Hi everyone,
I've not been able to do much writing for a while, and as your comments so far have all been so useful I'm hoping that another critique will kick-start me into getting on with it again!
This is the second part of a chapter I've been working on, the first part of which introduces a new character, Tomos Hake. Tomos is a Feroxi, a martial people who are employed by the government to "defend" the state. While most of the book focuses on a group of workers who are able to manipulate and accelerate the growth of plants (and who are put to work in factories doing so), the Feroxi are able to (and have a legally enforced monopoly on the practice of) manipulating the growth of animals, and breed customised animals to fight with as their primary weapons. They do not accelerate animals' growth (animals find it extremely distressing), and so have to be in constant contact with their animals for the early years of their lives. For some (those who fight with large animals), this means alternating between growing years and fighting years, while for others, like Tomos, who breeds rats, this means having their animals in a harness so as to be in constant contact with them while fighting and doing other things. Tomos has a large mischief of custom-grown rats, which he transports in large wooden boxes on the back of his horse, as well as the few young rats he is currently growing. The Feroxi also have a culture of altering their own bodies (partly so they know what it feels like). They live on land given to them by the government (which, unlike most of the surrounding land, is very fertile), subsistence farming in communal Feroxi communities while they wait to be called to arms.
In the first part of the chapter, Tomos and his regiment are summoned to quell a disturbance among the peasants on a local estate (owned by a man called Forecroft). This is a frequent occurrence, and is basically all the Feroxi are ever called to do nowadays, leading Tomos to already be pretty disillusioned with his military life (which he had thought would be all romantic battles for worthy causes). We also meet Pluck, a scruffy, ill disciplined old Feroxi who fights with eagles. The peasants on the estate are always easily cowed just be the presence of the Feroxi, but this time the landowner and Tomos's General seem to want to make an example of them, pick out a ringleader (Epert Trap), and order Tomos to execute him.
This is the first 'action' scene I've ever written, and I found it quite difficult. I often don't particularly enjoy action scenes in the books i read, finding they get a bit tiresome, but i felt this scene really needed something of this kind. Any feedback at all would be really really appreciated!
**************
The Sergeant looked at Tomos, her stern face unaltered. “Sergeant Hake, my order stands.” Next to her, Forecroft looked down at his feet, trying his best to look somber.
At this, a commotion started in the crowd, several young men pushing through towards Epert Trap. There was a shout, something that Tomos couldn’t make out. Something was thrown, hitting the bullock standing at the bottom of the steps in the shoulder.
The Sergeant gave a command, and the Feroxi surrounding the crowd moved forwards, their animals lurching in towards the crowd. There were screams as the crowd contracted, bunching together into a tight, terrified mass. One man was floored by one of Jula’s bulls; another rolled on the floor, three of Hursh’s snakes writhing on top of him.
A seemingly endless minute later, the Sergeant gave the command to pull back. The crowd cowered. Those lying injured on the floor were pulled back from the Feroxi and into the middle of the crowd, out of immediate harm’s way. The Sergeant turned to Tomos again.
“Private Hake. Now.”
Tomos continued to stare at Epert Trap, his mind blank, a high-pitched whining noise flooding his ears. Could he really kill this man? He had spent his whole life training for this. His whole life readying himself for war and bloodshed, to do what was necessary to defend the state. His whole life being told stories of valour, of brave Feroxi fighting for peace and stability. It wasn’t just what he had to do; it was who he was, who he had always wanted and assumed he would be. But is this what all of that meant? Tearing a man to pieces in front of his family; half torturing a man to death, stood at the foot of the biggest manor house he had ever seen, simply for wanting an hour a day to pick his own vegetables? The more he thought about it, the more impossible it seemed.
He was ripped from his thoughts by the thundering of hooves. One of Jula’s bullocks, charging at Epert Trap, head down, his enormous, polished horns somehow not wavering from their target as it ran. Tomos looked up at the Sergeant, who glowered at him from the steps. He had blown it. All that training, the discipline, the drills, all for nothing. He was as dead as Trap.
A terrible shriek. Then a roar, more bear than cow. Tomos turned to see Jula’s bull flailing, peasants desperately diving away from its hind legs as it kicked and jumped in circles, two huge eagles clawing at its face. Then hooves. Pluck was galloping straight towards him.
“Run, boy! Now!” Pluck sped past him, grabbed Epert Trap by the collar and, with a strength Tomos would never have thought possible from the old man, hauled him up onto the back of his horse. Tomos started, the old man’s words breaking the hold his shock had over him and bringing him back to the bright, stinking, all-too-real present.
