Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 297 of 619

The green hides sat in a barrel of bark tea for three days. Tarron pulled them out at dawn and rubbed one between his fingers. Ajax watched him work in the shed, the loom quiet behind them. Rowan's traps and the deer had given them the raw stock. Now the woolwright had to turn it into goods worth a ship's hold. "Soft enough," Tarron said. He laid a hide flat on his bench. "Boots first. Men pay for boots." He cut with a curved knife, quick and sure, the way he read fleece. He did not look up. "Then gloves. Then vests. I need one day." Ajax gave him the one day. Tarron worked through both. He stitched with waxed thread and a bone awl, his thin hands never slowing. Ajax brought him food and found the plates untouched at dusk. By the dark the bench held finished work: three pairs of boots, stiff and oiled; gloves cut to the hand; vests lined with the bear pelts Grayson and Rowan had hunted in the north woods. Grayson came to inspect. He pulled on a glove, flexed his fist, tested the seam. "Holds," he said. He set it down. "Good enough to sell." From him that was high praise. Tucker lifted a vest and turned it in the light. He knew goods and he knew men who bought them. "This is northern coin," he said. "A captain wears this on deck and every man at the port asks where he got it." He grinned at Tarron. "You just made us a name." Tarron closed the subject. "They're made right. That's all." He folded a glove and set it on the pile. Marco stood in the doorway. He had gone quiet, the way he did when he heard something far off. "Sail," he said. "Coming for the dock." Ajax went out to the wall. A ship sat off the breakwater, oars pulling it toward the hidden gate. It was the master who had cursed and then agreed to come. The thaw had brought him first, ahead of the others. His hull rode low, holds empty, ready to fill. "He came," Grayson said. He did not sound surprised. "For the needles," Ajax said. But it was more than needles now. It was boots and gloves and vests, cloth and blades, all stamped with the leaf mark. Black Oak had made goods no port could copy, and the first buyer had brought his ship to their dock instead of the other way around. Ajax turned to Tucker. "Bring him in through the canal. He sees the dock, the goods, and nothing else." He looked at the pile of finished work. "We sell him what we have. Then he tells the coast who to come to." Tucker went down the covered canal to meet the hull. The trade Ajax had built no longer lived on a promise. It rode on the water, and it had arrived.