Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 437 of 619

Ajax rode north with Tucker and Rowan for a day and a half. He needed five men to hold his walls, and the port had given him nothing but debtors and liars. The wild lands were his last ground to fish. Tucker knew towns. But out here, past the maps, Rowan knew the land itself. Ajax had brought his hunter for that reason. Rowan rode point with his bow across his back. He was the man Ajax had taken from the dryads, raised in groves and quiet with strangers. He read tracks the way Tucker read a room. On the second morning he reined in and pointed at the mud. "Four men. Two days old. Heading to the same water we are." "Camps?" Ajax asked. "Living rough. No lord's road under them." Rowan slid off his horse and touched a bootprint. "Deep heel. They carry weight. Fighters, not farmers." Tucker grinned and swung down. "Then I'll go say hello. Men in the wild always want a drink and a reason." He pulled a skin of plum wine from his saddle and shook it. His gold chains caught the sun. "You two stay back. Nobody trusts three armed strangers walking in together." Ajax let him go. Tucker crossed the clearing to the far treeline alone, calling out easy, offering the skin before he showed his hands empty. Ajax waited in the pines with Rowan and watched. Four men came out slow. Rough coats, plain steel, hard faces. Tucker sat on a log with them and passed the wine. Ajax could not hear the words, only the shape of it. Tucker leaned in, laughed, went still, let them lean back. After a while he raised one hand and waved Ajax forward. Ajax walked in. The four men stood. He did not speak of oaths first. He set his hand flat on the biggest man's chest, felt the heartbeat, and looked him in the eye the way he looked over every recruit. "You answer to no lord out here," Ajax said. "Come with me and you answer to me. Wages, a bed, a share, and a wall worth holding." "He's not lying," Tucker said, easy. "I checked the wine first." Rowan came out of the pines behind Ajax, bow lowered. His presence closed the ring without a threat. The biggest man looked at the three of them, then at his own. "How many walls?" he asked. "One," Ajax said. "Mine. Black Oak." They talked terms until the wine ran low. All four agreed to ride south at dawn and swear the chain at the fire. Four men, not five. But four fighters pulled from open country, loyal to no lord, was more than the port had given him in a month. Ajax mounted. "One more," he told Tucker. "Then we go home." Rowan was already reading the mud for the next set of prints.