Tomos sped after Pluck, urging Hess onward. There was no turning back now. He glanced over his shoulder, and his heart sank. Sergeant Frik’s dogs were thundering after him, heads down in single-minded, absolute determination. There was no way he could outrun them. Feroxi horses were infamous for their speed, bred by several families at their headquarters near the capital who had been doing so since the Feroxi were founded. Yet over a short distance, Frik’s dogs were faster.
Tomos reached back and untied the strap holding the wooden boxes in place. They fell with a crash, splintering as they rolled across the dogs’ path. Hess sped up, grateful for the lighter load. Two of the dogs dodged the wooden crates in their path; the other leapt over them without breaking stride. Still they were gaining on him.
By now, Tomos had caught up with Pluck, the extra weight of his passenger slowing his horse down. Pluck turned to him and grinned.
“All on you now, lad. Make it worth it.”
Before Tomos could respond, Pluck stood on his saddle and leapt, past Trap who had been sat behind him and towards the pursuing dogs. He landed directly on top of one of the dogs, his legs managing to knock the legs from under a second, and together they rolled in a sickly ball of dust and elbows and teeth. Yelps alternated with snarls with Pluck’s trademark profanities as the old man fought wildly with the enormous dogs.
Tomos stared behind him in disbelief as he galloped onwards. Was this really the same Pluck he had known most of his life, doddering and lazy, cynical and drunk? True, the old man had always been full of exciting tales of bravery and blood, but Tomos had always taken them with a pinch of salt: stories like that had a tendency to take on a life of their own at the best of times, never mind when told with a whisky in hand.
Tomos was torn from his reflections as he spotted the third dog charging towards him, its eyes fixed on him as it closed the distance between them. He turned and tucked down low, urging Hess to run as fast as she could. The dog might be faster than her, but if he could just avoid it for long enough it would tire much sooner. The world flashed past him, the noise of the wind mixing with the ringing in his own ears to cut him off from the world, a bubble of adrenaline and fear plummeting through a familiar landscape rendered alien. Beside him, he heard sobs from Epert Trap, whose horse was keeping good pace with his own.
He looked behind again, over his right hand shoulder, trying to focus, to see where the remaining dog was. It was nowhere to be seen. He turned, looking to his left. Still no sign of it. With a mix of elation and dreadful scepticism, he sat up a little, frantically trying to get sight of his pursuer. Just then, Hess let out a terrible noise and stumbled, skipping a step. The dog must be too close for him to see, biting at her calves.
Tomos drew his sword and leant back, trying to see the dog, to swipe it away from Hess. It was running alongside Hess’s left side, snapping at her rear leg, almost connecting, each time dodging away at the last second as her powerful legs threatened to crush it. It only needed one good bite to bring them crashing down. Tomos changed his sword to his left hand and lunged at the dog, feeling clumsy handling it with his weaker hand while trying to stay on the speeding horse. He missed once, twice. The dog lunged, almost catching Hess's ankle before lurching away again.
Tomos screamed at the dog in frustration, swiped and missed a third time. This time he missed Hess’s flank by a hair’s breadth.
Tomos thought frantically, everything he had learnt at the barracks flooding through his mind in a blur. They’d never been taught how to fight animals like this, for it was only Feroxi that used them. The ringing in his ears grew even louder, the gutteral barks of the gigantic dog and the pounding sound of Hess’s hooves fading into the background as the world closed in around him.
The dog moved further forward, now snapping at Tomos’s own leg. He kicked wildly at it, panic filling his throat. In desperation, Tomos grasped at an idea. He grabbed the sword in both hands, holding it down straight in front of the dog. He closed his eyes and took a breath. Then he screamed the verbal halt command to Hess, and she stopped running, skidding on the dusty ground beneath them. Tomos put all his weight behind the sword as the dog propelled itself into it, the sword making a brutal, grinding noise that reverberated through his whole body as it dug into the creature’s skull.
The dog gave a pitiful, screeching yelp as it fell, sliding and rolling in the dirt, the sword so embedded that it was torn from Tomos’s grip. He turned, expecting to see a platoon of Feroxi on his tail, but nothing came. Either they had so expected the dogs to catch them that the Sergeant hadn’t thought it worth making chase, or something else had happened amongst the peasants to keep them distracted. Either way, he was sure it wouldn’t be long until they followed.
With an overwhelming sense of loss, for the dog he just killed, his mischief he had left behind, and for his life as he knew it, he kicked Hess back into motion, tearing out of the Forcroft estate on Epert Trap’s tail.
