Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 239 of 619

Ajax took Rowan and Grayson to the hall table and set out bread and meat. The other men were at the wall. He wanted the two of them alone. "Tell it," Ajax said. Rowan set his bow against the bench. He rolled up his bloody sleeve. A long scrape ran from his elbow to his wrist, closed with pine gum. "Second day, north side of the ridge. I hung a doe on a low branch to bleed. Walked ten paces for my skinning knife. Came back and the deer was gone." "Gone how?" Ajax asked. "Rope cut clean. Not chewed. The carcass was dragged forty paces uphill and left half eaten under a spruce. Ribs cracked open from the back." Grayson set his cup down. "Bear doesn't crack ribs from the back. Bear goes belly first." "Wolf?" Ajax asked. "No," Rowan said. "Wolves leave the bone scatter. This ate the organs and left the meat." Ajax looked at him. "The tracks." Rowan pulled a folded strip of birch bark from his belt and set it on the table. He had scored the shape into the bark with a knife point. Four toes. No claws. A round pad wider than a man's fist. A drag mark behind the heel like a tail line. "I've walked those ridges since I was a boy," Rowan said. "I don't know this print." Grayson touched the cut above his eye. "Something came at us the second night. Past the fire ring. I never saw the whole of it. Green eyes low to the ground, then higher than my head. It broke a sapling behind me and was gone before I raised the axe." "How far from the gate?" Ajax asked. "Half a day's ride," Rowan said. "North fork of the creek. It's working the ridges between the split pine and the low grove." "Moving which way?" "South. Toward us." Ajax turned the birch bark under the lamp. He thought of the groves Rowan said had gone quiet in the ridges. He thought of the rot they had burned out of the oak. He did not think this was the same thing. He thought it might be walking the same road. "Rest tonight," Ajax said. "Tomorrow you go back with me and Marco and Chalam. We find the last kill and Marco listens for what it thinks. If it thinks at all." Rowan pushed the birch bark across to Ajax. "Keep it. If I don't come back, someone else needs to know the shape of the foot." Ajax folded the bark and put it inside his loincloth against his skin. The library was warded. The men had furs. And a thing he could not name was walking south out of the ridges toward his gate.