Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 304 of 619

Before Ajax hunted three beasts, he needed to know what he already had. He walked to the vault with two keys and Grayson at his side. Grayson was his lieutenant, the blunt sellsword who once refused to kneel and now held the second key to every locked thing in Black Oak. He turned his key when Ajax turned his. The iron door swung open on stacked wealth and stranger things. "Bring Aldric," Ajax said. "I want it all counted. Coin and workings both." Aldric came with his ledger under one arm. He was the scholar who had named the Verath from a torn page, the man who tracked wealth as carefully as he tracked old creatures. He set the ledger on the stone shelf and opened it to a fresh page. "Then we count," he said. "Nothing skipped." They worked through the morning. Grayson hauled the gold bars into rows of ten while Aldric marked each row. Ajax stacked silver plate and weighed the cut coin in a leather sack. The numbers grew past what any of them had held before. "Eight hundred gold bars," Aldric said. He did not look up. "Near four hundred pounds of silver. Coin on top of that." He tapped the page. "Three winters, even feeding thirteen men and the hired hands." Grayson set down the last bar. "More than we need," he said. "Not the point," Ajax said. He moved to the shelf where the workings sat wrapped in cloth. "What of these?" Aldric unwrapped them one at a time and named each from memory. The chain that hid its wearer from scrying. The ring that opened iron doors. The knife that killed sound. The bracer against detection, the caller ring, the vials of sleep and sight. He counted the sound-muffling oil last. "Three vials," he said. "Merchants pay silver for one." Ajax looked at the box of Verath teeth. He lifted the lid. One tooth remained. "One," he said. "We sold eleven." "The tooth runs dry," Aldric said. "You knew that." Ajax closed the box. The count told him what he suspected in the yard. He was rich in coin and rich in old magic, but his trade stock was nearly bare. Two hides. Three vials. One tooth. A fortune that could not fill a ship's hold twice. "Write it plain," Ajax told Aldric. "Coin on one page. Goods to trade on another. I want to see them apart." Aldric wrote. When he finished he turned the ledger so Ajax could read it. The coin page was full. The trade page held four lines. Grayson read it over Ajax's shoulder. "You can buy a hundred men," he said. "You can't sell them coats." "No," Ajax said. He shut the vault and turned both keys. The wealth was safe and useless for what he wanted. He needed goods, not gold, and the goods ran through the beasts in the north woods. "Then we hunt at dawn," he said. "All three lines. Empty stock means we ride."