Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 392 of 619

The new vault held the northern silver, but Ajax already saw the next wall closing in. He stood at the sealed door with Aldric and Chalam the morning after the ship came. The silver was one hold. More ships meant more silver. If sea trade grew, this vault would fill within a season. He needed a deeper, bigger vault, and he needed the answer now. "Show me the hill," Ajax said. Aldric led them behind the gatehouse. He carried his ledger under one arm, his green tunic dark with the morning damp. He set a hand flat on the stone. "The vault cuts three paces into the hill," he said. "Cut deeper and you break through here." He pointed low. "The spring runs behind. Water floods the coin. Silver stays dry or it turns to nothing." Ajax knew the spring. It fed the cellars already. It had capped his wine at sixteen vats. Now it capped his gold too. Chalam pressed his palm to the wall. He kept it there a long moment. His staff leaned against his shoulder, and his robe hung open at the chest. "He's right," Chalam said. "The water sits close. My staff can cut, but I can't move water. Cut into it and you drown the vault." "Then not the hill," Ajax said. "We go down. Under the gatehouse floor. Straight down, past the spring." Aldric wrote a line. He stopped. "Below the spring the rock is dry," he said. "That could hold. But you sink a shaft through solid stone, then chamber it wide at the bottom. That's a well dug for coin, not water." "Can you do it?" Ajax asked Chalam. Chalam looked at the floor as if he could see through it. "Down is slow," he said. "I cut down, the rock falls where I stand. I'd have to lift each block out by hand after. Days, not one night. And the staff dulls. I lose clear days after each cut." "How many days total?" "Six," Chalam said. "Maybe seven. A shaft, then a chamber wide as the hall. Iron door at the top so no man drops in." Aldric shut the ledger. "It works," he said. "Dry rock. Below the water. Twice the room of the new vault, and room to cut wider later." He looked at Ajax. "It buries the coin under the gate. No wall to breach. A man would have to take the whole house to reach it." Ajax set his hand on the floor where the shaft would go. "Start today," he said. "Grayson holds the hatch while it's open. No hired man past the gatehouse." Chalam took up his staff. Bran's masons came with rope and buckets. Seven days later the shaft ran deep under the gate. Iron door at the top, two keys. A chamber below, dry and wide, empty and waiting. The northern silver went down first. Ajax had his deep vault. Now the sea could bring all it carried, and Black Oak would hold it.