Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 609 of 619

Black Oak rose from the sea at dawn. Ajax rode through the gate with the god's hide across the cart and the old man's map in his coat. The freed men had stayed in the valley with their kin. Now his crew came home tired, but the hold was full of trade goods no other port could match. Ajax called for Aldric and Tarron to meet him at the workhouse before he had washed the road from his face. Tarron came first. He was the woolwright, a thin gray man who read hides the way scholars read pages. He ran his hand down the god's skin without waiting for leave. His fingers stopped on the thick fold along the spine. "This is the best I've touched," he said. "It won't cut like the beasts. Too dense. But it will hold a shape for three lifetimes." He named the goods it would make. Coats for the council. A cover for the great chair. Boots that no blade would pierce. He said no more once the work was settled. Aldric arrived with his tools and his ledger. He was the keeper of the vault and the sharpest reader of old scripts in the house. He knelt at the god's jaw and worked a tooth loose with an iron pry. He held it to the light. "Needle stock," he said. "Healers pay a season's wage for one. There are more here than any Verath. This carcass alone fills a ship." He set the tooth in a cloth and reached for the next. He worked fast, saying little, laying each tooth in a row like coin. While the two men stripped the hide and drew the teeth, Ajax unrolled the old man's map on the workbench. The cracked leather held a coastline and a shape of land far out in open water. He weighed the corners with tooth and stone. Chalam came to his shoulder and read the marks without his staff. "An honest hand," the wizard said. "The water's drawn true." He traced the ring of land with one finger. His face changed. "There's a mark here I know. Same cut as the doors under our own cliffs. Someone sealed this place. Long before your father's line." Ajax pressed the map flat and studied where the wizard's finger stopped. The island lay past the last water any chart of his named. His father had sealed doors along the whole coast, but this ground bore an older mark, made by a hand that came before him. Ajax rolled the hide tight and tucked it under his arm. "Then we ride for the coast at first light," Ajax said. "Tarron, cut the god into coats for the council and a cover for the great chair as well as armor that no blade can pierce. Aldric, count the teeth and load the ship for the north." He tapped the map. "This place answers to no one yet. It will answer to me."