Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 391 of 619

The ship slid into the canal and stopped. Ajax stood on the stone lip with a lamp. Marcus's four sailors hauled the first crate onto the dock. Silver rang inside it. Ajax opened the lid and looked at northern coin stacked to the brim. His plan had worked. Now came the next problem. Every crate had to leave the dock and reach the vault before dawn, and the vault could not hold it. Grayson came down the canal path, silver chain bright on his bare chest. He held the second vault key. "Where does it go?" he asked. No greeting. He never gave one. "My chamber," Ajax said. "Under your guard. We stack it there while we make room." Aldric arrived behind him, ledger open. He did not look at the silver. He looked at the vault door in the gatehouse wall. "Won't fit," he said. "The vault holds coin and gold already. Add this and the door won't close." "Then we make the vault bigger," Ajax said. Aldric wrote a line and stopped. "Three times the size, at least. The northern silver is only the first hold. More ships come." He tapped the ledger. "You cut the chamber deeper into the gatehouse wall, you weaken the gate itself." "So we go the other way. Into the hill behind it." Ajax turned to Grayson. "Chalam cuts the stone. You hold the door while it's open. No hired man walks past." Grayson nodded once. He set two sworn men at the canal mouth and took the vault door himself. Chalam came at Ajax's call, robe open, staff in hand. He looked at the silver, then at the wall. "You want it wide," he said. It was not a question. "Three times," Ajax said. "By dawn." Chalam pressed his palm to the gatehouse stone. "The rock behind is soft. I can cut it. But cutting fast dulls the staff, and I lose a day of clear work after." He said it plainly, the way he said everything that cost him. "You'll have your room. I'll be no use tomorrow." "Do it," Ajax said. The men worked through the dark. Chalam's staff sheared blocks from the hill and Bran's masons dragged them clear. Sailors carried the silver crate by crate into Ajax's chamber and stacked it against the wall. By the third hour the new vault stood open, three times the old, raw stone still warm from the cutting. Grayson set the iron door back on its hinges and turned both keys. The silver went in. Aldric counted every crate into the ledger and closed it. "Full," Aldric said. "And half again empty for the next ship." Ajax looked at the sealed door. He had the silver, the room, and the route north. His house could arm and feed itself for years now, no raid, no lord above him.