Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 527 of 619

One quill-backed hide did not fill a hold. Ajax kept the small boat moving south the next dawn, hunting for more. Rowan crouched at the bow and read the shore as it passed. He raised a hand and pointed. "Tracks," he said. "Scattered. Four sets. Same beast, different sizes." Ajax ran the boat in where Rowan showed him. The prints crossed a mud flat and climbed toward a rise. Rowan knelt over one and pressed two fingers to the edge. "Fresh," he said. "They drink here. They den close." He looked north along the flat and stopped. "Something burned." Ajax followed his eyes. A house stood at the top of the rise, or what was left of one. The roof was gone. The stone walls stood black and open to the sky. No smoke. Ajax had not marked any settlement this far south. He had thought the coast empty. "Chalam," Ajax said. "Read it." Chalam climbed the rise ahead of them and set his staff to the burned threshold. He stood still a long while. When he spoke his words came clipped. "A working here. Old. Under the floor." He pressed the staff down harder. "Not the beast's. Someone set a binding in this house and left it. The fire came after." Rowan circled the ruin once and stopped at the rear. "The beasts scratch here," he said. "They dig at the same stone. Night after night." He rubbed dark grit between his fingers. "They smell what's under it." Ajax stepped inside the black walls. A slab lay in the floor, scored by claws. He knew the shape. He had opened stones like it before, up and down a coast far to the north, each one holding something his father had sealed. He had thought that work finished. He had crossed off every mark on the old woman's map. "This is not on any map we hold," Ajax said. "No," Chalam said. "And it is older than her marks. Older than the ones you closed." He lifted his eyes. "Whoever burned the house was trying to reach it. They failed." Ajax weighed it. The quilled beasts were trade. The slab was something else, and he could not tell yet if it was a threat driving south toward his walls or only cold stone. He would not open it blind. Not with four men and a boat. "We take the beasts first," Ajax said. "We mark this place. Every mile back to the boat." He set his palm flat on the scored slab. It was cold. Nothing stirred beneath it. "Then we come back with the blade and enough men to know what my father left down here." They killed two of the quilled beasts at the water that dusk. Ajax loaded the hides and marked the burned house on Aldric's blank coast. His store had grown. So had the questions under it.