Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 273 of 619

At first light Ajax found Tarron already in the yard, running a hand along the loom timbers. The old man had slept a night as a sworn man, and now he wanted work. Ajax had promised him a proper place for the wool. Today he meant to build it. A shed of stone, walls and roof, room for the loom and the spinning wheel and the fleece. Ajax called Bran and set the crew to cutting stone. By noon the first course stood square. Tarron worked beside them, hauling blocks he had no business lifting at his age, testing each fleece stacked against the growing wall. "Wool wants dry stone," he said. "Wet floor rots a staple." Ajax told Bran to lay the floor flat and high. The old man closed the matter with a nod and went back to the beam. By dusk the walls stood chest-high. Grayson came from the gate to look. He walked the shed once, checked the door line, and stopped where the wall met open ground behind it. "Good work," Grayson said. He pointed at the field beyond. "What about that?" Ajax looked at the wide flat behind the shed and outside the wall. Empty grass, running to the cliff. Tarron had kept his rabbits and one thin flock in a rope pen there, nothing more. "Tarron needs animals held," Grayson said. "A rope won't hold sheep through winter. Won't stop a Verath or a wolf either." He crossed his arms. "Wall it. Full stone to cliff. A door through the wall to the inside of the field once it’s done." Ajax studied the ground. A stone wall around that field would take days and stone he had not counted. But Grayson was right. A man could not clothe a house with a flock that scattered. "How long?" Ajax asked. "Two days, with Bran and the port men," Grayson said. "Chalam cuts stone faster. Do it now, before frost hardens the ground." Tarron came around the shed, chain flat on his chest, listening. He was more proud to show his chain and chest now. “A walled field," he said. "I can hold thirty head in that. Wool and meat both." He looked at Ajax. "Do it and I feed you through winter and trade the rest." Ajax decided. "Bran finishes the shed roof tomorrow. Then the field wall. Chalam cuts. Grayson, mark the line at first light." Grayson paced the field, heel dragging a line in the grass, cliff to cliff. Ajax watched him and saw the shape of it: a shed for cloth, a walled pasture, a flock that would not scatter. Not a raiding camp. A holding that fed and clothed itself. Tarron ran his hand down the shed wall one last time. "Good stone," he said, and went to his loom. Ajax stood in the yard as the light went. The shed would house the craft. The wall would hold the flock. Come spring, Black Oak would send cloth and meat to the port, not men to raids. He had built a warrior brotherhood. Now he was building something that would outlast the fighting.