I've not been able to do much writing for a while, and as your comments so far have all been so useful I'm hoping that another critique will kick-start me into getting on with it again!
This is the second part of a chapter I've been working on, the first part of which introduces a new character, Tomos Hake. Tomos is a Feroxi, a martial people who are employed by the government to "defend" the state. While most of the book focuses on a group of workers who are able to manipulate and accelerate the growth of plants (and who are put to work in factories doing so), the Feroxi are able to (and have a legally enforced monopoly on the practice of) manipulating the growth of animals, and breed customised animals to fight with as their primary weapons. They do not accelerate animals' growth (animals find it extremely distressing), and so have to be in constant contact with their animals for the early years of their lives. For some (those who fight with large animals), this means alternating between growing years and fighting years, while for others, like Tomos, who breeds rats, this means having their animals in a harness so as to be in constant contact with them while fighting and doing other things. Tomos has a large mischief of custom-grown rats, which he transports in large wooden boxes on the back of his horse, as well as the few young rats he is currently growing. The Feroxi also have a culture of altering their own bodies (partly so they know what it feels like). They live on land given to them by the government (which, unlike most of the surrounding land, is very fertile), subsistence farming in communal Feroxi communities while they wait to be called to arms.
In the first part of the chapter, Tomos and his regiment are summoned to quell a disturbance among the peasants on a local estate (owned by a man called Forecroft). This is a frequent occurrence, and is basically all the Feroxi are ever called to do nowadays, leading Tomos to already be pretty disillusioned with his military life (which he had thought would be all romantic battles for worthy causes). We also meet Pluck, a scruffy, ill disciplined old Feroxi who fights with eagles. The peasants on the estate are always easily cowed just be the presence of the Feroxi, but this time the landowner and Tomos's General seem to want to make an example of them, pick out a ringleader (Epert Trap), and order Tomos to execute him.
This is the first 'action' scene I've ever written, and I found it quite difficult. I often don't particularly enjoy action scenes in the books i read, finding they get a bit tiresome, but i felt this scene really needed something of this kind. Any feedback at all would be really really appreciated!
**************
The Sergeant looked at Tomos, her stern face unaltered. “Sergeant Hake, my order stands.” Next to her, Forecroft looked down at his feet, trying his best to look somber.
At this, a commotion started in the crowd, several young men pushing through towards Epert Trap. There was a shout, something that Tomos couldn’t make out. Something was thrown, hitting the bullock standing at the bottom of the steps in the shoulder.
The Sergeant gave a command, and the Feroxi surrounding the crowd moved forwards, their animals lurching in towards the crowd. There were screams as the crowd contracted, bunching together into a tight, terrified mass. One man was floored by one of Jula’s bulls; another rolled on the floor, three of Hursh’s snakes writhing on top of him.
A seemingly endless minute later, the Sergeant gave the command to pull back. The crowd cowered. Those lying injured on the floor were pulled back from the Feroxi and into the middle of the crowd, out of immediate harm’s way. The Sergeant turned to Tomos again.
“Private Hake. Now.”
Tomos continued to stare at Epert Trap, his mind blank, a high-pitched whining noise flooding his ears. Could he really kill this man? He had spent his whole life training for this. His whole life readying himself for war and bloodshed, to do what was necessary to defend the state. His whole life being told stories of valour, of brave Feroxi fighting for peace and stability. It wasn’t just what he had to do; it was who he was, who he had always wanted and assumed he would be. But is this what all of that meant? Tearing a man to pieces in front of his family; half torturing a man to death, stood at the foot of the biggest manor house he had ever seen, simply for wanting an hour a day to pick his own vegetables? The more he thought about it, the more impossible it seemed.
He was ripped from his thoughts by the thundering of hooves. One of Jula’s bullocks, charging at Epert Trap, head down, his enormous, polished horns somehow not wavering from their target as it ran. Tomos looked up at the Sergeant, who glowered at him from the steps. He had blown it. All that training, the discipline, the drills, all for nothing. He was as dead as Trap.
A terrible shriek. Then a roar, more bear than cow. Tomos turned to see Jula’s bull flailing, peasants desperately diving away from its hind legs as it kicked and jumped in circles, two huge eagles clawing at its face. Then hooves. Pluck was galloping straight towards him.
“Run, boy! Now!” Pluck sped past him, grabbed Epert Trap by the collar and, with a strength Tomos would never have thought possible from the old man, hauled him up onto the back of his horse. Tomos started, the old man’s words breaking the hold his shock had over him and bringing him back to the bright, stinking, all-too-real present.
