Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 18 of 619

They stopped at midday in a hollow off the road, out of sight of any rider. Ajax swung down and led his horse to the stream. The others followed without asking. He had not told them yet what the iron collars were for. He had carried the answer since Elara named it, and he had carried it alone. That ended here. He turned to face them. Marco set his reins over a branch and waited. Asher leaned against a tree with his arms crossed. Tucker sat on a flat rock. Grayson stood a little apart, close enough to hear, far enough to leave. Chalam eased himself down beside a bush thick with red and blue berries that caught the light wrong. Elara knelt near the wizard and put a hand on his wrist without looking at him. "The collars are for a god," Ajax said. "Six of them. Six limbs. The shelf was built to hold the thing they fit." No one spoke. "The man on the road knows the mark," Ajax said. "He is not coming for gold. He is coming for what the collars were made to hold, or for whoever finds it first. That is us." Marco's hand went to his bracelet and stopped there. "A god," he said. "On the coast." "Buried, or gone, or waiting," Ajax said. "I do not know which." "My grandmother said a god took from us," Marco said. "She never said what. This could be the door to that." "It could be the door to worse," Grayson said. "You should have told us before we rode." "I am telling you now," Ajax said. "Ride on or ride off. Choose here." Asher pushed off the tree. "I swore until the new moon. The moon has not turned." Tucker rolled his shoulders. "Walls are not built. I stay." Marco nodded once. "I stay." Grayson looked at Ajax a long moment. "Next time, you tell me first. Not the group. Me." "Next time," Ajax said. Grayson swung back up onto his horse. Elara stood. "I did not swear. I am still riding." She glanced at Chalam. "He needs an hour more than that." "He gets the hour," Ajax said. "Then we ride hard to the crossroads. If the god hunter passed the camp, we track him from the mark. If he has not, we take him there." Chalam pushed himself upright with his staff. "I can ride." "An hour," Ajax said. He walked to the edge of the hollow and looked south along the road. The men behind him were his because they had chosen to be, knowing. That was a thing he had not owned before today. He waited out the hour. Then he mounted and turned his horse south, and they rode after him without being called.