Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 452 of 619

At first light the ship left the dock. Marcus stood at the wheel and took them south along the coast Ajax had never charted. Rowan sat in the bow, watching the shore slide past. Kael checked his knife twice. Chalam held the jar of grove oil in his lap. Ajax stood beside Marcus and watched black cliffs give way to gray sand. By midday they reached the rocky water Marcus had marked. He dropped anchor where the swell broke soft. "Row in from here," Marcus said. He nodded at the small boat lashed to the deck. "I hold the ship. You have until dusk." Rowan and Kael lowered the boat. Chalam climbed in with his satchel. Ajax took the second oar himself. The four men pulled for shore while Marcus stayed at anchor. The surf caught them and shoved the boat onto wet sand. Kael leapt out and dragged the bow up. They stood on ground no chart showed. Rowan crouched at once. He pressed his fingers to the sand, then to a strip of pale grass above the tide line. "Coast bends east here," he said. "Fresh water runs down that cut." He pointed at a dark seam in the low bluff. "Something drinks from it." Ajax pulled a strip of charcoal and a folded hide from his belt. He knelt and began to draw. The line of the shore. The rocky water where the ship sat. The cut where water ran. Rowan named the shapes and Ajax marked them. A stand of dead pine. A shelf of black stone. A cove that curled south out of sight. Each thing Rowan found, Ajax set on the hide. Chalam walked the tide line with his staff low. "No binding here," he said. "No old work in this ground. This coast is clean." He sounded almost surprised. Kael stayed at Ajax's shoulder, eyes on the tree line. He said nothing until Rowan stopped at the mouth of the cut. Then Kael crouched fast and touched the mud. "Tracks," he said. One word, flat. Rowan came and read them. Wide prints, four-toed, a drag behind. He measured one with his hand. "Big," he said. "Two of them. Came down to drink last night. They went back into the trees." He looked up at Ajax. "They'll come again at dusk." Ajax marked the cut on his hide with a hard stroke. He looked at the dead pines, the black shelf, the cove that ran out of sight. He had wanted a wreck and a gamble. Now he held a map, drawn true, of a shore no port knew. Beasts waited in the trees, and he knew where they drank. "We row back to the ship," Ajax said. "We eat. We come at dusk when they walk down to the water." He rolled the hide and tied it. The coast was mapped. The tracks were found. The hunt had a place to begin.