Paksworld

I have finished (structurally) another story in Paksworld, although it’s still in the polishing phase.  I would like it to be a tight little thing about 5000 words, but of course it would like to stretch all boundaries and and grow…so I’m patiently snipping sprouts and hoping the topiary approach works.

It is a Horngard side story and some of it occurs while exciting & suspenseful things are happening in Horngard, which is why if shared now it’s spoilerish…no, actually it IS a spoiler if shared whole.  Or maybe…(eyeing it sideways and up and down)…it’s spoilering several aspects of Horngard I.   On the other hand, it’s a bouncy, energetic story and I’m happy with it and am dying to share it.  I would’ve shared it with a good friend last night or this morning, to get her comments (she gives excellent comment) BUT I’m having problems with phone quality, hers and mine, and her husband can be impatient, and was in an impatient mood today, it seemed like.  He, like one of their sons, is usually in a mood to hurry someone along, which I find very tiring these days.  It’s also affected her ability to listen and respond to the whole store, since she said it was starting too slowly one paragraph in. That’s not like her, and neither of the other first readers (both now unavailable)  commented that this draft’s beginning was slow.

ANYway.  Since she’s hundreds of miles away at this point and he seems to be charging around at full speed wanting her to come along here, come along there, I’m extremely tempted to share one ore more snippets with you, steering around the things you should not know, before having read Horngard I.   Maybe just talk about the protag, who’s a new person on the scene here.

Grethan D’Anzo is a small (one-wagon) trader specializing in supplying mercenary units with foodstuffs.  A sutler, in fact.  She’s the senior partner in the inherited business (“D’Anzo Sutlers”) with her sister, who is blind.  Small traders are often used by larger traders to provide part of an order, and since a small trader can’t afford to hire guards for their one wagon, they usually join the caravan of a larger trader, who charges a fee for the services the large trader provides: guards for the whole caravan.  This of course reduces the already smaller profit of the one-wagon snall trader.  They are often limited to trade within one city and its immediate environs.   The Sutlers Guild grades sutlers by their reputation for  the *volume* of goods sold.   This often (usually) determines what level of licensing they can achieve in each city where they do business.  And *that* is revealed by how many digits their license has.  Low-numbers are great numbers.  Four digit numbers…much lower tier.  Grethan has a 4-digit license in Valdaire and can’t even get a license in Foss Council cities: she’s considered not worth a space in their markets.

So when she realizes a new market may be opening somewhere else, she wants to pack a wagon and go, hoping to get there in time for a low-number license.  But she’s never been there, it’s a long way, there may be a war, and it costs to take time off and lose even the piddly profit she can make where she is.   If she makes it, she’ll be much better off, but if anything goes wrong, she’ll be in a hole deeper than she’s been.