Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 32 of 619

By mid-morning the group sat in a rough circle above the walls. The bodies were dragged off the shelf. The gold bars, the cut coin, the rings and knives Grayson had stripped were laid out on a spread cloak. Ajax stood over the pile with his father's chain warm against his chest. He had walls, coin, and six men and a healer around him. What he did not have yet was their word to stay past this. "I'm not done here," Ajax said. "Someone sent those riders. Someone will send more. I mean to hold this coast and put more men under my sign. I need you with me for that." Grayson leaned on his blade. "Say the terms." "We sell the pile. Every bar, every ring, every blade we don't need. There's a port two days east. We ride in, we move it clean, we ride out. The take splits seven ways. Equal shares. Mine the same as yours." Tucker whistled low and thumbed one of the gold bars. "Equal. That's a generous word out of a man standing on his own walls." "It's the word I'm using." Marco turned his bracelet on his wrist. "You keep the walls." "I keep the walls. The coin is yours to spend or save." Asher looked at Marco, then back at Ajax. "I'm in until the new moon. That was the deal. This doesn't change it." "It doesn't," Ajax said. "After the new moon, you choose again." Chalam sat with his staff across his knees. "I stay under the terms we set. No magic on your men without your word. A share is a share." Elara had her sleeve pulled down over the bracelet at her wrist. "I don't swear to you. You know that." "You get a share anyway," Ajax said. "You bled for it." She nodded once. Grayson straightened. "Port city. Two days. We move the gold through a broker, not a smith. Smiths talk." "Tucker knows brokers," Ajax said. "I know one," Tucker said. "He doesn't ask names. He shaves the price for the privilege." "Then he's ours." Ajax crouched and rolled the cloak closed over the pile. He tied it with two loops of cord and set his hand flat on the bundle. "Seven shares," he said. "We ride at first light. When we come back, we come back with tools, salt, and more steel. And we start building for real." Grayson spat to the side. "Agreed." One by one the rest gave it. Marco. Asher. Tucker. Chalam. Elara last, and only a nod, but the nod counted. Ajax lifted the bundle onto his shoulder. It was heavier than it looked. He carried it down to the walls himself and set it inside the gate. They had a road now. Two days east, and a broker who did not ask names, and a company that had chosen him with the coin still on the ground between them.