Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 359 of 619

The young trees stood in their row by the west wall. Ajax had the fruit coming and the books open, but no man who could turn a grape into wine a captain would buy. He gathered the ones who might solve it. Aldric came with the brewing book. Chalam came with his staff. Rowan came from the pens, hands still smelling of the flock. Aldric set the book on the table and tapped a page. "Beer first," he said. "Barley is simple. Grind it, steep it, let it work with yeast. I can read the steps. Marco brings me a captain's tastes, I match the brew to them." He looked up. "Wine is harder. The fruit must ripen full, or the wine turns sour. And the trees bear in a season, not a month." "Then we make beer now and wine later," Ajax said. "But the trees need to bear before the season ends, or we pour nothing worth silver." Chalam knelt at the row. He pressed his palm to the soil and was quiet. "The ward holds," he said. "The roots took." He crushed a young leaf between his fingers. "I can push them. Grove-grown roots answer a charm. But it costs." He held up two fingers. "Two vials, spent in order. It will strip a season of growth into ten days. No more after that." "Do it," Ajax said. Chalam opened the first vial and spoke over the row. The soil darkened. Green shoots climbed the bare branches while they watched. By the time he opened the second, the nearest tree stood shoulder-high and thick with hard green fruit. Rowan walked the row. He touched a leaf, smelled it, pinched a plum still small and firm. "These need more sun than your wall gives," he said flatly. "Move them ten paces out. And the water pools at the roots. It will rot them before they ripen." He crouched and dug a shallow channel with his hand. "Cut a trench like this to each tree. Drain it toward the stream." "You know fruit?" Ajax asked. "Dryads grow it," Rowan said. "I ate it before I ate meat." By dusk the trees stood in open ground, trenched and draining. The fruit was setting fast, apple and pear and plum and berry, hard but true. Aldric mashed a fistful of barley in a crock and set it by the hearth to work. "Beer in a month," he said. "Wine when the fruit falls ripe. Twenty days, with what Chalam did." Ajax stood over the row. He had the trees bearing, the beer working, and Rowan's hands to keep the fruit alive. But he still had no brewer who had ever made a wine a captain would name. He turned to Aldric. "Find me the fruit-grower in the next valley," he said. "Bring him here before the plums drop."