Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 281 of 619

The morning after the dock house went up, Ajax walked the shelf with Grayson and saw the flaw. Carts hauled goods down the cliff path to the new dock. Any merchant who paid the dock tax could watch the whole climb. The path told the world where Black Oak's gate stood. Worse, a wet spring would turn the track to mud and strand every load. Ajax needed a covered way from the gate to the dock that no eye could follow. "A stone canal," Ajax said. "Walls both sides, roofed if we can. We float goods down from the gate to the dock on flat boats. No cart. No open path." Grayson studied the slope. He spoke in short words, as he always did. "Two days. No more. The builder needs the dock free before the merchants come." He would not soften it. He stated the limit and stopped. Ajax found Chalam at the water's edge, still gray from the breakwater work. The wizard had spent himself twice already holding back the sea. He had lost weeks of clear thought once to a working that ran too deep, and he guarded his strength now. Ajax asked plainly. "Can you cut the channel stone in two days?" Chalam did not dress it up. "My hands still shake. If I cut, I do only that. No wards, no sea-holding. I have the strength for stone.” They started that hour. Bran and the port masons dug the trench from the gate down the slope. Chalam raised his staff and split the raw rock into squared blocks, course by course, the way he had cut the north wall. The channel took shape as a walled ditch, stone on both sides, wide enough for a low boat. Grayson set men on each length and drove the pace. By dusk of the first day, the canal ran half the slope. The second day tested them. Rain came at noon and filled the open trench. Grayson ordered the water bailed while the masons kept laying block. Chalam cut slower now, his face slack with strain. He rested between courses. By late afternoon the walls reached the dock. The builder hung an iron gate at the sea end, a barred door that dropped to seal the mouth against thieves and tide. Grayson pulled the iron gate down and tested the latch. It held. "Sealed," he said. Nothing more. Ajax stood at the gate end and watched the first flat boat slide down the walled water to the dock, riding smooth between the stone. No cart. No open climb for merchants to read. The channel hid the whole run from gate to sea. Black Oak now had a private road to the water. But the iron gate at the sea end faced open ocean, and any ship could see it.