With Clerk Velt silenced and standing back against the stable wall under the watchful eye of Captain Hest Vale’s sergeants, the air in the bakehouse yard cleared like mountain air after a thunderstorm.
Marta didn’t waste a single heartbeat. With practiced smooth speed born of twenty years running busy commercial kitchens across the northern valleys, she directed her young teenage assistant, a local lad named Toben, to help secure the handcart.
“Lash the copper tubs tight with the hemp rope, Toben,” Marta instructed. She tested the tension of the cord with her strong, flour-whitened hands. “If the yeast culture spills on the cobbles, we’ll have no starter for the ovens down in Alderfast. That sourdough strain has been alive since my mother ran the kiln-house in high summer twenty years ago. It survived three killing frosts, two river floods, and a winter of Host quartermasters. It’s not dying on the floor of this barracks.”
Fellis Dain stepped forward, offering his good right hand to help steady the wooden shafts of the handcart. “Here, Mistress Marta. Let me hold the tail-gate while Toben slides the iron peel blades underneath. If you wrap the flat shovels in this dry canvas sack, the iron edges won’t rattle against the copper or dull their bevels against the sideboards.”
