Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 352 of 619

Rowan and Chalam knelt over the two pale hides while Ajax stepped away into the dead trees. He slipped the bronze ring onto his finger and thought of Tucker at the gate. The ring carried a message one way, no reply. Ajax pictured the two beasts, the clean white fur, the frost-hard ground. He asked Tucker for word from Aldric on what to strip and save. The answer came slower than Ajax liked. He stood in the cold with his hand raised until the ring warmed. Tucker's voice arrived thin and dry, the way it always did through the working. Ajax had known Tucker since a campfire on the coast road, when the man tracked his mark and talked his way into the company. Tucker still spoke like a man selling something he already owned. "Aldric's here," Tucker's message ran. "He says the pale-fur is worth more whole than cut. Don't split the pelts. Take every tooth, root and all. The throat holds an oil gland like the Verath. Pack it in snow, not mud. Cold keeps it clean. Leave the meat. Bring the skulls if the horses can carry them." Ajax turned back to the hollow and passed the words to Rowan and Chalam. Rowan grunted and changed his cut, working the blade around the hide's edge instead of down the belly. "Whole, then," he said. "Aldric knows his beasts." He drew the pelt free in one piece, white and heavy, and laid it flat on the snow. Chalam found the throat glands under the jaw of each beast. He cut them loose and packed them in a sack of scraped snow, the way Tucker's message described. "Aldric's right about the cold," he said. "Mud would sour these by morning." He tied the sack shut and set it apart from the fire. Ajax pulled the teeth himself with the point of his father's blade, root and all, and dropped them clinking into a pouch. The skulls he lashed behind Rowan's saddle. Two hides, two sacks of gland, a pouch of teeth. He had what Aldric wanted and no more weight than the horses could bear. They rode south at first light. The dead woods gave way to living pine, then to the coast road Ajax knew by heart. By the second dusk the walls of Black Oak rose against the sea, the iron gate shut and dark. Torren called down from the blind. Grayson opened the gate, and Ajax led the horses through with the pale hides folded across their backs. Aldric met him in the yard before he dismounted. The scholar ran a hand along the nearest hide and did not speak at first. "Whole," he said finally. "Good. This is the piece that brings the second ship." He looked up at Ajax. "Now we have goods worth the master's silver." The hunt was done, and Black Oak had its cargo for the dock.