Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 402 of 619

The ship sailed home at dawn with the silver crated in the hold. Ajax stood at the rail as the northern harbor shrank behind them. The route was set. But eight days at sea gave a man time to think, and one thought would not leave him. The merchant city sat far up the coast. If a storm broke his hull, or the sea turned against him, he had one port to run to and no other. He needed to know the land. He needed to know the nearest city he could reach on foot if the water failed him. He found Marco at the bow, wind in his open collar, the gold chain bright at his throat. Marco had ridden with Ajax since the wild lands, and he heard men's thoughts the way other men heard voices. He turned before Ajax spoke. "You're asking what's inland," Marco said. "Not the port. A city a man could walk to." Ajax nodded. "If I lose the ship, I don't want to be stuck at a dock I can't leave." Tucker came up the deck with a captain's chart rolled under his arm. He had spent two nights in the harbor bars, buying rounds and letting sailors talk. His chains caught the light as he crouched and spread the chart across a crate. "Asked around," Tucker said. "Sailors know the water. But one old hand drank enough to talk land." He tapped a mark east of the harbor. "Half a day inland by road. A market town, walled. They call it the crossing." Marco leaned over the chart. His face went still, the way it did when he weighed a thing. "He wasn't lying," Marco said. "He'd been there. Sold hides once." Ajax studied the mark. A walled town, half a day from the water, on a road any man could walk. "Who runs it?" "No king," Tucker said. "Same as the port. Traders and a council. They take a toll at the gate and ask nothing after." He rolled the chart tighter. "A man could land, walk in, and vanish. No one there knows Black Oak." That settled it. If the sea ever failed him, Ajax had a road and a town at the end of it. He would not be trapped between water and rock. He could reach dry ground and disappear into a place that asked no names. "Mark it on Aldric's map when we land," Ajax said. "The crossing. Half a day east of the harbor." He looked north again, where the port lay behind them. "Now I know the water and the land both." Marco tapped the rail once. Truth. Ajax had settled it in his own mind. The route north was no longer a single thread over open sea. It had a second road behind it, and that road led to men he had not yet met. Men who might one day wear his steel.