Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 255 of 619

The horses came up the seam by midday. Torren and the others hauled the chests through the passage while Ajax rode ahead. By the time he reached Black Oak, the cart was already at the gate. He led the men to the hall and had them stack everything on the long table. Grayson met him at the door. He looked at the piled chests, the coin sacks, the row of workings wrapped in cloth. "Vault's near full," he said. "We need the count clean before anything goes down." "Then we count," Ajax said. He set the wrapped workings apart from the coin. "Chalam names each. Aldric writes it. The gold and silver you and I weigh." Chalam unwrapped the items one by one. He held each near his staff and spoke plainly. The copper armband. The glass beads. The stoppered horn. The bone-grip knife. He stopped at the bronze ring he could not read in the cave. He turned it in the light and set it down. "Still nothing," Chalam said. "It answers to no working I know. I will need the book and a full day." Ajax picked up the ring. Plain bronze, worn smooth. "Keep it out of the vault until you read it. I want no unknown thing sealed with the coin." Grayson counted the gold bars into stacks of ten. Ajax weighed the silver plate on the arm scale from the smithery. They worked without talking. The number grew past anything the house had held before. "Eight hundred bars," Grayson said. "Silver plate near four hundred pounds. Cut coin I have not finished." He straightened. "This feeds us three winters. More, if we hold the men steady." Ajax looked at the wrapped ring in Chalam's hand and the stacks on the table. Three winters. Wages, walls, food. Enough to hold thirteen sworn men and take on more. Enough that no one at Black Oak would ride out for hunger. Aldric closed the ledger. "Every item is down. Coin, gold, plate, and the workings, each with its use noted separate. The bronze ring I have marked unknown." "Good," Ajax said. "Grayson, take the second key. Load the vault tonight. Everything but the ring." Grayson took the key from his belt and weighed it in his hand. "You're building past a warhouse now," he said. "You know that." Ajax did not answer at once. He set his hand on the piled gold. He had ridden out alone once, with no men and a dead father's chain. Now he had a full table, a full vault, and a full house. "I know," he said. "Seal it." Grayson carried the first chest toward the vault. Chalam wrapped the bronze ring in chalk and lodestone and slid it into his satchel. The count was closed. Black Oak was fed. Only the ring stayed open, and it would wait for the book.