Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 355 of 619

Aldric woke Ajax before dawn. The finished coats lay across the bench, cut and sewn from the pale-fur hides. Ajax rose stiff but loose, the ache from Grayson's oil worked out of his arms. He carried the goods to the hall table, where his men were already gathered for breakfast. Aldric laid the new wares out one by one. Two pale-fur coats, glove sets, a row of bone needles, and stoppered vials of gland oil. Grayson set down his cup and looked over the spread. Tucker leaned in, dry-eyed, counting it in his head the way he counted a bar's take. "That's the master's price met," Aldric said. "His ship holds twice this. We fill half." Ajax stopped. Half a hold would sell, but a half-empty ship told a poor story. The corner master would carry that word to every dock he touched. "How long until he comes?" "Two days," Aldric said. "Kael signals when he sees the sail." Two days. Ajax turned it over. "Then we have time to get more." He looked to Rowan. "What's still in the woods?" Rowan had come in from the cold, bow still on his shoulder. He set it against the wall. "Two Verath north," he said. "Half a day. Fresh sign this morning." He did not soften it. "We ride now, we're back tomorrow night. Skin here." Grayson frowned. "You pull hunters, the wall goes thin." He spoke to the gate first, always. "Master comes early, we're short at the slits." "Then we ride light," Ajax said. "Rowan, Chalam, and me. Three men. You hold the gate with the rest." Grayson weighed it. He had refused to kneel from the first day, and he would say his piece before he agreed. "Three's thin for two Verath." "Three killed the last," Rowan said. Flat. He did not argue past it. Grayson looked at Ajax a moment longer, then nodded once. "Ride hard. Be back before the sail." Tucker turned a bone needle in his fingers. "Two whole Verath hides beside pale-fur," he said. "He'll not just fill his hold. He'll tell the next three masters what he saw." He set the needle down. "That's worth the ride." Ajax gathered his father's blade and the scent-masking oil. They rode out by full light, three men north toward the burned grove. They found the Verath by their four-toed prints and killed both by dusk of the second day, Rowan's arrow first, Ajax's blade through the mouth. They skinned the hides whole in the cold and rode home through the night. At the gate, Kael's signal already burned on the cliff. The sail was in sight. Ajax hauled the two Verath hides through the canal and hung the larger one whole in the hall beside the pale-fur coats. The ship's hold would fill now, and full. Black Oak had its first cargo, and a story to sail south with it.