Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 533 of 619

The Seraphine had barely cleared the wall when Rowan came to Ajax at the dock with news that changed the season. He held two teeth in his palm, both cracked and old. "Found these south of the burned house," he said. "No fresh tracks. The quilled beasts moved on. So did the pale-fur." He closed his hand. "The grounds south of Silvermoor are empty. We hunted them thin." Ajax felt the weight of it at once. His hold was full this trip. The next would come up short. Empty ships meant empty stores, and the red quay would look elsewhere. "How long?" he asked. "A season, maybe less," Rowan said. "The beasts breed slow. We took too many, too fast." Ajax called Aldric and Chalam to the lodge that night. Aldric came with his ledger, the green tunic dark in the lamplight, gold stitching dull. He set the book down and ran his finger down a column. "Rowan is right," he said. "Four hunts this season, each smaller than the last. We stripped the coast clean." He looked up. "No beasts, no hides. No hides, no trade. The house lives on what the ship carries north." "Then we find new ground," Ajax said. Chalam leaned on his staff, the one bound from bone and grove wood. "South is charted now. All of it. I marked every cove." He shook his head. "Nothing left we have not walked." Rowan spread a hide map across the table. He tapped a stretch of coast far past the burned house, where the shore bent west into water no one had drawn. "Here," he said. "Never sailed. Rivers run out of the hills. Where there is water and cover, there is game." Aldric studied it. "Uncharted rock," he said. "Marcus warned us before. A ship can break on water no man has read." "Then we go slow," Ajax said. "Rowan reads the shore. Chalam reads the deep. We anchor where it is safe and row in." Aldric was quiet a moment. "It is that or an empty hold by thaw," he said. "I will not soften it. We have no third road." Ajax looked at the three of them. Rowan, who read the land like a face. Chalam, who could mask them from any beast. Aldric, who counted the cost and never lied about it. He set his hand flat on the map. "We sail west when the Seraphine returns," Ajax said. "Rowan finds the ground. Chalam keeps us hidden. Aldric maps what we take." He looked at each man. "The old grounds are spent. We open new ones or the house starves." No one argued. Rowan rolled the map and tucked it under his arm. The decision was made. The southern coast was finished, and Black Oak's next hunt lay in water no chart had ever held.