Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 274 of 619

The field wall closed at dusk on the second day. Chalam cut the last blocks with his staff, and Bran set them cliff to cliff. A stone door hung in the middle, swinging inward to the pen. Ajax walked the line and pushed the door. It held. The grass inside was empty. A pen without animals fed no one. Tarron came from his shed with a bundle of cord and green willow. "A wall holds sheep," he said. "It doesn't catch them. I need snares. Loop traps for hare, deadfalls for the bigger runs." He held up a snare he had already tied, the loop small and neat. "Ground's soft near the stream. Rabbits cross there. Deer too." Ajax sent Rowan with him. Rowan knew the ridges and the runs better than any man in the house. The two worked the tree line all morning, Rowan reading the tracks, Tarron setting the loops low and hiding the cord under leaf. "Set the trap where the animal already goes," Tarron said. "Don't make it come to you." By noon they had eight snares out and a woven fish trap sunk in the stream. Ajax watched the old man's hands move fast and sure. The pen would fill. With the traps set, Tarron turned to his loom. He carded the fleece stacked in the shed, worked it into thread, and set the warp on the beam he had built himself. Ajax stood in the doorway and watched wool become cloth. The shuttle crossed and crossed again. By the second day Tarron had a length of gray wool wide enough for a coat. Ajax took the cloth in his hands. It was thick and even, warm to the touch. This was the thing he had built the shed for. Not gold pulled from a dead man's cave. Cloth his own house made, from a flock his own wall would hold. He could send this to the port and take coin for it, season after season. "Make more," Ajax said. "I will," Tarron said. "Bring me the pelts too. The bear skins Grayson took. I'll line them." Ajax fetched two bear pelts from the store. Tarron cut and stitched through the night, backing the hide with his own wool. By dawn he laid two long coats across the loom. One he gave to Ajax. "For the cold," he said. "You built the wall. You wear the first." The second he set aside. "For Grayson. He marked the line." Ajax pulled the coat on. It hung heavy on his shoulders, warm and dark. He walked into the yard wearing it, his gold chain flat against his bare chest. Grayson came from the gate, and Ajax handed him the second coat without a word. Grayson put it on and nodded. Black Oak no longer only took. It made. The pen would fill with the season's snaring, the loom would turn wool to trade, and his brotherhood would clothe itself against the winter and every winter after.