Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 350 of 619

The two Verath hides hung and crated by dawn. Rowan came to the hall still smelling of the north woods, bow across his back. Aldric bent over the largest hide, running a thumb along the grain. Tarron stood beside him, silent, judging the fleece with a shepherd's eye. Three days remained before the ship. The hold needed filling, and Ajax meant to know what else the woods could give him. "The teeth pulled clean," Aldric said. He set a row of them on the table, pale and curved. "Twelve to a beast. Aldric can cut needles from these that no port sells. The glands rendered to three vials of oil. That's a season's price in a jar." He tapped the ledger. "But two hides won't fill a hold. You need more." Ajax turned to Rowan. "How many more up there?" "Two fed and gone," Rowan said. "But the woods have shifted. Tracks I don't know." He did not soften it. "Something new moved in past the burned grove." Before Ajax could answer, the hall door opened and the Leafgift Dryad stepped inside. Her bark-brown skin caught the hearth light, and leaves shifted along her shoulders when she moved. Ajax had traded with her before; she came to repay old favors, never to ask. She carried no bundle this time. That meant a debt, not a gift. "You close doors," she said. "You kill what wakes beneath them. I owe you clean woods." She looked at the hanging hide, then at Rowan. "The tracks your hunter found are pale-fur. Two of them. They hunt my northern grove now. They carry hide worth more than any Verath." Tarron stepped closer to the hanging skin, then to the dryad. "Fur or leather?" he asked. "Fur," she said. "White as frost. It does not soak. A coat of it lasts three lifetimes." Tarron nodded once. "I can work that." He said nothing else. The subject was closed for him. Aldric shut his ledger. "Two pale-fur hides and two Verath in one hold. No master could name a fair price. He'd overpay just to say he saw them." He looked at Ajax. "But it's another hunt. Another two days from the walls, and the ship is three." Ajax weighed it. The Verath filled the hold. The pale-fur filled it with a story. A story brought the next ship, and the one after. That was the house he was building, not a raid but a name that carried on the water. "We take them," he said. He turned to the dryad. "Tell me where." She drew a line in the ash of the hearth with one long finger, a fork of two creeks north of the burned grove. Then she was gone through the door, leaves trailing. Ajax looked at Rowan. "You ride at first light. Same team. Chalam masks the sound." He set his father's blade on the table beside the teeth. The hunt was set. The next beasts had names now, and the water waited for them.