Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 438 of 619

Ajax had four men sworn to ride south at dawn. He needed one more before he turned for home. Rowan was already off his horse, bent low over the mud where the four fighters had come and gone. The hunter moved slow along the bank, reading the ground the way Tucker read a face. Rowan straightened and pointed north. "Fresh tracks. One man. Half a day old." He touched a print with two fingers. "Heavy boot. Walks even, no limp. Carries a pack and a blade." "Alone?" Ajax asked. "Alone." Rowan crouched again and traced the trail with his eyes. "He stopped here. Drank. Filled a skin. Then went on." He looked up. "He knows this water. Comes back to it." Tucker leaned on his saddle and grinned. "A man who walks the wild alone and isn't dead yet. That's a man who can fight." He shook his wine skin. It was nearly empty. "Not much left to charm him with." Ajax looked at the tracks running north into the trees. A lone man, hard and careful, loyal to no lord. Exactly the kind he came to find. "Can you follow it?" "Already am." Rowan swung back onto his horse. He led them off the bank and into the pines, eyes down, saying nothing. Ajax and Tucker rode behind him. The trail bent along a ridge, then dropped toward a hollow. Rowan reined in and lifted a hand. He pointed through the trees. A thin line of smoke rose from a low fire. A man sat beside it, sharpening a long knife on a stone. He was big through the shoulders and arms. He had not heard them. "There," Rowan said, flat. "Your fifth man." Tucker slid down and pulled the last of the wine free. "Let me work. Same as before. You two hang back till I wave." He walked into the hollow with his hands loose and his chains bright in the firelight, calling out easy before the man could stand. Ajax waited in the trees with Rowan. He watched Tucker sit, pass the skin, lean in. The stranger kept the knife across his knee but did not raise it. After a while he laughed at something. Then Tucker went still, and the man leaned back and talked. Tucker raised his hand and waved them forward. Ajax walked in. The stranger stood. Ajax set his hand flat on the man's chest, felt the heart under it, and held his eye. "You answer to no lord out here," he said. "Come with me and you answer to me. Wages, a bed, a share, a wall worth holding." "His name's Ajax," Tucker said. "Black Oak. It's real. I checked." The man looked from Ajax to Rowan's lowered bow to Tucker's easy grin. "One wall?" "One," Ajax said. "Mine." The stranger sheathed his knife. "Then I'll ride." Five men. Ajax mounted and turned his horse south. His walls would hold now. Come dawn, they rode home. Ajax messaged Marco to meet him at Black Oak.