Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 440 of 619

At dawn the new men drilled in the yard. Ajax watched twenty-eight swords move under Grayson's count. The wall was covered. But the bunkhouse was not. Twenty-eight fighters and workers slept in the bunkhouse. Ajax called his council to the hall. Aldric came with his ledger already open. The scholar had kept Black Oak's count since the first thaw. He set the book flat and turned it so Ajax could read. "Nineteen fighters below, workers above," he said. "You've added nine men since. The floor's full. Bodies pressed to bodies." "Then we build a second bunkhouse next to it," Ajax said. "Same as the first. One for warriors. One for workers. Make all of the beds of wool in both. Not straw.” Grayson nodded once. "Fighters near the gate and the arms. Workers apart. Keeps loose talk from the canal." "That's the easy part," Aldric said. He tapped the ledger. "Twenty-eight men is a garrison now. A wall with a low gate and no killing ground behind it. If someone breaches, they're straight into the yard." Tucker leaned on the table, gold chains catching the morning light. He had ridden the wild lands with Ajax for weeks and looked tired of it. "I've seen towns fall," he said. "They never fall at the wall. They fall inside it. Once men are through the gate, a wall means nothing." Ajax turned to him. "So how do we fortify further?" Tucker shrugged. "Build a second wall behind the first. Split the yard. Traders and workers on the outer side. Your sworn men and the vault on the inner. If the gate breaks, they hit a second door. And you decide who crosses it." Grayson considered. "An inner ward. One gate through it. Guarded day and night." Aldric ran his finger down a page. "We have the stone. We have Chalam's staff to cut it. We have Bran to build it." He looked up. "Two bunkhouses and an inner wall is ten days' work, maybe eight." "Do it," Ajax said. "Second bunkhouse first, so the men sleep. Then the inner wall. Fighters and vault inside. Workers, traders, and the canal path outside." Bran cut and squared stone through the week. Chalam sheared blocks with his staff until his hands shook. The second bunkhouse rose in three days. Ajax moved the workers into it and left the fighters below the first. Then the inner wall went up, chest-high, then higher, ringing the vault and the fighters' hall. By the eighth day the gate through it hung on iron. Grayson set two sworn men to hold it every hour. Ajax stood in the inner ward at dusk. His stronghold had two skins now. A stranger through the outer gate would face a second wall and a second door. His vault, his fighters, and his secrets sat behind both. Grayson came to his shoulder. "Hard to take now," he said. "Harder still soon," Ajax said. "Thirty men. Two walls. This holds against a merchant house's swords. That's what we build for next."