Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 611 of 619

The Seraphine reached the island at dawn. Cliffs rose black from the water, ringed by surf. Ajax stood at the bow with the old man's map in his coat. The ship anchored where Elara had marked the safe water, and the crew rowed ashore in the small boat. Ajax landed first on a stretch of gray stone below the cliffs. Chalam, Aldric, Rowan, Kael, and Torren followed. Chalam planted his staff on the rock and waited. "There's a binding here," he said. "Deep. Older than what I read at the town well." He pointed his staff up the cliff. "The seal sits above us, cut into the high ground. I can't reach it from the shore." Rowan crouched at the tide line and studied the sand. He rose and walked to a cut in the cliff face where water trickled down. "Fresh water," he said. "And tracks." He pressed two fingers into the mud beside a print wider than his hand. "Four toes. No claws. Something heavy came down to drink last night." He looked at the trail leading up. "More than one. They feed here." Aldric knelt beside the print and matched it against a torn page from his satchel. His green tunic caught the wet spray. "This is the beast the sailors named," he said. He tapped the drawing. "Older than the gods we've hunted. The tales say they hunt the ridge above the water. And they do not leave men who climb it." "Then we don't climb it blind," Ajax said. Kael walked the base of the cliff and returned. "There's a path up," he said. "Narrow. Two men wide, no more. Steep." He nodded toward the trickle of water. "The tracks use it. So can we." Torren looked at the path and the cliff and the tide. "If the beasts come down that path while we're on it, we're pinned," he said. "No room to swing. No room to run." Ajax weighed it. He looked at the cliff, the tracks, the seal Chalam could not reach without climbing. He set his plan against the ground. "We climb at first light tomorrow, not now," he said. "The beasts feed at night. We take the path when they've gone up to rest." He turned to Rowan. "You go ahead of us, find where they lie. Kael and Torren break trail with blades. Chalam reads the seal when we reach the top. Aldric names what we find." Aldric rolled his page and tied it. "And if the seal is failing like the well?" "Then we close it," Ajax said. "My blood, my father's blade. Same as before." He pointed to a flat shelf of rock above the surf line. "We camp there tonight. Dry ground, backs to the cliff, one watch on the path." The crew hauled the boat up and set the camp. Ajax stood at the edge of the shelf and watched the trail climb into the dark. The plan was set. At dawn they would take the island's high ground and meet whatever slept above.