Jack Timber's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Jack Timber set his axe against the first screaming pine and the wolves stepped out of the fog. He counted six. Their eyes were empty sockets, dark as knotholes. The pines behind him groaned like men drowning. Every autumn their roots crawled under the village fields and choked the crop, and every autumn Vetchhollow's harvest came up black. Jack had come to cut them down. The candle inside his hollow pumpkin skull guttered when the lead wolf snarled. He swung the axe. The blade bit bark. The tree shrieked, a sound that rattled his carved teeth. The wolves rushed him. Jack spun, caught one across the ribs with the flat of the axe, and it skittered off unhurt. Another lunged at his boot. He kicked it back and lost his grip on the haft. The pine still stood, barely scored. He could fell it or he could fight, not both. He backed against the trunk and did the math. Six wolves. One axe. Three trees to bring down before the frost. The candle in his skull wobbled. If it went out, so did he. Iron rang behind him on the path. Jack turned. The blacksmith came through the fog like a furnace on legs. Flint Grimshaw. Mismatched plates, amber rivets shaped like little grinning gourds, eyes lit from inside. Jack had bought his axe head from him last spring and paid in cordwood. They had not spoken since. Flint carried a long iron pike in one gauntlet and, behind him, a smaller figure in a fur-lined hood. "You're losing," Flint said. His voice sounded like a kettle boiling. "I noticed," Jack said. The hooded one pushed past. Gareth Thornwood. Jack knew the name from the tavern board. A hunter. Yellow eyes under the hood, brighter than they had any right to be. He looked at the wolves the way a butcher looks at hanging meat. "Cut your tree," Gareth said. "I'll keep them off you." "For what price?" Jack asked. "Later." A wolf broke first. Gareth met it in the air. He moved wrong for a man his size, too fast, too low. The wolf went down and did not get up. Flint stepped past Jack and planted the pike between him and the pack. Sparks jumped where iron struck fang. Jack picked up his axe. He swung. The pine screamed. He swung again. Chips flew past his jaw. Behind him he heard Gareth breathing hard, and then not breathing like a man at all. He did not turn to look. The tree cracked at the heart and came down across the clearing, and the wolves that were left broke into the fog. Jack leaned on the haft. One pine down. Two to go. Gareth stood over a dead wolf, wiping his mouth. His hood had slipped. Jack saw the teeth before Gareth pulled the cloth back up. "Tomorrow," Gareth said. "Same time." Jack nodded and did not ask.