Sharps by K. J. Parker

of the broken axle against his forefinger.
    “Those rods,” he said.
    “Well?”
    “Roughly an inch thick?”
    “More or less. But like I said, we could pack out the axis hole in the wheel with something.”
    Giraut grinned. The luggage rack stretched the full width of the coach; slightly more, in fact. The broken axle was two and a bit inches across. And if he pulled it off, he’d suddenly be a hero and everybody would like him. As it happened, the Invincible Sun was sulking behind a cloud at that precise moment, but Giraut nodded gratefully in His direction nonetheless.
    “Come down here a minute, will you?”
    “Why?”
    “Because we don’t need one bar,” Giraut said. “We need four.”
    They called Addo out to give them a hand. The look of gratitude he gave them suggested he’d be their friend for life.
    Fortunately, Addo was a good deal stronger than he looked. Together, he and Suidas were able to lift the coach while Giraut pulled the broken axle out from the other side. Then he hauled a couple of similar-sized rocks under it to prop it up, while they lashed into a bundle the four luggage-rack bars they’d eventually managed to prise loose, wrapping the spare reins round them as tight as they possibly could. This bundle they inserted into the steel loops welded to the springs.
    “One axle,” Suidas said delightedly. “Of course we won’t be able to go more than walking pace, and it’ll be bumpy as hell, but never mind.”
    In order to get the wheels back on, they had to lift the coach up higher. Iseutz and Phrantzes were pressed into service as auxiliary lifting power, while Giraut crammed in flat slabs of stone from a nearby derelict wall. By now it was nearly dark, so they snapped off the pretty gilt brass coach lamps and lit them; it was just enough light to work by. It wasn’t straightforward. The other wheel didn’t want to come off the old axle, and neither wheel wanted to go on the new one. The drizzle turned to rain, which made hands slippery and dissolved the ground under their feet into greasy, thin mud. Iseutz insisted on offering advice, most of it perfectly reasonable, which Suidas seemed to regard it as a point of honour to ignore. Eventually, however …
    “Knock the stones away,” Suidas shouted, “and let’s see what happens.”
    To keep the wheels from sliding off the axles, they’d bound the ends tightly with spare rein, knotted and intertwined into balls the size of a closed fist. That had been Addo’s suggestion, and Suidas didn’t think much of it. But it held. Addo led the horses on; the wheels rolled, creaked, wobbled in two planes, but stayed on. It was, Giraut couldn’t help thinking, something of a miracle.
    “What about the luggage?” Addo asked.
    They’d had to take it off the rack and dump it on the ground, of course, to break out the improvised axle rods. There wasn’t enough left of the rack to tie it to, and there most definitely wasn’t room for all of it inside.
    “We’ll take the fencing gear,” Suidas said, after a long silence. “They’ll have to send someone from the way station to pick up the rest of the stuff. Probably they can catch us up on the road later.”
    The wooden crate took up the space they’d been using to put their feet. Faced with the prospect of spending the rest of the ride with his knees tucked under his chin, Giraut volunteered to ride up top with Suidas, even though the rain showed no sign of letting up. He was so wet already, it couldn’t possibly matter. But that’s all right, he told himself. The huge log fire at C9 will have us all dry in minutes. In spite of everything, the wet, the pain in his back and shoulders and where he’d skinned his knuckles against the hub, he felt serenely happy, in a way he couldn’t remember having felt before.
    “I really would like to know where that so-called political officer’s got to,” Suidas said, wiping rain out of his eyes with the back of his hand. “I mean, we’re in