Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 240 of 619

At first light Ajax found Aldric in the library. The scholar had a scroll unrolled on the table and a lamp pulled close. Ajax laid the strip of birch bark on the paper. "Four toes. No claws. Drag mark like a tail. Killed a deer on the north ridge and cracked the ribs from the back. Have you read of it?" Aldric set his finger on the print and turned the bark under the lamp. He pulled a thin book from the shelf and opened it to a folded page. He held the drawing beside the bark. The shape was close. Not the same. "Verath," Aldric said. "A burrowing serpent in one torn fragment I have chased for years. The foot is wrong. But the feeding is right. Organs first. Meat left. It hunts by sound under the soil and comes up behind the kill." "Sound?" "A hung carcass drips. Drops on leaves carry. It came for the rope, not the deer." "Can it be killed?" "The fragment says iron in the mouth. Nothing else held." Aldric closed the book. "I would like to see the kill site. I have wanted this creature a long time." "You ride with us." Ajax crossed the yard to the herb strip. Rowan sat on a stump with his sleeve rolled to the shoulder. The pine gum on his arm had cracked in the night and the scrape was weeping. Elara knelt beside him with a bowl of warm water and a clean cloth. "Sit still," she said. She washed the wound out and pressed the edges together. She laid her palm over it and light gathered under her hand, small and steady. When she lifted her hand the skin was closed to a pink line. "How much did that cost you?" Ajax asked. "An hour of sleep tonight," Elara said. "No more. Don't hang another deer by a rope, Rowan." "I won't," Rowan said. He flexed the arm. It held. He picked up his bow. Ajax turned to Grayson at the gate. "You hold the walls. Close after dark. No one out without your word. If we are not back in three days, send Torren north to look and no farther." "Three days," Grayson said. "Understood." "Aldric rides with us. He knows the feeding." Grayson looked at the scholar and then at the bow across Rowan's back. He nodded once. "Take the two spare horses. Take iron." Ajax mounted. Chalam and Marco were already in the saddle. Rowan swung up and Aldric followed, the thin book tucked under his arm and a fresh knife on his belt. Ajax nudged his horse through the gate and the ward let them pass. The road ran north into the pines. Somewhere ahead of them, in the ridges between the split pine and the low grove, a thing that ate from the back was working south. Now Ajax had a name for it, and a way to kill it.