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Continuing the story of Sergeant Vardan and her patrol.
The edge fires were also burning southward, pushed by the wind; when Vardan realized this, she knew they had only to wait a little to get into unburned forest. In the more normal firelight, she and the others cleaned their wet and muddy swords and daggers and warmed up as their clothes dried. Only five blackwood bows remained to them, the others having been dropped as people jumped into the ditch. Most of the arrows had survived and needed only to be wiped dry. Any clothing touching the water’s surface had burned; Vardan’s own winter cloak, like many others, looked like a ragged collar. Two of the corpses, found face-up, had whole cloaks, sodden with mud.
“We’ll have to use those,” Vardan said. “Don’t know when we can resupply.”
“But–”
“And their weapons,” she said, in a tone that brooked no argument. “They will have all honor later, but for now we have a war to fight.”
The muddy cloaks, rinsed as well as possible in the ditch, and wrung out, steamed by the fires. Vardan had their dead companions laid out as decently as they could, with prayers to Alyanya, Falk, and the taig. To Vardan’s amazement, the earth opened and gently took them in, closing over the bodies as tenderly as a mother folds a sick child in a blanket. Nearby stones tipped slowly over and sealed the grave.
“The Pargunese will come,” Vardan said. “Either on that fire-path or through the woods. We’ll wait for them here.”
Now–hungry, tired, and cold, but eased by the taig’s care for their dead, they crouched behind the bulwark of smoking debris, warmed by remaining coals, and waited for the Pargunese to come.
Almost simultaneously, Vardan heard a distant rhythmic sound blown on the wind and someone nearer, in the woods. Vardan didn’t know who the nearer sound was. Pargunese scouts? The Pargunese were certainly war-wise enough to have forward and flanking scouts, Vardan knew.
But whoever it was moved more quietly than she thought Pargunese would, never stumbling. Vardan touched Tarvol’s shoulder; she could just see Tarvol’s nod when he pointed to the sound. Tarvol nocked an arrow and Vardan stood up and spoke the password aloud.
Silence, but for the wind and the distant sound of marching, a little closer now. Then the correct reply, and “Ranger–you?”
“Halveric,” Vardan said.
“Bless the Lady,” the ranger said. The ranger came within sight now, a shadow among shades. “How many of you?”
“Three hands and one,” Vardan said. “The camp’s gone.”
“More than that,” the ranger said. “Have you bows?”
“Five,” Vardan said. “And plenty of arrows.”
“Pargunese are coming,” the ranger said. “Many, some on foot and some with horses.”
“I can hear,” Vardan said.
“Rangers on both their flanks,” the ranger said. “We’ve picked off some already, but they have crossbowmen as well as pikes.”
“Royal Archers?” Vardan asked.
The ranger sniffed, a sniff eloquent of contempt. “Those next upstream say they were bade stay until ordered to go in case more Pargunese landed. Fifty of them–well, forty, because ten did come, to explain why the rest wouldn’t.” His voice warmed. “My pardon: I’m Veril. I was at the river; we could not prevent the landing.”
“And I’m Vardan, a Halveric sergeant.” If the magical fire had struck Riverwash, she might be the only sergeant left for this cohort…if she could call sixteen a cohort. “We were coming back from a two day patrol–late, we kept getting stuck in the marsh–and almost to camp.”
Now the Pargunese were close enough that Vardan could hear the sound of horses’ hooves as well as men’s feet. Her stomach tightened.
Comment by Abigail Miller — December 27, 2011 @ 12:53 am
Mmmm — thanks. More and more eager for book.
Comment by Rolv Olsen — December 27, 2011 @ 4:46 am
Anyone having a fast forward-button, please?
It’s a loooong time to wait! 🙂
Rolv
Comment by Iphinome — December 27, 2011 @ 5:26 am
I thought the Halverics didn’t use bows because he didn’t want to copy Kierei, now they’re carrying blackwood bows?
Comment by elizabeth — December 27, 2011 @ 8:33 am
Way back in the original Paks, you might recall that Estil Halveric, according to Kieri, used a blackwood bow–and so did the home guard she commanded when Aliam was away. The Halverics have been back in Lyonya, where the longbow is traditional, for several years now, and have again taken to Lyonya’s traditional weapon. Those who are native to Lyonya (like Linnar Vardan) learned to use one before they ever joined Halveric Company.
The blackwood longbow is traditional in Lyonya because that’s where blackwood grows, and it’s forbidden to export bow-length blackwood…except, recall, that as an honor, individuals may be granted their own blackwood bow, as Paks was.
Comment by Mollie Marshall — December 27, 2011 @ 9:28 am
And these are the bits that DIDN’T get in to the book?!
I’m looking forward to seeing more of Sergeant Vardan, come February.
