Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 162 of 619

They reached the ridge at dusk. Ajax picked a hollow behind two boulders and set no fire. Elara wrapped a thin shroud over the camp and sat with her back to a pine. Chalam laid out his staff and satchel. Marco leaned on a rock and closed his eyes, listening down into the valley. "Keeper's in her hut by the seat," Marco said after a while. "Old. Alone. She's tired. She's thinking about milk and her knees." "No riders?" Ajax said. "None near. The road north is empty for hours." Grayson set his bow across his lap. "Then we go at first light like you said." "First light," Ajax said. They slept in turns. Asher took the last watch and woke Ajax before the sky turned. Ajax chewed cold bread and checked his father's blade. He palmed the bone tube of salt and the brass disc. The disc stayed in the pouch. They came down through the pines while the valley was still gray. Marco walked point. He stopped once and held up a hand. "She's at the seat. She's pouring the milk now." "Hold her," Ajax said. "Quiet." Marco went still. His jaw tightened. "Done. She's sitting. She won't move." They crossed the last of the trees. The stone seat sat in a flat patch of grass, dark and square, the same shape as the one at the coast. The old woman sat on a stump beside it with an empty tin cup in her lap. Her eyes tracked them but her body did not move. "Sorry, mother," Ajax said. He set her cup aside and stepped past her. Chalam knelt at the seam and took the pale flowers from his satchel. He crushed them between his palms and let them fall along the crack. Ajax pulled the bone tube and tipped a line of salt after them. The stone hissed. The seam widened. Grayson and Asher took the corners with their bows drawn. Elara stood at the ridge above with light gathered at her fingertips. Marco kept his eyes on the old woman. The seat opened. Cold air came up. Ajax dropped into the pit with his father's blade in his hand. The thing inside was smaller than the others, curled and pale, its six arms folded tight from long sleep. It turned its head toward him. Ajax drove the blade through its eye before it could uncoil. It shook once and went slack. He climbed out. Chalam burned the last of the flowers along the seam and closed it with ash. The stone sealed flat. "Six," Grayson said. "Six," Ajax said. Marco let the old woman go. She blinked, looked at the empty cup, and set it down like the morning was over. She did not look at them again. Ajax wiped the blade on his loincloth. The brass disc sat quiet in the pouch. The Keeper did not yet know her last seat was dead.