Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 427 of 619

The ship sailed north, and Ajax's mind turned inland. He had a water route now. He wanted more. The Crossing lay half a day east of the port, a walled market town run by traders. Ajax had struck a deal there for steel and grain. He wanted to survey the city beyond it and learn what else the road might feed his house. At dawn he took Tucker Hoskins and Marco Valentino, both of whom knew the town, and Chalam Othworld, whose staff would warn him of any binding on the road. They rode east into open country. Tucker rode easy, chains flat on his bare chest. He had worked more towns than any man Ajax knew. "City's bigger than the Crossing," he said. "Ten times the traders. But every one of them talks. You show your face there, someone remembers it." "That's why we look and don't buy," Ajax said. "I want to see the shape of it." Marco said nothing for a while. He rode with his head tilted, listening past the wind. Then he pulled his horse up short. "Stop." Ajax reined in. "What." "The Crossing gatekeeper." Marco's gold bracelet caught the light as he pointed toward the town wall ahead. "His men are on the road past the gate. Six of them, waiting. One's thinking about our cart runs. He wants to count how many of us pass." Chalam set his staff across his saddle. "No binding out here. Only men." Ajax weighed it. The gatekeeper controlled who prospered through the Crossing. He held the road to the city beyond. If Ajax rode past the wall and let the man's watchers count his party, the gatekeeper would learn Ajax scouted a market outside his own. That would sour the steel and grain deal Ajax needed through winter. He made the call. "We stop at the Crossing. We don't ride past it." Tucker grinned. "Cheaper than a fight." They stopped at the Crossing's lodging house inside the wall. Ajax kept his party small and quiet. Tucker bought a round in the tavern and traded easy talk for news. Marco sat near, listening to the room without a word. By dusk Tucker came back to the table. "City's rich," he said. "But the gatekeeper taxes the whole road to it. Nobody reaches that market without his cut." Ajax turned it over. He had come to survey the city. Instead he had learned the truth of the ground: the gatekeeper stood between him and everything east. His inland reach ran only as far as this one man allowed. "Then we reward the men who got us this far," Ajax said. He waved the lodge keeper over and paid for two of the alluring room workers. He gave one to Marco, one to Tucker. "You earned it. The city can wait." Tucker raised his cup. Ajax had his answer now. Before he took the city, he had to break the gatekeeper's hold on the road.