"I'll take this up the first hill," she said. "You watch the champion, and you count."

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