Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 312 of 619

The beds were built. The oath still waited on the thaw. Ajax spent the morning in his quarters going over Aldric's ledger of hides and coin. A soft knock turned him around. Bran stood in the door, uneasy. "The dryad's in my house," Bran said. "The one who carves. She walked past the gate like it wasn't there. She's cutting into my table now." Ajax found the Leafgift Dryad already at work. Her bark-textured skin caught the light. A dress of broad green leaves hung to her feet, and vines coiled at her wrists. She held a bundle of pale flowers in one hand and traced leaf shapes into the wood with the other. She did not look up. "Your mark protects this house," she said. "Now this house feeds my kin if the grove burns. That was your pact." Ajax knew the pact. He had sworn it to shelter dryad women. He watched her carve a vine along the table edge, clean and deep. "You came a long way for a table." "I came with news." She set the flowers on the finished wood. "Something new walks the far north woods. Not Verath. Bigger. It cracks trees at the trunk and leaves no tracks a man reads. It hunts our young groves. It will reach yours by summer." Ajax sent Bran to fetch Aldric. The scholar came fast, ledger still under his arm. He stopped when he saw the dryad and set the book down slow. "You know creatures no one else names," the dryad told him. "Describe what breaks a full-grown oak and drinks the sap from the roots." Aldric crouched by the flowers she'd left. He studied the carved vine, then the pale blooms. "Sap-drinkers are in the torn fragment. A Gallow root-beast. Slow, blind, but it feels a footfall through the ground." He looked up. "Its hide takes dye better than any leather. Its root-teeth never dull." Ajax stood still. He heard it plain. A new beast. A new hide no other trader could offer. Merchants would cross the sea for it. "How many?" Ajax asked her. "Three feeding north of the burned grove." The dryad gathered the last of her flowers. "Kill them and the grove lives. Trade what's left. Both serve you." "Then it serves us both," Ajax said. She pressed the flowers into his hand. "Burn these at the root-heart before you strike. It cannot feel through smoke." She stepped past the gate and was gone into the pines. Aldric ran his thumb over the fresh carving. "She traded us a hunt for a warning. Fair price." Ajax closed his fist on the flowers. Come thaw, ships would arrive and men would swear the Code. Now he had a reason for idle hunters to ride, and a beast no rival held. He would take Rowan, Chalam, and the four hired men north the day the snow broke.