Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 604 of 619

Rowan broke the last cage lock. The captives spilled out, blinking. Some could not stand. Ajax counted them: nine men, thin as reeds, chained too long to walk fast. Below the room, the passage ran down into black. That was where the god waited. But he could not fight it with nine broken men at his back. "We take them up first," Ajax said. "The god keeps." Kael slung a captive's arm over his shoulder. Torren took two more, one under each arm. "They're light," Torren said. "Fed on nothing." He said it flat, the way he stated any fact he did not like. Elara moved among the freed men. She was their healer, and she read a body the way Rowan read tracks. She pressed two fingers to a captive's throat, then his ribs. "This one's near gone," she said. "He won't climb. Someone carries him or he dies here." She did not soften it. She never did. Rowan took him. The captive weighed nothing. They started up, torches ahead, the wounded in the middle, Kael and Torren at the rear with knives drawn. The climb was slow. Water ran black under their boots. Twice a captive fell and they stopped to lift him. Ajax kept his father's blade in hand and his eyes on the roof. The thing they'd killed had dropped from above. He did not trust the dark over their heads. Chalam walked beside Ajax, staff low. He pressed it to the wall at each bend. "Nothing follows," he said. "The god stays deep. It made the hand we killed. It will make another." He paused. "We have time. Not much." They reached the bones, then the hidden chamber, then the open air. Dawn had come. Ajax's war band waited outside, six swords and the seer among them. The captives sat in the grass and shook. Elara went down the line, hands glowing faint, closing the worst of the wounds. Each casting cost her. Ajax watched her arm tremble and said nothing. She would not thank him for it. "Water," she said. "Broth if you have it. Slow, or they'll sick it up." The six swords moved to obey her. Ajax stood over the men he had pulled from the stone. Living. Free. He had come for a god and found this first. He turned to Chalam. "How long before it sends another hand?" "A day. Maybe less." Chalam looked at the passage mouth. "It knows we took its captives now. It will not sit." Ajax looked at his crew, gathered whole outside the cave. Kael wiped his knife. Torren set a captive down soft. Rowan crouched to check his arrows. Elara knelt in the grass, spending herself on strangers. "Rest them one hour," Ajax said. "Then we go back down. This time for the god."