There is a post at every holding in this kingdom. Oak, waist-high, black with rain. It is the reeve's business to walk out after a fight and cut one notch into the post of the man who won it, and it is nobody's business to take a notch out once it is in.

Nate's post had stood one notch short since the end of the last reign.

He came down the west road on muster day with the largest host he has ever put on a field. Three armies in the whole memory of this kingdom have been bigger than it. That is the entire list.

200.5.

Gabes met it at his own gate, which is a gate he paid the hunted man's price to keep. He was crowned in the autumn. He spent all winter buying back the ground he already held, at the rate the kingdom charges a man for having been right in public, and the walls looked well enough from the road.

He came out with 97.22.

He lost by 103.28.

What the reeve noticed, walking the yard afterwards, was the tithe barn. It was barred from the outside. Twenty of Gabes's own men were in there in the dark, 20.08 of them, listening to the road, and the bar had been dropped by their own lord before he went out.

There were nine other holdings in the kingdom that day. Gabes would have lost to all nine of them. Nate would have beaten all nine.

By custom the smallest host of the muster pays ten to the largest. Ten dollars went up the hill from the champion's hall, which is the shortest journey money has ever made in this league and the longest fall.

Then the reeve cut the hundredth notch into Nate's post. Fifteen seasons of riding out, the last one of them spent one cut short, and the mark went in on the morning he raised the best army of his life. They rang the bell in the gate tower for it.

Across the valley, in a wet field with no bell in it, Justin heard the thing ringing.

His own post carries ninety-seven notches. He had been given the eighth army in the kingdom to fight and he brought the ninth, and neither of those two hosts would have frightened a single other holding on the map. Eric/Blakey took the field with 115.26 and that was enough.

Justin lost by 3.36.

He has spent an entire winter buying his own house back, stone by stone, at a premium, and the reeve rode past his post without dismounting.

At the muster ground below Bill's manor they were still calling names off the tally when the sun got high. This is the part of the kingdom's business nobody sings about: a man stands in the mud and decides which of his people walk out and which of them stay behind the wall.

Bill sent out a boy who was worth 5.7.

He left the bowman behind the wall to split firewood. That bowman was worth 29.8, and the difference between those two men, 24.1, is a number the village will be discussing at every harvest for years.

Bill won by 15.14.

Behind him, in the barn, in the woodshed, in the hall itself, sat 39.9 of unused strength, and the man responsible for all of it rode home with a victory. The kingdom is not a system of rewards. It is weather.

Bolek had the misfortune to be the one standing opposite. He raised 141.5, which on most muster days is a respectable thing to bring, and he left 26.52 of it at home behind his own gate.

So they fetched the belt.

It is a broad, ugly strap of harness leather, kept in this kingdom for the man who most visibly abandons his own strength, and it had been round Daniel's waist since the winter for a crime of his own making. They took it off him on muster day and buckled it onto Bolek, who has worn it more often than anybody alive, and who did not look especially surprised to be measured for it again.

Which brings us to the strangest thing the reeve wrote down all day.

Daniel brought everything he had. Every man he owned walked out of the gate with him. He left two points sitting at home, and two points is the dust on the floor of an empty granary. There was nothing else in the building.

Bryan beat him by 15.28.

Daniel did the thing the kingdom asks and was beaten by a man who spent all winter pouring money into quarterbacks and got a return on it, and the only mercy of his day was that somebody else's carelessness came and took the belt off his waist while he was out losing.

At the ford, Mario and Jack weighed in against each other and the beam barely moved. Both of them marched nearly everything they owned. One of them went home dry.

Mario by 0.56.

Jack led this kingdom's table for an entire year once and finished it holding nothing at all, and he has begun the new reign losing by less than a bushel.

The reeve went home in the dark. Ten posts, five fresh notches, one barn still barred from the outside.

And a bell in a gate tower, ringing for Nate, carrying clean across the valley to a man three cuts short who could hear exactly what it was for.