Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 474 of 619

Eight days of open water put Ajax on the island's stone wharf at dawn. The walled town rose gray above the harbor, empty and waiting. He had fourteen men to make it look held. Marcus Tidewater tied off the hull himself, the captain who had sailed them north without one wrong turn. "Land's yours," he said, and stepped back to let Ajax count them onto the dock. Ajax walked the wall first. It ran the whole rim of the town, chest-high in most places, taller near the gate. Good stone, old work, still sound. But a wall did nothing without men on it. He climbed the steps and looked down at his crew waiting in the yard. Nine sworn. Four hired. Rowan with his bow. Tucker leaned on the parapet and turned a chain in the light. He had held more towns than any of them, and he knew how empty walls fooled a watcher. "Space them wide," he said. "One man every stretch, walking. From a boat it reads like forty. Bunch them and it reads like fear." Ajax took the count. He put the four hired men on the harbor side where any rival sail would first appear, one to each stretch, told to walk and never stand still. His nine sworn he split between the gate and the landward wall, the ground that mattered. Rowan he sent up the tallest point above the gate. "Why the height?" Ajax asked him. "See the water two ways from here," Rowan said. He did not explain more. He nocked an arrow, set it down, and marked the sight lines with his eyes. "And I hunt off the north slope. Deer sign there. I'll feed us without touching the grain." Chalam laid his hand flat on the gate stone and spoke low over it. The wizard had marked both islands before they sailed, so Black Oak would know at once if either fell. "Wall's clean," he said, straightening. "No old working in it. Nothing under the town but rock and cellars." By midday the positions held. Ajax named the gate to Tucker and the harbor watch to Marcus, since the captain read water better than any of them. He gave Rowan the north slope and the high point both. The four hired men walked their stretches, chains hidden, silent as sworn. He stood at the gate and looked at his own work. Fourteen men, spread to look like a garrison. It would hold as long as no one landed and tested it. "It's held," Ajax said. "Now we make it true." He had come north for a town and taken it with a crew that could sit. The brotherhood answered to him on land no lord had claimed. The wall was manned.