Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 222 of 619

Ajax woke before dawn to Marco's hand on his shoulder. Marco did not speak until Ajax sat up. Then he said one word. "Riders." Ajax pulled on his boots. "How many." "Six on the road. Two more back a ways. She's with them." "You hear her." "I hear the men around her. She's a hole where a mind should be." Marco's mouth was tight. "They stopped at the split pine. Feeding the horses. She wants to reach the gate by midday." Ajax stood. The armory was closed in but not yet stocked. Vello's arrowheads sat in a crate by the smithery door. Rowan's enchanted shafts were bundled on the hall table. The threshold working was laid under Elara's ward. Everything Ajax had built for this day was in place a day early. "Wake Grayson," Ajax said. "Then Chalam. Not the others yet. Let them eat." Marco went. Ajax crossed the yard to the gate and put his hand on the iron. It was cold. He could feel nothing of the working under it, which was how Chalam had said it would feel. A held foot instead of a burned one. A mouth to question. Grayson came fast, belt half-fastened, blade already in his hand. Chalam behind him with the staff. "She's early," Ajax said. "How early," Grayson said. "Midday. Six on the road. Two behind." Grayson looked at the wall. "Bran on the north slit. Rowan on the south. Asher middle. Vello keeps forging until I call him off." "Elara at the hall door with the healing cloth," Ajax said. "Marco with me at the gate. Chalam behind the threshold. Every worker armed.” "Tucker." "Roof of the barracks. He sees the road best from there." Grayson nodded once and went to wake the men. Ajax turned to Chalam. "The threshold holds?" "It holds. If she sends a man through unnamed, his feet stop. If she comes herself, the ward burns her first. If she pushes past the burn, the threshold takes her legs." "And if she does neither." "Then she stands outside and talks. Which is what she will do." Chalam set the book on the stone bench by the gate. "She wants you alive. She cannot take the shelf without you naming a way in." Marco came back across the yard. "She's moving. Not fast. She wants us watching the road." "Then we watch," Ajax said. He climbed the wall to the north slit. The road ran empty under a gray sky. Somewhere past the split pine, the Keeper rode toward his gate with six men and whatever she carried in her head that Marco could not read. Ajax had built the walls. He had hung the gate. He had sworn the men and set the ward. Now she was coming, and he would meet her at the iron.