Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 204 of 619

Rowan spread his map on the hall table before the ink on his line was dry. He tapped a crooked mark north of the creek. "Rot's here. Started as a ring around one oak. Now it's four trees wide and eating the moss." Chalam bent over the map. His staff rested against the bench. He touched the mark with two fingers and pulled them back. "I've read this before. Not on a map. In a book." Ajax looked up. "What book?" "One I don't have," Chalam said. "A friend at the port keeps it. He collects old bindings. Three hundred years back, a grove west of here went the same way. Rot in rings. Trees dying from the inside. The book had drawings. It had a cure, if the drawings were honest." "How far to your friend?" "Day there. Day back. Less if the road's dry." Ajax weighed it. The rot was half a day north and moving. Two days for a book was two days he might not have. But guessing at a cure would cost more. "Tucker," Ajax said. Tucker was already at the door with the salt tally in his hand. He set the tally down. "Ride with Chalam to the port at first light," Ajax said. "Fetch the book from his friend. Come back the same day if the horses can take it." Tucker looked at Chalam. "He’ll know me?" "He'll know the name I send with you," Chalam said. He pulled a folded strip of paper from his satchel and wrote three words on it. He handed it to Tucker. "Show him this. He'll open the door." Tucker tucked the paper into his vest pocket, behind the chains. "What's the price, if he wants one?" “The book is mine.” Chalam said. “He’ll give it.” Tucker nodded. "Then I'm gone at gray light." "Not gone," Ajax said. "Sent." Tucker's mouth twitched and grinned under the mustache. "Sent, then." Chalam gathered the map and rolled it. "I'll stay," he said. "If the rot moves at your line while he's away, my staff reads it faster than his eyes. Send him alone. My friend will trust the paper." Ajax weighed that too. He didn't like splitting them. But he liked the shelf bare of Chalam even less. "Alone, then," Ajax said to Tucker. "Ride hard. Sleep in the saddle if you have to. Back by dusk tomorrow." "Back by dusk," Tucker said. Ajax walked him to the gate before dawn and watched him mount. Tucker set his heels and rode out under the iron. The ward did not spark. The road swallowed him inside a minute. Ajax turned to Chalam at the wall. "Now we wait, and we watch the north." "We watch," Chalam said.