Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 226 of 619

The Keeper's shards lay in the road with her horse. Frost still steamed off the ground where Chalam's words had held her. Ajax leaned on the wall and looked down at what was left. The one rider who had thrown down his blade still stood with his hands up inside the arch, shaking. Ajax climbed down the stair. Grayson met him at the gate with a short blade in his hand. He had come down from the hall the moment the arrows flew. He did not look at the shards. He looked at the surrendered rider. "Him first," Grayson said. "Alive," Ajax said. "Marco reads him. Then we decide." Grayson gave a single nod and walked the rider to the wall. He tied his wrists with a length of cord and sat him in the dirt. He did not speak to him. Marco came down and knelt in front of the rider and put a hand on his brow. After a minute Marco stood. "Hired," Marco said. "No collar. No mark. He does not know her name. He knows the coin." "Wipe him," Ajax said. "Walk him south past the split pine and leave him with water." Chalam came through the gate with chalk in his hand and did the work in the road. The rider's eyes went soft. Grayson lifted him by the arm and led him out past the ward line. Ajax turned to the shards. "Loot the dead. Every token, every ring, every coin. Then we burn them." Bran and Asher came out with sacks. They stripped the four riders in the road and the one who had burned inside the arch. They pulled two spiral tokens, a purse, three blades, and a small iron key from a cord at the burned man's neck. Ajax took the key and put it in his belt. The rest went in the sack. "Not here," Grayson said when he came back. "Not near the wall. The smoke will sit for days." "The dry wash," Ajax said. "Half a mile north. Burn them there. Bury the ash." Grayson took Bran and Rowan and two of the port men. They loaded the bodies on the cart and rolled the shards of the Keeper and her horse in with them under an old hide. The cart went out through the gate. Ajax watched it clear the ward line and then he watched the road behind it. Nothing followed. He went back inside and had Elara set water and bread in the hall. When Grayson came back at dusk his hands were black to the wrist. He washed them at the well and sat at the carved table. "Done," Grayson said. "Ash is under two feet of dirt. I marked nothing." "Sleep," Ajax said. "All of you. Full watch tomorrow." The men ate and went to their rooms. Ajax sat at the table with the small iron key in his palm and turned it over once. He did not know the lock yet. But the road was quiet, and the gate held, and for the first time in a season no one was coming for him tonight.