Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 73 of 619

The cart rolled behind them by midmorning. Marco lay between the two collared prisoners with a hand on each brow. His eyes were shut but his jaw was tight. Ajax rode alongside and watched him lose the fight against sleep in small jerks. Every time Marco's chin dropped, one of the prisoners twitched. Once, the taller one opened his mouth as if to shout, and Marco snapped awake and pressed harder. Chalam brought his horse up beside the cart. The new staff lay across his saddle. "He can't hold them another day like this," he said. "He'll break before they do." "Then fix it," Ajax said. Chalam opened his satchel and drew out a small brown vial. "Sleep. Not mine. The dryad left it in the moss under the cart bed. Two drops each in the mouth. They won't dream. They won't call." "How long." "A day. Maybe more. Long enough for him to sleep too." Ajax nodded once. "Do it." Chalam climbed into the cart. He tipped the vial over the first prisoner's mouth and counted the drops. Then the second. Marco felt the change before it showed. He lifted his hands slow, like testing a rope. The prisoners' faces went slack. Marco let out a breath he'd been holding for a day and lay back in the moss between them. He was asleep before Chalam climbed down. Ajax rode forward to the head of the line. Grayson was there. Asher rode beside him at the middle position, close enough that their stirrups almost touched. They were talking low. Ajax slowed his horse to listen without seeming to. "—shorter than my father's," Asher was saying. He held out his gold chain between two fingers. "He wore it his whole life. She gave me mine the week before she died." Grayson looked at the chain. He didn't reach for his own silver one. But he didn't shut the talk down either. "Mine came off my father," he said. "That's all I say about it." "That's enough," Asher said. Grayson almost smiled. Ajax hadn't seen him do that in weeks. Ajax dropped back a length and let them ride. He had wanted Asher watched. Grayson had done the watching. Somewhere along the road the watching had turned into something else. Grayson trusted him now. Ajax could see it in the loose set of his shoulders and the way he leaned when Asher spoke. It was useful. It was also a problem. Grayson had demanded to be consulted before Ajax moved on serious things. Asher was banished in all but name, riding on borrowed days. If Ajax cut him loose at the new moon now, Grayson would take it as a decision made without him. Ajax rode in silence and watched the two blonde heads at the middle of his line. The cart creaked behind. Marco slept. The prisoners slept. For the first time in three days, no one in the company was fighting to stay awake. He had bought quiet. He had spent something for it he could not yet name.