Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 158 of 619

The woman reined in twenty paces off the gate. Her four riders halted behind her, spread wide. She wore a plain dark coat and an iron token on a cord at her throat. She held another token loose in her left hand and rubbed it with her thumb. Ajax stopped on the road in Marco's body. He kept his hands open at his sides. The plain sword hung at his hip. Elara's shield sat cool on his skin under the oil. Behind the wall, he felt Marco's mind settle against his own like a hand on the back of his neck. "You came out," the woman said. "Good. Walk to me." "Say what you want first," Ajax said in Marco's voice. She smiled. "The Keeper wants the names in your head. Give them, and Tucker's port stays whole. Refuse, and I burn it tonight." Two taps landed inside Ajax's skull. Truth. She meant to burn it. "Send your men back down the road," Ajax said. "Then I walk." Her thumb worked the token. "They stay." One tap. Lie. They were meant to take him alive the moment he cleared the wall. Ajax took one step forward and stopped. He was counting paces to the wall behind him. He was counting arrows. "You're closer than you think," he said. Her face didn't move. "To what." "To my bows." Her eyes flicked past him at the slits in the stone. Her thumb stopped on the token. She had measured the range wrong. She had ridden up thinking the wall was long shot, and it wasn't. "Now," Ajax said. Three bows loosed from the slits behind the wall. Asher, Bran, and Grayson had held four arrows drawn since she crested the rise, one on each chest. The shafts crossed the twenty paces clean. Two riders took shafts through the ribs and folded off their saddles. The third caught his in the throat. The fourth pitched sideways and hit the road hard. The woman jerked her hand up. Ajax felt the shield tighten on his skin. From the wall, Chalam's voice came flat and close. "Down." Ajax dropped. A white line went over him from the staff on the wall and took the woman in the chest. She came off the horse without a sound and lay on the road with her coat smoking. The iron token rolled from her hand. Ajax stood. He pulled the ring off his finger. His own hands came back. His beard, his scar, his father's weight in his shoulders. He walked to her. She was dead. He picked up the token and the cord at her throat and cut them free with the plain sword. Behind him the gate opened. Marco came out first, then Tucker with a torch, then Chalam with the staff still lit. "Five bodies on my road," Ajax said. Loot them and burn them here. The Keeper comes next."