Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 301 of 619

They rode north at dawn with bone knives on their belts. Rowan led on foot near the woods, reading the ground. Chalam kept pace with his staff, satchel bouncing at his hip. Elara rode last, her gold band bright in the cold light. Half a day north, Rowan raised a hand and stopped. He crouched and touched the churned soil. "Both here," he said. "Feeding together. Fresh." Ajax dismounted and studied the ground. Two drag marks scored the dirt, wide and deep. The Verath was a burrowing serpent that hunted by sound. He had killed one before by driving iron into its mouth. Two together would hear them first. "Chalam," he said. "Soften our steps." Chalam spoke low words and tapped his staff on the earth. The sound of their boots dulled to almost nothing. "It will hold," he said. "Move slow. Loud noise breaks it." He set his jaw. "I count one beast under us. The second is close but I cannot mark it." Rowan climbed a pine and nocked an arrow. Elara raised her hand and a thin shield of light wrapped Ajax's chest. "It stops one strike," she said. "No more." She did not soften it. Ajax nodded and drew his father's blade in one hand, a bone knife in the other. He struck the ground twice with his boot heel. The muffled sound still carried down. The soil heaved. A Verath erupted, mouth wide, teeth like white spikes. Ajax rammed the bone knife between its jaws. It bit down and the blade held. He drove his father's iron through its eye. The beast thrashed once and dropped. The ground split behind him. The second Verath came up fast, striking for his back. Elara's shield flared white and caught the teeth. The light shattered. "That's all I have," she called. Rowan's arrow took the beast in the throat. It reared, screaming without sound. "Chalam, hold it," Ajax shouted. Chalam slammed his staff down. Roots of light gripped the serpent's coils. It froze mid-strike. Ajax turned, stepped in, and forced the second bone knife into its open mouth. Then he buried his father's blade to the hilt through the roof of its skull. The Verath went still. Rowan climbed down and looked at the two carcasses. "Both whole," he said. "Hides clean. Bone knives cut their own kind." He wiped his blade on the grass. Elara sat on a stone, pale and spent. "I need a day before I cast again," she said. "But no one's hurt." Ajax pulled his blade free and wiped it. Two beasts, two hides for eighty coats, and a story every trader would carry home. "Load them," he said. "We take them back whole." He looked north, where the woods ran on. More Verath fed somewhere in that dark. The hide trade would not run dry. Black Oak had a mark of its own now, and the ride home was open.