Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 147 of 619

By noon Bran was on the north wall setting a stone into fresh mortar. Ajax climbed up beside him with the pot in one hand. Chalam followed, robe open at the chest, staff across his back. "Down," Chalam said. Bran climbed off the course and stood on the dirt, shirt still off. Chalam poured a measure from the pot into a horn cup. The liquid was pale gold and thin. "Drink it in one pull. Do not stop halfway." Bran took the cup. He looked at Ajax. "Drink," Ajax said. Bran drank. He shut his eyes hard, coughed once, and steadied himself with a hand on the stone. "Taste?" Ajax asked. "Iron. And something like burnt grass." Chalam took the cup back. "Sit for a count of fifty. Then go back to the wall. You will feel warm. That is the working starting in the blood." Bran sat on the stack of cut blocks. Ajax watched his face. Nothing dramatic moved across it. After a while Bran stood, picked up his trowel, and climbed back to the course. He set the next stone. He set the one after that faster. Ajax found Chalam by the coals in the afternoon. "How much on the first day?" "A little. Full effect by the fourth. You will see hair on the chest first. Then the shoulders fill. Then the arms." Chalam tapped ash from his staff. "He will not know himself in the mirror by the last dose. That is normal." "No sickness." "None. I have made this before." Ajax nodded and left him at the fire. He kept his eye on Bran through the day without making a show of it. By the late afternoon Bran was lifting stones in one hand that he had needed two for at dawn. He did not seem to notice. He kept setting the course. At sundown Ajax called the crew off the wall. Bran walked past him toward the water bucket. His shirt was over his shoulder. Ajax saw it then. A dark line of hair was coming in down the center of Bran's chest where there had been almost nothing that morning. The shoulders sat wider under the skin. Not by much. Enough to see. Bran caught him looking. He did not smile. He looked steady, like a man who had been given a tool that fit his hand. "Tomorrow at dawn," Ajax said. "Same cup. Same place." "Yes." Bran drank at the bucket and went to the fire. Ajax stayed at the wall. Two doses left. Three days until the woman came. He had one more stoneworker who would be worth two by the fourth morning, and a wall that would close before she reached the gate.