Tomos sped after Pluck, urging Hess onward. There was no turning back now. He glanced over his shoulder, and his heart sank. Sergeant Frik’s dogs were thundering after him, heads down in single-minded, absolute determination. There was no way he could outrun them. Feroxi horses were infamous for their speed, bred by several families at their headquarters near the capital who had been doing so since the Feroxi were founded. Yet over a short distance, Frik’s dogs were faster.
Tomos reached back and untied the strap holding the wooden boxes in place. They fell with a crash, splintering as they rolled across the dogs’ path. Hess sped up, grateful for the lighter load. Two of the dogs dodged the wooden crates in their path; the other leapt over them without breaking stride. Still they were gaining on him.
By now, Tomos had caught up with Pluck, the extra weight of his passenger slowing his horse down. Pluck turned to him and grinned.
“All on you now, lad. Make it worth it.”
Before Tomos could respond, Pluck stood on his saddle and leapt, past Trap who had been sat behind him and towards the pursuing dogs. He landed directly on top of one of the dogs, his legs managing to knock the legs from under a second, and together they rolled in a sickly ball of dust and elbows and teeth. Yelps alternated with snarls with Pluck’s trademark profanities as the old man fought wildly with the enormous dogs.
Tomos stared behind him in disbelief as he galloped onwards. Was this really the same Pluck he had known most of his life, doddering and lazy, cynical and drunk? True, the old man had always been full of exciting tales of bravery and blood, but Tomos had always taken them with a pinch of salt: stories like that had a tendency to take on a life of their own at the best of times, never mind when told with a whisky in hand.
Tomos was torn from his reflections as he spotted the third dog charging towards him, its eyes fixed on him as it closed the distance between them. He turned and tucked down low, urging Hess to run as fast as she could. The dog might be faster than her, but if he could just avoid it for long enough it would tire much sooner. The world flashed past him, the noise of the wind mixing with the ringing in his own ears to cut him off from the world, a bubble of adrenaline and fear plummeting through a familiar landscape rendered alien. Beside him, he heard sobs from Epert Trap, whose horse was keeping good pace with his own.
He looked behind again, over his right hand shoulder, trying to focus, to see where the remaining dog was. It was nowhere to be seen. He turned, looking to his left. Still no sign of it. With a mix of elation and dreadful scepticism, he sat up a little, frantically trying to get sight of his pursuer. Just then, Hess let out a terrible noise and stumbled, skipping a step. The dog must be too close for him to see, biting at her calves.
Tomos drew his sword and leant back, trying to see the dog, to swipe it away from Hess. It was running alongside Hess’s left side, snapping at her rear leg, almost connecting, each time dodging away at the last second as her powerful legs threatened to crush it. It only needed one good bite to bring them crashing down. Tomos changed his sword to his left hand and lunged at the dog, feeling clumsy handling it with his weaker hand while trying to stay on the speeding horse. He missed once, twice. The dog lunged, almost catching Hess's ankle before lurching away again.
Tomos screamed at the dog in frustration, swiped and missed a third time. This time he missed Hess’s flank by a hair’s breadth.
Tomos thought frantically, everything he had learnt at the barracks flooding through his mind in a blur. They’d never been taught how to fight animals like this, for it was only Feroxi that used them. The ringing in his ears grew even louder, the gutteral barks of the gigantic dog and the pounding sound of Hess’s hooves fading into the background as the world closed in around him.
The dog moved further forward, now snapping at Tomos’s own leg. He kicked wildly at it, panic filling his throat. In desperation, Tomos grasped at an idea. He grabbed the sword in both hands, holding it down straight in front of the dog. He closed his eyes and took a breath. Then he screamed the verbal halt command to Hess, and she stopped running, skidding on the dusty ground beneath them. Tomos put all his weight behind the sword as the dog propelled itself into it, the sword making a brutal, grinding noise that reverberated through his whole body as it dug into the creature’s skull.
The dog gave a pitiful, screeching yelp as it fell, sliding and rolling in the dirt, the sword so embedded that it was torn from Tomos’s grip. He turned, expecting to see a platoon of Feroxi on his tail, but nothing came. Either they had so expected the dogs to catch them that the Sergeant hadn’t thought it worth making chase, or something else had happened amongst the peasants to keep them distracted. Either way, he was sure it wouldn’t be long until they followed.
With an overwhelming sense of loss, for the dog he just killed, his mischief he had left behind, and for his life as he knew it, he kicked Hess back into motion, tearing out of the Forcroft estate on Epert Trap’s tail.
