Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 38 of 619

Ajax left camp before the others woke. He rolled his blanket, took bread and a water skin, and walked past the picket line. Grayson lifted his head from his saddle. Ajax showed him one open hand and shook his head once. Grayson lowered his head again. Ajax led his horse up the slope on foot until the pines closed behind him, then mounted and rode inland. He did not want a farewell. A group of seven leaves tracks a scout can read. One man alone leaves a rumor. He rode two days south along a game trail that kept him off the coast road. He watered the horse at a shallow creek and slept one night without a fire. On the second dusk he came to a clearing ringed with birch and stopped where the ground was soft. He unbuckled Chalam's flute from his belt. The wizard had pressed it into his palm before he left, short and clipped. Blow three times. Wait. She may come. She may not. Ajax blew three times. The sound was thin and did not carry far. He sat on a fallen log and waited. She came out of the birch without noise. Her skin was the color and grain of bark. A dress of broad leaves hung from her shoulders to her ankles. She carried a bundle of pink flowers in one hand as if she had been gathering when the call reached her. Ajax had seen her before, at the seat, when she told him whose blood would open it. She looked at him now the way she had then, as if he were a young thing she pitied. "You are far from the sea," she said. "I need to know about a stone hall inland. Spiral iron on the doors. A man sits at the center." She set the flowers on the log beside him. "I know the place. My sisters have lost trees to his diggers for a long time." "Tell me how it stands." She knelt and drew in the dirt with a bark finger. "One gate. South wall. The other three walls sit against a cliff his masons cut back into. No windows on the ground floor. The doors are iron worked in spirals. Cold iron. My kind cannot cross it." "Guards?" "Twelve on the wall in daylight. Fewer at the third watch. He keeps his hunters underground. There is a well in the courtyard that goes down further than a well should." "Weakness." "The well. The water comes from a spring my sisters know. Foul the spring and he must open the gate for water carts within three days." She looked up. "He is not a god. He wears iron because he wants to be one." Ajax memorized the map in the dirt. He gave her the last of his bread. She took it and walked back into the birch. He had a road in. He rode north to find his men.