Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 202 of 619

The dryad turned back to Ajax. Her eyes were the pale green of new leaves. She smelled of wet bark and cut stem. "Roots I can bring," she said. "Dried leaf. Nuts in shell. Seeds to plant, too. Ready by spring.” "For silver," Ajax said. "Silver, yes. And something else." Rowan straightened. Chalam set the butt of his staff in the dirt. "Name it," Ajax said. She looked past him at the hall line, at the barracks doors, at the long benches Bran had set inside. "Ornate wood carvings. For your hall and its table and chairs. For your barrack beds and furniture. Detailed beauty. My work, my hands." Ajax waited. He had learned not to accept the first shape of a bargain. "In trade for what," he said. "Safety inside these walls. If the axes come to my grove, my kin walk through your gate. You keep them safe. You do not send them out the threat ends." Ajax looked at Chalam. Chalam gave a small nod. He looked at Rowan, who had been raised by her kind. Rowan said, "They keep their word. They give more than they take." "How many," Ajax said. "Twelve. No more. Women and young. The old ones stay with the trees." "How long." "Until the threat leaves or the ground freezes them out." Ajax thought of the hall half-built, the bunkhouse pegged but not roofed. Twelve mouths in a hard winter. Then he thought of the road, of the Keeper still out there, of a grove at his back that owed him nothing yet. "Done," he said. "Silver for the stores. Shelter for your twelve if the day comes. Carvings on the hall and the barracks." She held out her hand. Her fingers were the color and grain of oak. Ajax took them. Her grip was cool and firm. "I will send the first cart in three days," she said. "I begin the carving tonight." She walked to the hall line. She laid her palm against the top course of stone. She closed her eyes. When she opened them, she moved to the nearest post and drew a slow line down the wood with her thumbnail. A leaf shape stayed behind, cut clean into the grain. "To mark the pact," she said. She walked back through the herb strip, past Rowan, past the flowers she had left on the turned earth. The tree line took her without sound. Ajax stood a moment with the leaf mark at his shoulder. He had bought winter food and given up a promise he could not take back. If the axes came, his walls would hold women and children he had never met. His brotherhood was no longer only men who had sworn to him, but allies. "Rowan," he said. "Plant the flowers along the north edge.”