Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 280 of 619

The next dawn broke gray and hard. Ajax came down the cliff to the tide line, where the builder waited by the half-laid breakwater. Chalam stood at the water's edge, staff planted in wet stone. He had pushed the sea back once already, and the strain had cost him a day each time. They had three courses left to lay, and no more days to spare. "I can hold it much longer today," Chalam said. He reached into his satchel and drew a small vial. "This settles the shaking in my hands. I found it in the last cache. Aldric read it clean." He drank it down and set his stance. "Tell them to work fast." Ajax nodded to the builder. Chalam raised his staff. The water peeled back from the foundation stone, and this time it stayed. The old stone Ajax's father's people had cut lay bare and dry. Bran hauled the first block into the gap while the builder set the mortar. They laid one course, then the next. Chalam's arms shook, but the potion held him upright. By midday the breakwater rose above the waterline. The builder tested it with his boot. "That's the height it needs," he said. "The rest can dry. The sea won't wash it now." Chalam let the water fall back. It struck the stone and broke into foam, but the wall held. The wizard sat down hard on a dry rock, gray in the face but breathing. "Done?" Ajax asked him. "Done," Chalam said. "The dock house can go up on the dry side. No more magic needed." He closed his empty satchel. "The potion cost me nothing lasting. Elara checked me for that this morning." Elara stood higher on the shelf, out of the spray. She wore the pale rabbit coat Tarron had sewn her, and it kept the wind off her while she watched. "His pulse held steady," she said. "No fever after. He can rest tonight and be right by morning." She had spent too much of her own light too many times to let a man burn himself for stone. She had made Chalam show her his hands before he drank. By dusk the builder and Bran framed the dock house on the finished stone. The breakwater stood. The sock of tide gates hung ready to swing. That night the eleven came to the hall in Tarron's new hide coats shirtless underneath, brown and thick against the cold. The old woolwright handed each one out by name and said nothing after. Ajax watched his men take them. No one had bled for the coats. No one had bled for the dock. He had a harbor now, and a house that clothed itself. At dinner, Ajax stood and toasted to the Chalam, the breakwater workers, and Tarron. The team clinked mugs. Tarron’s guard was lowering and he was beginning to smile more and feel at home.