Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 300 of 619

Tarron cut the last coats from the first Verath's hide. The beast was stripped clean. What remained were the bones, pale and heavy, stacked in the vault corner. Aldric had said the bone marked wards against sound-hunters. Ajax had another use in mind. He carried a bone to the forge and laid it on Vello's bench. "Iron kills a Verath," he said. "But this bone came from one. Can it cut its own kind?" Vello ran the fire hot and set the bone in the coals. It did not burn. It hardened. He drew it out glowing and hammered it flat against a blade shape. By dusk he had four bone knives, edges keen enough to shave hair. Ajax tested one on a green hide and it parted like water. "Sharper than steel," Vello said. "And it holds." Rowan came in from the north woods at first dark. He set his bow against the wall and spoke flat. "Two Verath. Half a day north. Fresh sign, both feeding." He looked at the bone knives on the bench. "Iron in the mouth still works best. But those will finish the job." Ajax gathered them in the hall. Chalam sat with his staff across his knees, satchel at his belt. Elara stood by the hearth, her gold band catching the light. Tucker leaned on the table, chains bright. "We hunt two beasts," Ajax said. "More hide means more coats. More coats means merchants come back every winter. This is the good that does not run dry." Chalam turned a bone knife in his hand. "The Verath hunts by sound," he said. "Two together will hear us long before we see them. We move quiet or we do not move at all." He set the knife down. "I can dull our footfall with a working. Not silence. Softer." Elara spoke without softening it. "I can hold a light shield on the front man.“ Rowan looked at Ajax. "You strike the mouth. I strike from the pine. We killed the first one that way." He picked up a bone knife and weighed it. "Same plan. Two holes in the ground instead of one." Tucker grinned. "And when it is done, we come home with hide for forty coats from each Varath and a story every trader wants to hear." He tapped the table. "That is worth the ride." Ajax looked at his men. The bone had become a weapon. The forge had turned waste into edge. He handed a knife to Rowan, one to Chalam, and kept two. "We ride at dawn," he said. "Grayson holds the gate. Tarron and Vello keep the shed and forge running." The carcass in the vault was fully spent now, bones and all. But two more waited in the north woods, and the road there was open.