Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 328 of 619

The two carcasses lay bled and clean. Ajax wiped his father's blade and looked to Rowan. The tracker had not moved. He stood facing north, past the dead trees, listening. Ajax had learned to trust that silence. Rowan grew up among the dryads and read these woods as other men read a road. If something troubled him, it was real. "Speak," Ajax said. Rowan crouched and pressed his palm to the frost. "The ground is warm here. Not from the beasts." He pointed at a track wider than any they had killed. Three toes, deep, dragging a long line behind it. "This is fresh. Bigger than both. It has been circling us." Chalam knelt and set his staff against the print. The wood hummed low. His jaw tightened. "It carries a binding signature," he said. "Old. Older than the beasts we took." He looked up. "Something bound this thing once. The binding is failing." Ajax felt the cold move through him. He had come for two beasts and had them. His vault would fill. But a third thing stalked these woods, and it had watched them work. "Where," he said. Rowan rose and followed the drag with his eyes. "North. Slow. It waits for us to grow careless." He nocked an arrow without being told. "It hunts by sound, like the shell-back. But it is patient. It let us kill the small ones." The hired hunters gripped their spears and watched the tree line. Ajax made his choice. He would not leave a failing binding at his back. If it broke loose, it would follow them home to Black Oak. "We find it," Ajax said. "Now. Before dark." Rowan led. He moved without a sound, reading bent roots and turned soil. A quarter mile on he stopped and raised his fist. Ahead, the ground bulged. Something breathed beneath the frost. A ridge of gray hide broke the surface, then sank. Chalam crushed his last flowers and threw them wide. "It smells the grove," he whispered. "It will rise to feed." The earth split. A long neck lifted, blind and searching, its mouth ringed with teeth. It was twice the size of the shell-back. Rowan loosed one arrow into the soft throat. The beast swung toward the strike. Ajax ran in low, drove his father's blade up through the open mouth, and twisted. The thing shuddered and collapsed into its own pit. Chalam pressed his staff to the fallen head. The hum died. "Gone," he said. "The binding with it." Rowan pulled his arrow free and looked north once more. "Quiet now," he said. "Truly quiet." Ajax stood over three carcasses instead of two. A larger hide, worth more silver than both beasts together. He wiped the blade clean. The dead woods held nothing more. "Load all three," he said. "We ride at dawn."