Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 335 of 619

The stone carver finished the vine work in the bar and moved through the baths and the lodging rooms, one wall at a time. By the fourth day he stood at the bunkhouse door with his chisel and looked back at Ajax, waiting for orders. The bunkhouse was plain stone and rough bunks. Traders never saw it, but the hired men slept there, and cold men worked slow and left when the thaw came. Ajax needed them to stay. "Carve it too," Ajax told the carver. Then he called Grayson, Tucker, and Aldric to walk the room with him. Grayson crossed the threshold first and pressed a hand to the wall. "Cold," he said. "No hearth. Men won't stay warm on wall duty and then sleep in a box like this." He said nothing more, but he ran his thumb along a gap in the stone where the wind came through. Aldric walked the length of the bunkhouse and counted the bunks. He stopped at the far end. "Twelve beds and one lamp," he said. "They can't see to mend their own coats at night. Put a second hearth here and lamps on the posts. A man who can dry his boots stays. A man with wet boots walks." Tucker leaned in the doorway with his arms crossed. He wore his two gold chains and knew the room was beneath him, but he had slept in worse. "Give them a table and stools," he said. "Somewhere to eat and throw dice off duty. A man alone on a cold bunk counts the days till spring. A man at a table forgets to count." He grinned. "That's how you keep a crew without a chain around its neck." Ajax looked at the four bare walls. The carver's vines would make it pretty. But pretty did not warm a man. He weighed what each of them had said. "Do it all," Ajax said. "Second hearth at the far wall. Lamps on every post. A long table down the middle with stools. Wool ticks on the bunks, not straw. And the carver marks the walls last, once the hearth is set." Bran and the masons worked two days. They cut a flue through the back wall and raised a second hearth of squared stone. Lamps went up on the posts. The long table filled the center, and the carver ran his leaf work along the beams above it. Tarron sent down wool ticks for every bunk. On the third night Ajax stood in the doorway. Two fires burned. The hired men sat at the table with hot food and dry boots, the silver-chained 8 among them, laughing over a game. The room held warmth now, and the men held with it. But the second hearth ate wood fast, and the woodpile behind the kitchen had shrunk to half. Ajax counted the split logs and knew it would not last the winter.