Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 61 of 619

Ajax slept two hours and woke before the fire went low. The paper was still in his belt. A name at a crossing, three days south. He wanted a face to go with the name before he rode into a place another man had picked. He crossed the camp to where Chalam sat with his staff across his knees. The wizard's blue robe hung open at the chest. His satchel lay by his boot, the three numbered vials tucked inside. "I need to see him," Ajax said. "The one who wrote the note. Where he sleeps. Who stands near him." Chalam looked at him a long moment. "Blood and the name. Same as before. It will cost me the second vial." "Take it." Chalam set a flat stone between them and drew a circle on it with pressed chalk. He shook powdered lodestone into the ring. Ajax cut his palm on his father's blade and let three drops fall. Chalam spoke the name from the paper into the stone and broke the second vial across it. The chalk went dark. A shape rose in the smoke above the stone, thin and short, and then the ground around it. A low house of stacked timber. A creek behind. Men at the door. Chalam counted under his breath. "Nine," he said. "Two inside with him. Seven around the yard. He is awake. He is waiting for word from the two he sent north." "Word he will not get," Ajax said. "He knows that by now." Chalam let the smoke fall. His hand shook once and steadied. "He is not at the crossing. The crossing is a mile south of the house. He means to meet you there with fewer men and hold the rest at the timbers." Ajax pressed his cut palm against his thigh. "Good. Now I know both." He went back across the camp. Marco was awake at the horses, drinking from the skin, color back in his face. Ajax sat beside him. "I need you to listen out again," Ajax said. "Not far. The next crossing on our road south. Tell me how many men wait at it." Marco set the skin down. He closed his eyes. His jaw worked the way it had in the pines. A long minute passed. Two. "Four," Marco said. "At the ford. One in the trees on the west bank. He is the one with the paper hand." "Five, then." "Five." Marco opened his eyes. "They are cold. They have been there since dusk." Ajax stood. He looked south through the pines at the dark road he would ride in the morning. He had the house. He had the ford. He had the count at both. The trap the enemy had set for him was now a trap he could walk into with his eyes open, and cut down to size before he ever reached the man who wrote the name.