About this story
A timbering cut starves the settlements into a strike, a volley in the yard kills Maheu with the word bread on his lips, and Souvarine saws the cuvelage through in the dark. Forty chapters carry you from the frozen plain to an April road and an avenging army germinating under the beets.
Who you’ll meet
Catherine Maheu, a young lamp-room worker at a coal pit, crossing the yard with her father Maheu and the old carter Bonnemort at the start of a shift.
How it opens
The March night had erased the road beneath a skin of frozen mud.
Wind crossed the open beet fields without finding a wall to weaken it.
That sound cannot be wind.
BonnemortIf you seek the town, you have left the proper road behind.
Choose
I seek work, not the town.
Is that a factory ahead?