Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 445 of 619

Kael held the gate steady after that night. The wine matter closed. But a larger door opened three days later, when Marco rode in from the Crossing with two of his sworn men and a plan. Marco held the eastern gate for Ajax now. He had ridden the whole road east more than once. He wanted to ride the last stretch of it, past the Crossing, all the way to the wealthy city beyond. Marco found Ajax in the hall with Tucker and Chalam. He did not sit. He set both hands flat on the carved table. "I've watched the traders count coin at my gate all winter," Marco said. "They pay a tenth to reach a city we've never seen. I want to see it." Tucker leaned back with his cup. "A city that pays for rare goods and asks no names," he said. "Sounds like every town I've ever liked." Chalam spoke plainly. "We know the road as far as the gate. Past it, nothing. No map. No count of their walls or their men." He tapped his staff once on the stone. "That is a risk." Ajax weighed it. Marco read minds and caught lies. Tucker loosened tongues in any bar. Chalam could read a binding or cut stone if trouble came. Three men who had built his northern trade from nothing. Idle now, all of them, while the road east stayed a blank line on Aldric's map. His arc had always been to grow the brotherhood outward, to answer to no lord. A city no lord ruled was worth the walk. "I'll go with you," Ajax said. "All four of us. We ride as traders, not fighters. Two carts of cloth and needles. We pay the tenth like anyone and we look." Marco's jaw eased. "The gatekeepers on the road count heads. They'll mark us." "Let them count four traders with goods to sell," Ajax said. "That's all they'll see." They left at dawn. Grayson held Black Oak. They passed the Crossing gate, where Marco's two men waved them through without a word. Beyond it the road ran flat and open, farther east than any of them had gone. By dusk the second day they crested a low rise and saw it: a city sprawled below, walls high, smoke rising from a hundred fires, a market gate wide enough for six carts abreast. Marco stared down at it. "No banner," he said. "No king's mark on the gate." Tucker grinned. "My kind of place." They paid the tenth at the market gate and rode in. No one asked their names. Ajax watched the crowds, the stalls heavy with northern goods, the traders with coin in every fist. His hides and needles would sell here for triple the port's price. He had found the market. Marco would begin to read the thoughts nearby.