Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 47 of 619

By midday the camp had settled into the shape Ajax set the night before. Asher rode back from the tree line with an armload of deadfall and stacked it near the fire without speaking. He did not look at Marco. He did not sit within twenty paces of him. He fed the fire, then walked to the far watch stone and sat. Grayson watched him go, then walked to Ajax at the creek. "He's doing what you told him," Grayson said. "Watched him all morning." "And Marco?" "Front of the line at dawn. He's steady." Grayson scratched his beard. "I was going to gut the man last night. I'll say it plain. But he came back in daylight. He took the terms. That counts for something." Ajax nodded. He had thought the same thing an hour ago and hated himself a little for it. A man who admitted the whole ugly thing was still a man who did it. But the ride was long, and cold hate was a heavy thing to carry two days southeast. Before dusk the wrenleaf gnome came up the creek path on his prowler with a bundle wrapped in oiled cloth. He set it on the flat stone by the fire and stepped back. Chalam knelt and folded the cloth open. Six blades lay across the stone, dark iron with pale edges that caught the low light wrong, as if the light bent past them and kept going. "She kept her word," Chalam said. "Three days, six blades. The edges cut cold iron. Not steel, not stone. Cold iron only. Strike a man with these on ordinary mail and you have a heavy knife, nothing more. Strike the spiral doors and they open." "How does she know they'll open?" Grayson asked. "Because she forged the doors," Chalam said. "Or her line did. She would not say which." Ajax lifted one blade. It weighed less than it should. He set it down and looked at Chalam. "And you?" Chalam opened his satchel. Five vials sat in the loops, each one full, the liquid inside steady and clear. "Full," he said. "The gnome brought the last two this morning. I did not use the fourth or fifth. I will not open them out of order." "Five vials, six blades, seven men," Grayson said. "That's the count we ride with." Ajax gave one blade to Grayson, one to Chalam to hold, and set four aside for the others. Asher's would go to him at the door, not before. He looked across the fire. Asher had come back from the watch stone and was helping the gnome water his prowler. He worked quietly and did not push in. "Two days southeast," Ajax said. "We ride at dawn." Grayson slid the blade through his belt. "Dawn."