Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 279 of 619

The breakwater held, but the cold came fast. Ajax climbed back up the cliff at dusk and found Tarron already in the shed, cutting hide by lamplight. The old woolwright had traded his loom bench for a wide board, and stiff pelts lay stacked at his feet. He did not look up when Ajax entered. "Coats," Tarron said. "Your men work the wall in wet wind. They'll sicken before the dock stands." He held up a shaped panel of stitched hide, brown and thick. "One for each of them. I've measured Bran and Torren already." He set the panel down and picked up his knife again. When Ajax started to answer, Tarron cut him off with a flat line. "It's done. I only need thread and time." Ajax watched him work. This was the man who had sworn to the craft and not the wall, who would defend the place if he had to but asked for the shed instead of a blade. Ajax had bound him with a gold chain anyway. Now he saw why. The old man read cold the way he read fleece. "Do it," Ajax said. "Coats for the eleven. Grayson has the coat you made for him." Tarron nodded once. Then he reached behind the board and pulled out a long roll of pale fur. Rabbit, soft and gray, sewn into a single sweep of pelts. "This one's not a work coat." He shook it loose so the lamplight caught it. "For the healer. Her hands stay cold when she spends her light. A woman who mends men should be warm." Ajax touched the fur. It was finer than anything he had traded at the port. "Elara," he said. "She earned it." Tarron folded it away. Subject closed. Grayson came in from the yard, still in the hide coat Tarron had made him weeks back. He shook rain off it and looked at the stack of pelts. "He's clothing the whole house," Grayson said. It was not a question. "He is." Grayson turned the coat's collar up with two fingers. "Kept me dry on the wall all day. Cody's men are freezing in wool." He looked at Ajax. "Give the woolwright what he needs." Ajax stood in the warm shed between the two older men. He had built a brotherhood to answer only to him, and now it fed itself, armed itself, and clothed itself against the winter. The coats were not loot. No one had bled for them. Tarron had simply seen the cold coming and cut hide to meet it. By the fire that night, Ajax made his choice. He had held one seat open at the table through all the swearing and the raids. Come the first thaw, he would offer it to the twelve as a permanent place, not a hired season. He said nothing of it yet. But he watched Tarron carry lamp oil to the shed to sew through the dark, and he knew the house was no longer a camp. It was a home worth keeping men for.