Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 362 of 619

Ajax rode home with three great pelts and a full hold. But the master's ship did not come at dawn. It came late, and the captain who stepped onto the dock brought news instead of silver first. Aldric met him at the workhouse, then found Ajax by the vault. "He talks of a city to the north," Aldric said. He kept his voice low. "One I have never mapped. He swears it is real." That word stopped Ajax cold. A city meant walls, lords, and taxes. It meant men who might buy his goods or come to take his dock. He needed two answers before he did anything. What sat in that city. And how far it lay from his gate. He brought Tucker down to the bar to work the captain. Tucker poured the man dark beer and leaned on the counter, gold chains catching the lamp. "Long haul from the north," Tucker said. "Cold up there, I hear." He said it like he already knew, and the captain filled the silence. The captain drank and talked. A city stood eight days' sail up the coast, he said. Stone harbor. A hundred ships. A council of merchant houses ran it, no king. They paid well for rare goods and asked no questions about where a man got them. Tucker caught Ajax's eye and gave a small nod. The man told it true. Ajax stepped closer. "Eight days by ship," he said. "How far by land?" "No road worth riding," the captain said. "The coast breaks up. You go by water or not at all." Aldric spread a worn chart on the bar. He set a finger where the coast bent north and tapped once. "Here," he said. "It fits the old fragment I carry. The distance matches. Eight days with a fair wind." He looked up at Ajax. "That is your answer. A trade city, not a threat. Too far to march an army to your gate." Ajax weighed it. A rich city, run by merchants, eight days out. It could not send men to break his walls before he heard them coming. But it could send ships to buy. His three rare hides had a market now, and it was bigger than one captain's hold. "They buy hides like mine?" Ajax asked. "Whole houses would fight over them," the captain said. "You could clear a season's silver in one sale." Ajax touched his father's chain. The city to the north was real, eight days by sea, and safe from his land. That closed the question that had gnawed at him. But it opened a larger one. He had a market for his goods and no ship of his own to reach it. "Aldric," he said. "We need our own hull. Find me a shipwright." Aldric folded the chart. "That is a bigger hunt than any beast," he said. But he was already thinking on it.