Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 21 of 619

Ajax stripped off his gold chain and handed it to Grayson. He pulled a brown cloak from Tucker's roll and threw it over his shoulders to cover the fur at his waist. A traveler alone. That was the shape he needed. "You ride down there alone, he puts a knife in you before you say a word," Grayson said. He kept his voice low. Grayson would not soften it, even now. "He does not know my face," Ajax said. "He knows the mark. I go in as a man on the road. I get him talking. I learn what he thinks he found." "And if he swings first?" Ajax looked at Elara. She had already slid down from her horse and was tying the reins to a low branch. She met his eyes and gave one small nod. "I hold the light," she said. "He raises a blade, he loses the arm." She said it flat, the way she said most things. No boast in it. Ajax remembered the cost every casting took from her now, and did not ask if she was sure. "Stay in the tree line," he told the others. "No one moves unless Elara moves first." He rode down the slope at a walk. The wind off the sea pushed at the cloak. He kept his hands loose on the reins and his sword under the cloth. The hunter stood inside the raised walls, at the tide line, tapping the stone with the butt of a long iron rod. He was thin, older than Ajax expected, with a shaved head and a scar that split his lip. He looked up when Ajax's horse came into view. He did not reach for a weapon. He smiled. "You are late," the hunter said. "I was starting to wonder if the mark on the road was old work." Ajax stopped ten paces off. His throat went cold. The man knew him. "I am a traveler," Ajax said. "I saw the walls from the ridge." "You are the mason's blood," the hunter said. "You wear his chain under that cloak. I saw the shape of it when you rode in." He tapped the stone again. "Your father set the seat. He never told you what sits under it, did he." Ajax's hand went to the hilt beneath the cloak. The hunter raised the iron rod. Not at Ajax. At the ground. He drove it down and the wet stone rang like a struck bell. Something below the shelf answered. A low sound, deep, felt in the teeth. Light cracked out of the tree line. Elara's bolt hit the rod and knocked it flying. The hunter staggered back, his hand smoking, and ran for the cliff path. Ajax did not chase him. He was staring at the stone. Whatever was buried under his ground had heard its name. And his father had put it there.