Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 101 of 619

They rode north through low hills until the pines thinned. Ajax kept the last name folded in his coat. The freed man sat upright now behind Grayson, blindfolded, wrists tied. Marco rode at Ajax's shoulder, jaw set from holding the man's mind steady since the creek. By afternoon the road bent past a wash of stones. Ajax raised a hand and the line stopped. "He remembers the woman's face," Marco said. "The house. The collar on his neck. If we let him keep it, he walks straight back to the Keeper the first night he sleeps unwatched." Ajax swung down. "Then he doesn't keep it." He looked at Chalam. "Wipe him. All of it. Leave him enough to walk south and find work." Chalam dismounted and set his staff against a rock. He opened his satchel and took out a small brown vial and a pinch of pressed chalk. Marco pulled the blindfold off. The man blinked at the sky, then at Chalam. "Hold him," Chalam said. Marco put two fingers to the man's temple. The man's eyes went flat. Chalam thumbed chalk across his forehead and tipped the vial to his lips. The man swallowed. Chalam spoke three words Ajax did not know. The man's head dropped forward. "Done," Chalam said. "He'll wake at dusk with no face for us, no name for the woman, no memory of the collar. He'll know he was sick and walked a long way." Ajax nodded. Tucker cut the wrist cord. Grayson lifted the man down and propped him against a stone in the shade with a skin of water and half a loaf beside him. They left him there. They rode another mile before Ajax called halt again at the edge of a clearing. He looked at Chalam. "Call the gnome." Chalam took the wooden flute from his belt and blew three notes, low and even. The sound carried into the trees and stopped. They waited. The wrenleaf gnome stepped out from a stand of ferns as if he had been there the whole time. Round glasses, green vest, boots scuffed with moss. He looked up at Ajax without hurry. "One name left," Ajax said. "North. After that, the coast. I need to know if the road between here and the last house is watched, and I need a way to move fast when it's done." The gnome adjusted his glasses. "The road is watched at two places. I can show your wizard on a scrap. As for moving fast — the dryads will lend the cart again, but only to the coast, not past it. After the coast you are on your own legs." "How much for a ring like mine for each person in my team made in one day’s time?," Ajax asked. The gnome pulled a folded bark map from his vest and handed it to Chalam. The gnome paused and gave Ajax an answer.