Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 542 of 619

The three mythic hides lay salted on the ship's deck, but Ajax knew salt alone would not hold them. Elara had spent both bands blinding the beasts, and she could cast nothing more tonight. He knelt and pressed a hide's edge. The fur was thick and rich, worth more than any furs the north had seen. But the western bay lay days from Silvermoor's cold stores. By the time they reached ice, the hides would rot and the season's best prize would spoil. "They won't last," Rowan said. He crouched beside the pile and turned back a fold. His hands read hides the way other men read faces. "Salt slows it. It doesn't stop it. Two days at sea and the roots of the fur start to slip. These are too big to dry fast." Aldric climbed down from the rail with his ledger. He had counted every hide Ajax ever brought home, and he counted these now with a scholar's care. "Three mythic pelts," he said. "Worth a full season each. If they spoil, we sailed for nothing." He shut the book. "We need cold, and we have none." Chalam had said little. He stood at the mast with his staff, the new one bound from Verath bone and grove wood. He opened his satchel and drew out pressed chalk and a numbered vial. "I can hold them," he said. "A cold charm. Draw the warmth out of the salted hides and lock it out. It holds until I break it." "How long?" Ajax asked. "Days. Enough to reach the stores." Chalam looked at the staff. "The old one would have cracked on this. This one holds." Aldric frowned. "And the cost to you?" "A day of dull thought after," Chalam said flat. "No more. The staff takes the strain now, not me." Ajax nodded once. "Do it." Chalam knelt by the hides and pressed chalk to the deck in a ring around them. He tipped lodestone powder along the line and set the vial in the center. He struck his staff to the wood and spoke three low words. The air over the hides went hard and still. Ajax reached in and felt the chill rise off the fur like breath off a winter stream. The salt held firm. The fur no longer slipped under Rowan's thumb. Rowan tested the pile again and sat back. "Cold as ice under the walls," he said. "They'll keep." Aldric opened his ledger and marked the three hides as saved. "That solves it," he said. "But we'll want this charm every haul now, or a cold hull built for the bay." Ajax stood at the rail as the falls fell behind. The hides were frozen and safe, and his house would sell them whole and rich. He had beaten the sea's distance with a wizard's cold.