Jack Timber's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

The first wolf's cry rolled down from the ridge. A second answered. Jack turned to the last pine. Its bark was smooth and unbroken. No split root. No soft spot under his thumb. Sound as stone, the ghost girl had said. He had one swing left in the axe. Somewhere on that trunk was a place it could go in. Anywhere else and the blade would chip, and the axe would be finished. A branch snapped behind him. Jack spun with the axe raised. A hooded figure stepped from the ferns, bow drawn, arrow pointed past Jack's shoulder at the ridge. Gareth Thornwood. The hunter who had bled for him at the first pine, whose teeth Jack had seen shift in his mouth when the wolves came. Amber eyes under the hood. No greeting. "Two on the ridge," Gareth said. "More coming. Cut the tree." "I can't read it. It's clean all the way around." Gareth lowered the bow a finger's width. He walked to the pine and set his palm flat on the bark. He closed his eyes. Then he moved, slow, around the trunk, palm dragging. He stopped on the north face and pressed harder. His knuckles whitened. Jack heard the wood groan under his hand. "Here," Gareth said. "The sap runs slower on this side. Cold pocket. The grain's tighter but shallower to the heart. Strike two hands above my palm. Angle down." "How do you know." Gareth showed his teeth. They were not a man's teeth. "I hear it breathing." A wolf broke from the tree line at the top of the slope. Gareth turned, drew, loosed. The arrow took it in the throat. It fell without a sound. Two more came behind it. "Now, Timber." Jack set his feet. He fixed his eyes on the spot two hands above where Gareth's palm had been. He swung down and across, the way Gareth had said, angling into the grain. The axe bit deep. The pine screamed, higher than the first, a note that made Jack's teeth ache inside his wooden head. The trunk shuddered. A crack ran up the bark. The tree leaned, slow, then faster, and came down through its own branches with a sound like a house collapsing. Jack pulled the blade free. He looked at the edge. A notch the size of his thumbnail was gone from the middle. The axe was chipped. Not ruined. Chipped. Gareth loosed another arrow. Another wolf dropped. But more shapes were moving on the ridge now, four, five, six, and they were not stopping at the tree line this time. "The grove's done," Gareth said. His voice had gone rough. "They know it. They're not guarding anymore." Jack looked at the two fallen pines. Then at the ridge. The wolves were coming for them.