Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 476 of 619

Bran returned on the tide, tools in hand, and the cracked inner rows began to close. But Ajax had a harder count than stone. The island held twenty men now. Black Oak, eight days south, had bled fighters to man the wall. Warriors he'd sworn and drilled for a year sat here instead of guarding his true home. He needed both places full, and he could not stretch one force across a sea. He called JD to the gate. The second reader had proven his worth twice over, sorting clean men from spies at the harbor tavern. JD's brother Marco held the Crossing gate far to the south. The two rarely worked apart, and Ajax saw the strain of it in JD's flat voice. "I need men for Black Oak, not just here," Ajax said. "Enough to fill Grayson's wall so my sworn fighters can come home to me." JD didn't soften it. "The harbor's thin. I read six clean these past days. Won't find twenty more in a tavern." He paused. "Marco could vet faster. But Marco's on the road south." Aldric came up the wharf steps with his ledger, grey hair catching the wind. He had counted Ajax's whole force before, and he counted it now. "You want a second home," the scholar said. "You cannot build one by emptying the first." That was the knot. Ajax had scattered his council across two lands, Marco east, JD north, his fighters split. His brotherhood was meant to answer to him, gathered under his roof, not spread thin as a rumor of a garrison. "Then we recruit for Grayson, not for me," Ajax said. "JD, find fighters bound for Black Oak's wall. Marcus sails them south with Bran when the mason's done. They train under Grayson. My sworn men ride home once the wall's full again." Aldric marked it in the ledger. "That fills Black Oak. It does not settle this rock." "This rock is held," Ajax said. "Twenty men and a mended wall hold it. I won't drain more of my council to keep it." He looked at JD. "When Black Oak's back to full strength, you and Marco come home too. I won't have my house cut in pieces across the water." JD read him a moment, the way he read every man. Then he nodded once. "Clean fighters for the south. I'll have them by the third tide." He went down the steps to the tavern. Aldric closed his book. "You chose the house over the map," he said. "The house is the map," Ajax said. By the third tide JD brought eight men, all read clean, all sworn to serve Grayson's wall. Marcus loaded them with Bran's finished tools and made ready to sail south. Black Oak would fill again. Ajax's council would gather back under one roof, and the island would hold with the men already on it.