Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 478 of 619

The tide took Marcus north with six more fighters. Ajax stood at the island wall and let the sail go small on the water. His men were finding their way home in stages now. But a walled town held more than a garrison. It held empty shops, cold hearths, and streets no one had walked in a season. Aldric found him there with the ledger under his arm. "The wall is manned," Aldric said. "The town is dead." He nodded down at the harbor lane. Shutters hung loose. A doorframe sagged where fire had licked the beam. "Men will not stay in a graveyard. They need a place that looks like it wants living." Ajax followed his gaze. The drover's tale came back to him. People had fled when fire came from the mainland. What they left behind still stood, but it stood broken. "Then we make it want living," he said. "Where do we start?" Aldric opened the ledger and set his finger near the top of the page. "At the gate. First thing a man sees. Count out from there." He walked the lane and Ajax walked beside him. The scholar counted aloud, plain and flat, the way he counted everything. "Nine shops along the harbor row. Six standing, three burned to the sill. Twenty-two homes behind them. Half want a roof. The grain store holds. The well holds." He stopped and marked each number as he spoke. No softness in it. Just the count. "Bran's masons are here," Ajax said. "He came to mend the inner wall." "The wall is done," Aldric said. "Put his men on the shops near the gate. Roofs and doors first. A town rebuilds from its front. Traders see a live market or they sail on." Ajax pulled the caller ring from his cord and sent his voice to Bran. "Bran. Take four hands off the wall. Start on the shops by the gate. Roofs, doors, then the burned three. Aldric marks the order." The ring warmed with Bran's short answer. He would start at first light. Aldric shut the book. "Nine shops. Twenty-two homes. One store, one well." He looked up. "That is what you hold. Not a rock now. A town with a count." The words landed clean. Ajax had claimed empty walls. Now he knew what filled them, and what it would take to make them worth a man's oath. He set his hand on the gate stone. "Send the count home to Grayson," Ajax said. "He'll want to know what his brothers built while he held the south." Aldric wrote the figures fair for the ring. By dusk Bran's hands had cleared the first burned sill. The dead street had a job now, and a number for every part of it. The island was no longer a rumor of a place. It was a town, counted and mending, one shop at a time.