Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 472 of 619

Marcus sailed them home hard, and the ship slid through the hidden canal at dusk. Ajax climbed to his gate with salt still crusting his boots. He had reached the island first and left it standing empty behind him. Now he had to decide how to hold a walled town eight days across the sea before a merchant house sent its own hull. He called Aldric, Chalam, and Tucker to the hall table and spread the burned map flat. "Tell me what we're walking into," Ajax said. Aldric traced the two islands with one finger. He was the scholar who read old maps when no one else could, and he did not soften what he saw. "One town, walled, with grain. A second island bare. The merchant house wants the bare one for a storehouse port. If they land there, they'll see our lamps across the water. We can't hold one and ignore the other." "Then we take both," Ajax said. Chalam shook his head. The wizard set his staff across his knees. "I marked the gate. I'll know it from here. But eight days is far. If the water turns, I can't cut you free of trouble. And I can't be two places." Tucker leaned back and turned one of his gold chains in the lamplight. He had run more towns than any of them by buying rounds and listening. "Here's the thing," he said. "You don't need thirty men to hold an empty town. You need a face on the wall and grain in the storehouse. Send a small crew. Let the water do the guarding. The merchant house shows up, they see men already fed and dug in, and they think twice." Ajax weighed it. A full garrison would drain his walls at home and take three ships to move. A thin crew could sail on Marcus's hull with room to spare. "How many?" "Twelve," Tucker said. "Enough to man the wall and look like more. Rowan for the hunt so they eat fresh. A leader who won't crack alone out there." Aldric tapped the second island. "And a watch on this one. The day a merchant hull anchors, we want to see it before they see us." Ajax stood and set his hand flat on the paw mark carved into the center of the table. The plan held. Small crew, fast ship, the wall and the grain doing the work of numbers. "We sail in six days," he said. "Twelve men, Marcus at the helm, Rowan on the hunt. Grayson holds Black Oak. Chalam, you mark both islands before we go so we're never blind out there." He looked around the table. "We planted a wall on the coast with nothing but stone and gold. This one's already built. We just have to sit in it before someone else does." No one argued. Black Oak had reached past the sea, and now it meant to keep what it found.