Marshal Law's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Marshal Law drove the last sharpened post into the frozen dirt and stepped back to look at his work. The fence ringed his shanty in a crooked line, rails crusted with ice, points aimed outward. He had built it to keep the half-faced hounds off his door. He had built it because he meant to break the pact that fed them, and he could not plan a thing while they pressed at his walls each night. The first hound came at dusk. It slid between two posts like smoke through a sieve. Its torn jaw hung loose, one yellow eye fixed on him. The sharpened wood did nothing. The ice did nothing. The thing was not held by walls made for living animals. Marshal Law backed into the shanty and barred the door. Claws scraped the boards. He listened to the warped wood groan and knew the fence was a lie he had told himself. He could not sleep here. He could not think here. By dawn his hands shook and his plans were ash. He spent the next day building up. He hauled timber to the high ground behind the shanty and raised a narrow tower, four legs braced wide, a platform above the reach of any jaw. He fixed a rope ladder to the underside. When the sun dropped, he climbed up and hauled the ladder after him. The hounds came. They circled the legs and snapped at empty air. Marshal Law sat on the platform with his journal open on his knees, and for the first night in a long season, he had quiet enough to write. He set down the first line of a plan to find the broker and end the pact. The fence had failed. The tower held.