First, the Ledger
One thought struck me the moment I set out after Brasidas, before anything else could register.
'I really don't need a spear.'
Where a spear should have been, my hand held a single small wax tablet instead, with a few little wooden counting tokens laid out beside it—apparently for tallying as I went.
And there, right in front of me—
"...That's a lot."
Grain sacks were piled up like a mountain. Beyond them sat jars, dried meat, oil, and assorted odds and ends whose purpose I couldn't begin to guess. The place was several times larger and more tangled than our family warehouse in Methone, and the people inside were bustling about in a frenzy—men hauling goods, tying sacks, loading wagons, still others patching armor and shields.
I watched the chaos for a while, then turned to Brasidas.
"So what exactly is it you want me to do?"
"Count what's here."
I looked back at the warehouse. There had to be several hundred sacks in there alone. Is this a joke?
"All of it? By myself?"
"I didn't say alone."
Only then did the two men standing nearby register. Both looked considerably older than me, and anyone could read it plain in their eyes: what is this child doing here?
One of them addressed Brasidas.
"Who is this child?"
"Epitadas's daughter. Word is she caught the ledgers and the goods not matching in Methone."
The man's eyes narrowed. It was suspicion, plain as day, but Brasidas didn't so much as blink.
"That was her own family's stock, though—"
"This stock doesn't match either."
The jab shut the man's mouth. This stock doesn't match either? This is the army, isn't it?
"How badly does it not match?"
"That's why I brought her. To find out."
I looked at the sacks in front of me again.
Oh, I see. So I've come all this way just to run another inventory and go home.
In my past life, if you'd asked me to name the jobs I hated most, this one made the list without a fight. Two thousand years back in time, and inventory checks had still followed me here. Genuinely hellish work.
"By when do I need to be done?"
"By sundown. As much as you can manage."
Well. That was almost humane of him.
...Or so I thought, right up until Brasidas added:
"But if you get it wrong, you do it all again tomorrow."
Apparently I'd been staring at him like he'd just said something absurd.
"You don't think you can?"
And just like that, he pulled my trigger.
"Who said I can't?"
"Good."
Brasidas turned to leave on the spot, and I scrambled to call him back.
"Hold on—where are you going?"
"To my work."
"You're just dumping this on me?"
He only turned his head.
"Does the counting go faster with me standing next to you?"
With that, Brasidas truly did walk off. Having sent that insufferable man's back out of sight, what remained was me—and the two men who still eyed me like I didn't belong.
A brief silence passed. In the end, I quietly looked around, then picked up the wax tablet.
"Let's start with the ledger."
One of the men snorted.
"And you can read it, can you?"
"Not all of it. But numbers and item marks, I can manage."
I'd decided to answer honestly. This body wasn't completely ignorant of letters, but I couldn't read the script as effortlessly as I'd once read Hangul. Even after poring over the family records and growing far more familiar with them, plenty of marks still left me guessing.
I studied the wax tablet for a moment, then set it right back down.
"Fine. I'll count everything again from the beginning."
"It's already been counted."
"Which is exactly why it doesn't match. We need to know whether the ledger's wrong or the goods are missing."
"So we counted wrong, is that it?"
I rapped a knuckle against a barley sack within reach.
"I don't know—that's the whole point. If I knew, why would I be here?"
The man's face said he didn't like it one bit, but he said nothing more.
All right. Let's see how this goes, then.
First: the number of sacks matched what was written on the tablet. The problem lay somewhere else entirely.
Ssssss. The moment I lifted a water bag, water came trickling out from under it. I looked at the man without a word, and his face went stiff.
"...It's leaking."
"Rub fat into it and it'll hold."
So I pointed at the three I'd set aside. One had split along its side, one had a torn mouth, and the last was simply leaking as it sat there.
"Then the ones we can actually use come to twenty-eight."
"The ledger says thirty-two."
I sighed at his answer and held the sack up for him to see.
"I know. But you can't march carrying this and call it a water bag."
When the man's mouth finally closed, I left a mark on the wax tablet.
Next, the grain. The numbers roughly matched, but when I pressed my hand into a few of the sacks, they sank right in.
"Why are these so empty?"
"They settle during transport."
"Did the barley get up and walk away? Whether someone stole it or the rats ate it, if it's gone, someone should have written down that it's gone."
"'Stolen'—watch your mouth."
He fixed me with a glare far harsher than I'd expected, and my throat went dry for no good reason. Still, I couldn't exactly take back words I'd already spat out.
"I didn't say anyone did. I'm checking because I don't know."
The man glared at me for a long while. In my past life I'd have flattened him with rank, but there was none of that here.
