Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 608 of 619

The crew reached the valley's mouth by dusk. Word had run ahead of them. The freed men walked on their own feet now, thin but alive, and the locals came out of their houses to see. These were the people who had refused to guide Ajax in. They had feared the god so long they would not speak its name. Now they saw nine of their own coming home. A woman broke from the crowd and ran to one of the freed men. She took his face in her hands. Others followed. Children were lifted. Old men wept without shame. The god that had hunted them for three hundred years was dead, and the men it had caged were walking back down the road. An elder came forward. He was bent and slow, but he did not fear Ajax now. He stopped before the horse and bowed his head. "You did what we could not," he said. "For that we give what we have." The locals brought gifts. Sacks of grain. Dried meat wrapped in cloth. A jug of oil. Two goats on a lead. Coin in a small purse. Ajax took each with a nod. His men loaded the goods onto the cart beside the god's hide and the resting healer. Elara sat up in the cart, gray but steady. She watched the woman hold the freed man. "They thought these men were lost," she said. "I've seen that look. It's worth more than what I spent." The elder waved a boy forward. The boy carried a rolled hide, cracked with age. The elder unrolled it across the cart's edge. Marks covered it, faded but clear. A coastline. A shape of land ringed by water, far out and alone. "An island," the elder said. "No man from here has set foot on it. The old ones drew this before the god came. They said things sleep there, same as slept under our ridge." He pressed the hide into Ajax's hands. "We keep it no longer. We want none of it. Take it, and take our thanks with it." Ajax studied the marks. Chalam leaned close and read them without his staff. "An honest map," the wizard said. "Old, but the hand is sure. Whoever drew it knew the water." Ajax rolled the hide and tucked it in his coat. The god's death had bought this. The valley that once feared his name now welcomed him and gave up its last secret. "We rest here tonight," Ajax told his men. "The town feeds us. At first light we ride for the coast." The locals opened their houses. The freed men slept among their own kin. Ajax sat by the fire with the map in his lap and a new place to reach. His father had sealed doors along the coast. This island lay somewhere no father of his had ever touched.