Thanks for these snippets; they are a most welcome Christmas present.
Comment by elizabeth — December 27, 2011 @ 10:07 am
Even trimmed down in revision, this was close to 8000 words. I didn’t have another 8000 words in either KINGS or ECHOES. Remember the effect of the recession on publishing: many people had their lengths cut. I cut this because I knew it was more side-story than main, esp. with the increasing concerns about length. (FWIW, as e-book sales take over more market share, the cost accounting for paper books makes them more expensive….the cost of printing, shipping, and handling returns rises per book as fewer paper books are sold. Thus anything that increases the cost of the paper book–like more pages, interior artwork, wider margins [equates to more pages] is undesirable.)
Comment by Genko — December 27, 2011 @ 11:52 am
Hmmm… does this mean that it’s cheaper to do e-books, and does that mean that e-books might end up being able to be longer? I don’t know how the economies play out with all of that. I mean, could an e-book version include bits that the paper one doesn’t? Maybe just a little greedy with my kindle.
Comment by elizabeth — December 27, 2011 @ 12:32 pm
Not exactly…and no, my publishers don’t tell me every detail. Costs specific to paper books include paper, printing, binding, cover production and pairing with the book, shipping, and handling returns. (Paperbacks have their covers glued on during binding; hardcovers have separable covers that must be folded around the book’s own binding.) Costs specific to e-books include formatting for the various e-readers, which is not quite as simple as you might think, maintenance of servers and the software (and power) to run them and handle the accounting for direct downloads. Distributor/publishers like Amazon.com take a cut (as do bookstores) from what’s remitted to publishers (or, if self-published, from writer-publishers.)
Costs common to both (for books published through trad publishers, like mine) are the editorial and production costs up to the point of having a clean .pdf file that’s gone through copyediting and page-proofing. For a traditionally published book, that’s all the editorial time expended on it (including all editor/writer communication from initial submission through to publication and after, all reading, critiquing, all editor/production communication, all editor/artist communication–all the time the editor for that book spends on the text. Book design (combines editorial, marketing, art department costs) Copyediting the file in original format (as print or e-flie), conversion of the file from the word-processing software to .pdf format [often these days; not sure it’s universal], proofing pages as set (typically done by both author and a contract proofreader.) Writing jacket copy (both synopsis and author bio, plus blurbs.
So up to the .pdf point, e-books and paper books cost the same. Paper books do not have to appear in different formats to be readable (imagine if every copy had to be printed in half a dozen fonts because every human eye could decode letters in only one font.) So once you’ve got it converted from, say, Word to .pdf, you can just print it. From there the cost is materials (paper, cardboard, glue) and processing (machinery) and shipping the physical product. E-books require additional massaging (which plays hob with the formatting, my friends who do this for themselves tell me) and must be supplied to customers in a variety of formats to suit their individual e-readers. There are software helps, of course, but what I’m hearing from those in the trenches is that it still requires multiple proofing passes to be sure the thing formats correctly on different e-readers using that e-reader’s controls. (And time is money–the more time it takes, the more it costs.) But once that’s done the actual copy cost relates to maintaining the servers and software that “hold” the text until it’s wanted.
Creating different texts for paper and e-book would double the joint costs: you can’t just stick bits in (yes, of course I use cut and paste. Physically, you can stick bits in–but the story will not flow until you smooth the transitions.) Writer, editor, and production will have to do for the long form what they did for the shorter form (or vice versa) to be sure that the whole still works. When I cut and past segments while I’m writing, there are ALWAYS rough edges to clean up.
Comment by Linda — December 27, 2011 @ 2:17 pm
Many thanks from a reader tired of family conundrums generated by the season, tired of politics, tired of the mindless consuming of bread and circuses.
Thinking about surviving dragon fire by plunging deep in a freezing muddy ditch is a reminder to count one’s blessings.
Folks look at me strangely when I say that some of the best spiritual lessons I encounter are in fantasy novels, but there you are. Thanks again.
Comment by Genko — December 27, 2011 @ 2:24 pm
Yes, I can see that — thanks for that long explanation. I knew part of it, but not all of it. I used to typeset books back in the old days when we had to rekey it all in (I’m still a pretty fast, accurate typist). Just in the typesetting part we got in on design, proofreading, revisions, etc., though by the time it got to us, the editing was supposed to be done (and the publisher paid extra for editorial revisions after that — we had to eat the cost for what were called printer errors). That cost was primarily time, which can be significant, because someone has to sit there and do it and they have to be paid for that time.
I suppose it seems like it should be easier on something like the kindle because there aren’t the same kinds of materials and shipping involved. It still seems like magic that I can have so many books on that tiny thing. It’s true, though, that I’m not seeing the servers and infrastructure that supports it all.
