Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 208 of 619

Rowan held Tucker's gaze a moment longer, then dropped his hand from the chain. "Dawn's close," he said. Tucker nodded, took the lantern, and left the pie on the table. The door shut. Rowan lay down in his clothes, the chain warm on his chest, and slept. Ajax woke before the horn. He crossed the yard in the gray light and found the bunkhouse finished. Four walls, a roof, a stone chimney, a plank door. Bran had closed it two nights back, ahead of the estimate. The port men slept inside now, out of the wind. Ajax laid his palm on the door and felt the cold seep of new stone. Ready. Inside the hall, the dryad stood at the long table, working. She had come at dusk with a cart of roots and had not left. Her hands ran over the tabletop, and the wood answered her. Leaves curled up along the edge in shallow relief. Vines wove into the legs. She had been carving all night. "You said one leaf on the door," Ajax said. "For the pact." "That is the pact." She did not look up. Her bark-skinned fingers pressed a spray of pale flowers into the plank. "This is a gift. Your hall will feed my kin if the grove burns. A gift should be worth the roof it sits under." Ajax watched a knot in the wood open into a berry cluster under her thumb. He had ridden out at first light in his head an hour ago. Now his table was becoming a beautiful forest. "How long," he said. "Until it is done." Chalam came in behind him with his staff and the book from port. Marco followed, pulling on his shirt. Elara had the salt sack already at her hip. Rowan waited in the doorway with the bow, chain flat under his open shirt. Tucker leaned on the frame beside him and did not look at the chain. "The grove won't wait," Rowan said. "Rot moves at root pace. A day matters." Ajax weighed it. "Carve what you carve," Ajax told the dryad. She pressed another leaf into the wood without answering. Ajax turned to the others. "Salt, flint, the book. Rowan point. Chalam behind him. Marco with me. Elara at the rear. We ride at first light." "That's now," Tucker said. "Then now," Ajax said. They went out to the horses. Behind them, the dryad's hands moved on the wood, and a second vine climbed a table leg toward the top.