Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 521 of 619

The northern houses tore at each other now, and no one left alive could name Ajax. But the threat had shown him a hard truth. Rivals had come looking for his dock. Next time they might come with swords. Ajax sailed home to Black Oak and called his council to the hall. He needed a way to break an attack from sea or land, not just hide from it. He set the question on the table plainly. "We've hidden long enough," he said. "If a ship lands men on our shelf, or riders reach the gate, I want them dead before they touch the wall. What do we build?" Tucker leaned on the bar, drying a cup. "Buy trouble and you'll draw trouble. Fire arrows light up your own cliff. Every ship for eight days sees the glow and comes to look." He set the cup down. "Whatever we make has to kill quiet." Grayson stood by the door, arms crossed. He spoke short. "Slits work for men. Not for a boat pulling to shore. We need reach. Something that throws far and throws often." Aldric had a scroll open on the table. He tapped it once. "A large crossbow. Mounted. It fires four bolts before reloading." He looked up. "I read of them in an old siege text. Iron frame, a windlass to draw it. One man works it. It cuts through a boat's hull and the men behind it." Chalam turned the scroll toward himself and studied the drawing. "Vello can forge the frame. I can cut the stone mounts." He rubbed his beard. "The bolts, we already make. Verath bone tips. Harder than steel." Ajax weighed it against fire. Fire would betray the gate. A hidden crossbow would not. "How many?" "Four," Grayson said. "Two facing the sea path. Two on the gate road. Cover both ways in." Ajax gave the order. Vello worked the forge for six days straight. Chalam cut four stone cradles into the wall tops with his staff, sunk low so no ship could spot them. Bran fitted the iron frames and strung the cords. Grayson drilled two men on each engine until they could draw and fire without a word passing. On the seventh day they tested one at the shelf. A crewman rowed an old skiff out and left it. Grayson sighted the crossbow and worked the windlass. Four bone bolts crossed the water fast. Three punched clean through the hull. The skiff filled and rolled under within a breath. Aldric watched the wreck sink. "No fire. No smoke. Nothing a passing sail would mark." Ajax stood on the wall between the two sea-facing engines. Black Oak could now sink a boat before its men reached land, and cut down riders before they reached the gate. His brotherhood no longer hid behind the wall alone. It could strike from it. But four engines needed eight trained men to work them, and every man drilled here was a man he could not send north to hold Silvermoor.