Huge Ajax's Arc

Chapter 76 of 619

The pines thinned at the top of a low ridge. Ajax stopped the group behind a stand of trees where the house sat below in a hollow. Stone walls, one roof, a shed to the west, a well between them. Smoke drifted from the chimney. Ajax had a count now, and a plan forming behind his eyes. He turned his horse and gathered his men close. "Two men in the shed," Ajax said. "They're counting coin. They think Renn is bringing more tomorrow. They don't know he's roped to a cart behind us." Grayson leaned on his saddle horn. Tucker walked his horse up on the other side, one hand loose on his reins, the other resting on the flat gold chains at his chest. He looked down at the house the way a man looks at a price he's already worked out. "Shed first," Ajax said. "Quiet. If those two shout, the four inside bar the door and we lose the captain." "How quiet," Tucker said. "Knife quiet. You and me. We come down the west slope through the brush. The shed door faces the house. We come at the blind side." Tucker looked at the slope. "Wind's right. Ground's soft." He shrugged one shoulder. "I've done worse for less." Ajax almost smiled. Tucker had ridden with him long enough now that the joke landed clean. He turned to Marco. "Hold their heads while we move. If either one thinks about the house, push him somewhere else. A woman. A drink. Anything." Marco nodded once. His jaw set the way it had on the road. "Grayson, take Asher and Chalam to the tree line north of the house. When the shed is done, I whistle once. You come across the yard fast. The bowman at the back door is bored. He won't hear until you're on him." "And the captain," Grayson said. "Alive. I want the name Marco pulled out of him." Ajax swung down. Tucker followed. They tied their horses and cut west through the pines on foot. Ajax carried his father's blade drawn. Tucker had a short knife in each hand and moved lighter than a man his size should. They came down the slope in the shadow of the shed's wall. Ajax pressed his back to the wood and listened. Coins clinked inside. One man laughed. Ajax looked at Tucker. Tucker raised two fingers, then pointed left and right. He would take the man on the right. Ajax nodded. Ajax stepped around the door. The two men looked up from the purse on the crate between them. Ajax cut the first across the throat before the man's hand reached his belt. Tucker was already inside, his knife in the second man's neck up to the guard. Neither made more than a wet sound. Ajax wiped his blade on the dead man's shirt. He stepped to the door and whistled once, low and short.