I was a sixteen-year-old girl, and he was a grown man a full head taller than me.
Honestly? I was terrified right then. But if I chickened out here, Telekles would laugh his ass off.
That was the thing I couldn't allow.
"Next item."
In the end, the man looked away first.
From there, things went smoothly. If the numbers matched, we moved on; if the condition looked off, I set it aside. No need to fight over every single item—just pick out the strange ones.
A long while later, Brasidas returned. By then, the goods I'd set aside were heaped in front of me like a small mountain.
He studied the items in silence, then turned to me.
"What is this?"
"Things that exist but don't."
I picked up one of the water bags and poured in a little water; the ground beneath it went wet on the spot.
"It's in the ledger. But carry one of these, and you'll arrive with no water."
Brasidas looked at the torn seam, then glanced at the man beside him.
"And the rest?"
"The grain's short by a different amount in every sack, two jars of oil, and the cords—you'd be better off throwing those out."
Listening, Brasidas examined the set-aside goods, then said a single word.
"Good."
At that one word, my shoulders lifted without my meaning them to. So I'd done better than I'd thought, after all.
"Then load it. What you just picked out."
"...I'm sorry, what?"
The moment I raised my head and looked outside the warehouse, wagons stood lined up in a row.
"We're moving this now? Me too?"
"That's why it was set aside. And you're the one who counted it."
"Wasn't counting the end of the job?"
Brasidas looked at me as if I'd asked something very strange.
"If it disappears before it arrives, it'll have to be counted all over again."
He kept being annoyingly right, and it grated on my nerves. In the end, I tidied the wax tablet and lifted it.
"And my spear?"
"Not needed."
With that brief reply, Brasidas walked out of the warehouse ahead of me.
Called it. That was the second time that day I'd regretted something.
Maybe I should have just said no this morning.
It looked very different from the army I'd imagined. Soldiers with spears and shields walked at the front, and a line of wagons stretched out behind them.
And I was walking beside a wagon loaded to the brim with barley sacks.
There weren't many soldiers accompanying us, but every time a spear or shield caught my eye, my gaze drifted over for no reason at all.
I wanted to be in there. That was, until a little while ago. But once we'd actually been marching for a good stretch, my thinking shifted somewhat.
"Hot. I'm dying here..."
Seriously, the heat alone might finish me. What even is this, walking on and on under a sky without a single patch of shade?
I grumbled like that as I trudged along beside the wagons, but the column never once stopped moving.
The road wasn't entirely smooth, either. Partway there, one wagon halted over a bad wheel, and in the end part of its grain load was divided onto the wagon following behind.
"Six sacks over here!"
I hurriedly left a mark on the wax tablet.
Now all I had to do was note how many sacks had moved to which wagon. That was it.
Other than that, nothing really happened. We just fucking walked.
By the time we reached our destination, the sun had sunk quite low.
I had no idea exactly where this was. It was certainly no great city—just a wide open ground with tents and people spread across it.
Armed men, horses, shields, and more wagons besides.
'That's an army.'
Some of the fatigue from earlier drained away. At last, I was close to a real army.
"Unload the grain first!"
someone shouted. But I was too busy staring blankly at the army to hear it, and the man beside me turned to me.
"What are you doing?"
I gave the army one more look, then sighed at the grain wagon.
"Unloading."
What came back to me, in the end, was a sack. The men hauled the goods down off the wagons, and I checked each item one by one.
"We're six sacks short here."
When the question I'd been expecting came from a distance, my hand shot up at once.
"They're in this wagon! One broke down on the way, so we moved them."
They came up to my wagon, unloaded the cargo piece by piece, and exactly six more sacks came out.
This time it was me whose mouth curled up for no reason at all.
"Right?"
The man stared at me like he couldn't make sense of what he was hearing, then scratched the back of his head.
"...Right."
A meaningless little answer, and yet it felt fantastic.
I was still grinning over it when Brasidas spoke from behind me.
"All done?"
"Yes. For certain."
I watched the last sack come down, cross-checked it against what was written on the tablet, and nodded.
"Good."
That was all Brasidas said before walking off somewhere else.
That man really can't hand out a compliment, can he.
Just then, a sack beside me was torn open on the spot.
I stared blankly as the barley I'd been counting only minutes ago came pouring into a cooking pot.
"...We're eating it already?"
The man beside me looked at me as if that were a strange question.
"Why else would we have brought it?"
Fair point. And yet—watching what had been a warehouse number that very morning turn into dinner right before my eyes was a deeply strange feeling.
Then my stomach growled. God, I really am a simple creature.
"Can I eat too?"
"Were you staring like that just to ask that?"
"No."
Actually, yes.