Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 453 of 619

At dusk the four men crouched at the mouth of the cut. Ajax had rowed them back to the ship at midday, fed them, and returned when the light went low. Now the tide crept up the wet sand. Rowan lay flat behind a dead pine, his bow strung and an arrow across his knuckles. Chalam knelt to Ajax's left with a jar of grove oil open in his lap. Kael waited on the right, knife drawn, eyes fixed on the tree line. Ajax held his father's blade low and watched the seam where the water ran down. Chalam dipped two fingers in the oil and dragged them across each man's boots. "They hunt by sound," he said. "This masks your step. Do not speak once they come down." His voice stayed flat. He capped the jar and set it in the sand. Rowan lifted one hand. He pointed at the dark under the trees. "Two," he whispered. "Down together." Then he said nothing more. The beasts came out of the pines slow. They were tall, gray-furred, wide at the shoulder, and they walked on four thick legs with a drag behind. They put their heads to the water and drank. Ajax breathed through his mouth and did not move. Rowan drew. The bowstring made no sound Ajax could hear. The arrow took the first beast in the throat, above the shoulder, and it reared. Ajax broke from cover and ran. The beast swung its head down at him. He drove his father's blade up into the open mouth and pushed until the hilt struck teeth. The beast dropped and pinned his boot in the sand. The second turned on Kael. Kael did not step back. His knife was already in his hand. He slashed the beast's nose, then rolled under its jaw as it snapped. Chalam struck the ground with his staff and roots burst up around the beast's forelegs. It fought the roots and could not run. Rowan put a second arrow behind its ear. Ajax pulled his boot free, crossed the sand, and finished it through the eye. Both beasts lay still. The tide washed pink around them. Ajax stood over the kills, chest heaving, blade dripping in his fist. No man was cut. He looked at Rowan, at Kael, at Chalam, and none of them had a mark. "Skin them here, take the teeth," Ajax said. "Fast. We row before full dark." Rowan knelt at the first carcass with his knife. "Belly hide's clean," he said. "Both of them. Good as the pale-fur." Kael wiped his blade on his leg and set to dragging the second beast up the sand. Ajax rolled his father's blade in a cloth. He had gambled on a shore no chart knew, and it had paid. Two whole hides of a beast no port had ever seen. He looked past the surf to where Marcus held the ship at anchor. A new coast lay open, it fed his house and would provide lucrative items.