Colt's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Colt stood at the roadside with empty pockets and the deed to a farm he no longer owned. Three days ago, the lord's men had ridden up the lane and read a paper he could not read back. They took the fields, the barn, and the log cabin his father had built with a stone chimney and his own two hands. Colt had walked out with a rucksack, a black-and-white rabbit under one arm, and an old turtle riding in a sling against his hip. He meant to get the farm back. He did not yet know how a farmer took anything from a Nightbloom lord and lived. He counted his coins on a flat stone by the ditch. Four coppers. Not enough for a night's bed, let alone a sword or a lawyer. The rabbit nosed at his knee. The turtle blinked once, slow, and pulled its head back into its shell. Colt had grown up feeding these two from his palm. They were the only witnesses left to what the lord had taken. He thought about walking to the lord's gate and shouting until someone answered. He knew what happened to farmers who shouted at gates. His neighbor had tried it in the spring. They buried him in pieces. A cart rattled up the road and stopped. The driver was a thin woman with flour on her sleeves and a bruise along her jaw. She looked at the rabbit, then the turtle, then Colt's face. She said the lord had taken her brother's mill last winter using the same paper trick. She said there were others. A miller. A weaver. Two brothers from the orchard road. They met in a back room above a tavern and traded names and grievances and nothing else, because none of them had the nerve to move first. She asked if Colt had nerve. He said he had a farm to get back. She told him to climb in. He set the turtle in the straw and tucked the rabbit beside it. He climbed up next to the woman and gripped the rail. The cart turned off the main road onto a rutted track he did not know. Colt had walked out of his father's house a man alone against a lord. He rode away from the roadside a man with one ally and the promise of more. It was not an army. It was not even a plan. But it was the first thing that had moved in his favor since the paper was read, and he held on to the rail with both hands.