And I hear you about the formatting. Most of the books are pretty clean, but I still come across awkward line breaks and page breaks that I would not ordinarily find in a printed-on-paper book.
Comment by Jenn — December 27, 2011 @ 3:32 pm
Linda,
Thank you! I was beginning to think that I was the only one who got half my spiritual reading out of Fantasy novels.
Elizabeth,
Do you ever feel that storytelling is being cheapened? I guess I am left wondering what the LotR would have looked like if Tolkien would have written them today with all the editing and penny pinching and Deadlines. Or… maybe it is more a statement on our culture that wants to have everything immediately (Books 3-5 the wait is killing me) and for nothing (no, I will be paying for them all).
Comment by B. Ross Ashley — December 27, 2011 @ 4:28 pm
Once again,lovely. And echo that on the e-publishing software. I’ve played with Calibre, in fact I use it to change formats on non-DRM’d books for my reading devices, but although it is getting better it still makes a mess of export from .pdf to .epub …
Comment by Adam Baker — December 27, 2011 @ 4:35 pm
Thanks for these 3 snippets. Definitely nice to see side stories like this that help expand the universe even more.
Comment by Daniel Glover — December 27, 2011 @ 7:02 pm
Linda, Jenn,
I think it’s from selective fantasy novels that lifes lessons can be gleened, not all of them. The epic storytellers are more likely since they have more room to work the nuances. If you’re hanging around here I think it’s safe to say you like epics. As Elizabeth has said, she doesn’t write short easily.
Genko,
I work in data collection and we can definitely do a paper form cheaper than we can web based surveys. All the issues noted above come in to play. People think ease of use means it’s free. But that’s the incorrect paradigm, more like putting in a ramp and elevator as well as stairs so that everyone can reach the same third floor elevation. Each adds to the cost of the final outcome.
Elizabeth,
Thanks for all the back story. Now we know those bits from earlier aren’t zombies, and know some of how they came to look so disheveled.
Comment by elizabeth — December 28, 2011 @ 12:02 am
Linda: That’s a complicated question. I do think there’s pressure now on writers–from both publishers and readers–to produce their works faster, and to do “better” (a variable term, but always scary.) And yet I think of pre-typewriter writers (Sir Walter Scott comes to mind, but also Anthony Trollope) who wrote and wrote and wrote at an amazing rate…in longhand. So we can’t discount the internal pressure, the stories that demand to be written as fast as the hand will move. The loss of independent publishers has had a profound effect, in large part due to the hiring practices of the larger corporations of which publishers are now a part: whereas writers–at least the better ones–could expect a relationship with one editor as long as they got along with each other–now writers know they will be have to adapt to multiple editors, often without warning, often in the middle of a book. The new editor may not know the writer, or the book, or like the book or the writer once they’ve met. Editors are overworked–they have too many books to supervise, not enough time. It is rare now for a writer to have a compatible editor through an entire series of books, someone who knows that writer’s work, respects the writer and the work, and whom the writer can trust. (Having to switch editors midbook is a strain on both writer and editor.)
To the extent that stresses associated with modern publishing and consumer demand hurt writers work…yes, that degrades storytelling. Rushing–whether in the writing or in production–makes books worse, not better. But the amount it degrades it depends on the writer. Some are more sensitive to particular stressors, others more resistant…some will give in to demands for speed at the expense of quality and some won’t. (The amount of debt or savings has a big effect here.) I suspect that Tolkein’s work, had he been born post WWII, instead of being a veteran of WWI, would have been different–but just as meticulously researched and written. He had that personality. I’m glad we have what we have, though.
Daniel: Readers can take life lessons from the oddest places–because we are all different, with different backgrounds. I have been shut out by books others found profound, and have found wonder and wisdom in books that someone else has scorned. That’s partly the book and partly me. And it’s something writers–however committed to telling the best stories they can as best they can–do not control.
Comment by Daniel Glover — December 28, 2011 @ 7:28 am
Amen, Amen. I stand corrected. Thank you for the reminder.
Comment by Rolv Olsen — December 28, 2011 @ 7:42 am
Linda and Jenn,
You’re not alone in receiving spiritual lessons from fantasy literature. 🙂 (I’ve even frequently cited fantasy literature in sermons.)
Elisabeth,
Yes, definitely. And the same passage may tell quite different lessons to different people.
But, as Dorothy Sayers and C.S. Lewis put it (only far better than I rephrase them), good intentions are no excuse for poor work. When a story becomes a sermon, you usually get a poor sermon as well as a poor story.
So, the corollary is, one reason why your stories may give such profound spritual lessons is … 🙂
Comment by Jenn — December 28, 2011 @ 12:57 pm
I have come to believe that good writers place a piece of their souls in their work. We all have a thumbprint on our souls.