Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 540 of 619

The six new men were sworn, but oaths do not fill a hold. The larger ship rode at the ways, and the western bay held thirty-one beasts waiting. Ajax stood on the dock at first light and called Rowan, Chalam, and Kael to sail with him. He wanted the new crew tested on real ground before he trusted the season to them. "Are we ready to sail?" Ajax asked. "Let's go." Rowan came down the dock with his bow and a coil of rope. He looked over the six new hands where they stowed water casks. "Four pull clean," he said. "Two still fumble the line. They'll learn or drown." Chalam boarded last, his staff of bone and grove wood in one hand. He rubbed pressed chalk on the deck and spoke over it. "Beasts hunt by sound and heat," he said. "My oil masks both. Six vials. Enough for one landing." Kael took the bow watch without being told. His knife turned in his hand as he counted the rocks ahead. "Reef runs shallow at the mouth," he said. "Hold left of the black stone or we gut the hull." They sailed two days west past Silvermoor. The new men rowed the boat ashore into the bay Ajax had claimed. Rowan found fresh tracks at the riverbank, two beasts drinking at dusk. He set the crew in the pines and signaled with one raised hand. The first beast came down to the water. Rowan's arrow took its throat. Ajax stepped in and drove his father's blade through its mouth. The second broke from the brush faster. Chalam struck his staff to the ground and roots seized its legs. It thrashed, and one of the new men froze at the rail. "Hold the line," Kael snapped. He threw his knife into the beast's eye, then closed and cut its throat with a second blade. The frozen man breathed again and gripped his oar. Ajax watched the crew skin both beasts by the river. The four steady men worked the hides clean. The two who fumbled steadied under Rowan's flat orders. By nightfall two pale hides lay salted in the boat. "They held," Rowan said. "Both blooded now. They won't freeze twice." Chalam capped his fourth vial. "Two vials left," he said. "The bay carries more than we counted. Rowan's right about the falls." Ajax loaded the hides and turned the ship home. The crew had passed. The bay was his, worked by hands that could row and kill both. But the hold held only two hides where the larger ship would need forty. He would need this crew back a dozen times before the thaw. "We sail again in six days," Ajax said. "Same crew. Same ground." He set his hand on the rail and watched the bay fall behind. His house would eat through winter, and no lord had given him a single stone of it.