Side Project: Feedback Appreciated

Last night I wrote the final sentence of my manuscript for the third book in my Hawkridge Chronicles, Outlaws of the Golden Plains. Hopefully I'll have it up for preorder in the next few days while I enter revisions and editing. To celebrate--apart from eating an inordinate amount of ice cream--I allowed myself to work on a side project. I've been toying with the idea of starting some shorter serial work in the realm of 10-15 thousand word installments. Several ideas have been flitting through my mind and I poured out the first two thousand words of inspiration this morning on my laptop, essentially the opening chapter. This is raw, unedited first draft in need of  a good polish, but I would love some feedback. I'm looking to have three specific questions answered, though feel free to provide me with other comments or constructive criticism.

1) Does the opening grab you?

2) Does the work keep your interest?

3) Does the conclusion leave you wanting more?

Thank you very much! Please enjoy!

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Welcome to Ravenridge...

                Hex grabbed Bright’s hand and ran from the fire, heat licking at her back as screams of the dying joined the smoke rising into the air. She tripped over the poorly cobbled street but kept running. If she stopped, both of them would be killed. Or worse. Her acid scarred fingers squeezed tight on Bright’s and on the velvet pouch clutched to her chest.

                The tension in the Rathbone House had been a palpable force for months, pulling tighter and tighter like a lone rope struggling to hold back a wagon lost to the edge of the Ravenridge Chasm. It had snapped, and the backlash had destroyed what little security they’d had as thieves, cutthroats, and sellswords fell upon each other. Hex didn’t know how the fire started, didn’t care either—it was their way out. Neither she nor Bright had been important enough to for either of the sides to recruit and thus were fair game to any and all who drew near with poison or blade. Hex had no intention of letting either of them be raped or murdered that evening.

                Wings beat overhead, enormous wings that sent a downdraft of wind and smoke crashing into the poorly cobbled street, and a shadow fell over them, only to disappear back in the direction of the fire. Furor Blackquake had arrived. They had to be gone.  If the Lords of Ravenridge had sent their pet monster to deal with the fire, the city guard and even the Mercury Blades would soon swarm the streets.

                She pulled Bright down a side alley and dropped down into the sewers, wincing at the stench. Viscous liquid seeped through the holes in her boots to squish between her toes. Bright gave a muffled protest was caught off as Hex tucked the bag into her belt and began running again. The sewers were always dangerous, but had become even more so lately since the kappa infestation. Still, it was better than up above.

                “Hex,” Bright gasped. “Hex, we can’t go down this way.”

                “Shut up, we can,” she snapped, and pivoted down a side passage, splashing fouled water over her pants as she went with the downward stream.  It was dark in the tunnels but Hex had never needed much light to see by.  She navigated the tunnels with an instinctive clarity few other thieves possessed, something she had carefully kept secret from all but Bright.

                “We’re heading toward the ridge,” Bright said recognizing the direction they were headed from the flow of sewage. “We can’t go there! The guards—”

                “Will be distracted by the fire! Be quiet and run!”

The wealthiest of Ravenridge’s elite lived on the upper edge of the ridge, where they could see out over the great canyon and watch the river below run into the ocean. It was no place for the dregs of the city’s criminals. They would stick out there like an inkblot on white parchment with their tattered garments and stinking of the city’s refuse. But they didn’t need to be there long, just enough to make it to one of the canyon stairs. The Ravenridge canyon was treacherous and the Daggertooth River was more dangerous still, but there they could make their way to the ports and find passage on a boat out of town, where neither of them would be recognized. They could start over somewhere. Put all of this behind them.

She’d been an apprentice to her father, a tanner, before the loansharks had burned down his business. A smaller town would be glad to have her skills. And Bright knew how to improvise poultices and remedies from just about anything. They’d do well out from under the Rathbone’s heel. Staying simply wasn’t an option. No matter who came out on top of the crime family’s war, they would look kindly upon any who had not fought on their side. Those at the lowest levels would suffer the most, and Hex had no misunderstanding about her place in the hierarchy.

             “Hex, there’s something behind us,” Bright panted.

             “Kappa?” The sewage surged around her ankles, as if being pushed ahead by something.

             “I think—I think it’s Maw.”

“Shit.” She ran faster.

The giant serpent was the reason nobody had been sent into the sewers to deal with the kappas. Nobody cared about a few less street urchins and homeless, especially when the problem would eventually be devoured by Maw. Rumors about the snake’s origins were numerous, but all agreed that he was perpetually hungry.

She yanked Bright off their original path. There was no way they could outrun the serpent if they moved in a straight line. Plans of making it down to the docks were abandoned in favor of simply finding the nearest exit from the sewers.

Red sunlight and shouting filtered from a hole ahead. Hex made to climb for it but the shadow of a man in armor fell over it.

“Guards,” she hissed. The city watch had moved fast. Faster than she would have thought they’d been capable of. The sewers were a favored passageway for desperate thieves, but to be stationed there so soon after the fire didn’t make sense. Not unless they’d known it was going to happen.

“Shit,” she cursed again raced past the opening.

                “Hex, what are you doing?” Bright demanded. “Better a guard than Maw.”

                “Nobody’s catching us today.” But Bright began dragging on her, slowing down. Hex had been a runner for the Rathbones after they’d taken her and often took for granted the speed and endurance she’d built up over time.

“Just a bit further,” she urged. “We just have to get ahead of the next guard.”

                The flow of sewage rose higher as Maw drew closer. A hiss echoed up the tunnels.

                Bright whimpered.

                “Don’t look back,” Hex demanded. “Whatever you do, don’t look back!”

                “Who’s down there?” A voice from ahead. A guard positioned at another opening to the sewer.

                “Dammit,” she swore, and with a final burst of speed raced to the entrance. “Help!”

                The guard, a middle aged man with a salt and pepper mustache regarded them with only mild surprise and reached down to help them up. Hex shoved Bright ahead of her and leapt to pull herself up after. The guard leaned down to help her next.

The sewage beneath her exploded. Something wet and wide as a tree trunk grazed against her back, lifting up her shirt so that sewage dragged along her skin and she could feel the press of scales. The guard’s scream was cut off as Hex caught a glimpse of jaws large enough to swallow a dog whole latch onto his torso, crushing his chest through his broiled leather armor. And then he was pulled back down into the tunnels.

                Bright screamed. Hex screamed. Together they ran, no longer with a destination in mind or with concern to their surroundings. All they wanted was to be away.

                They passed between the walled in manors of the wealthy, spurred forward by commotion behind them. The marching of feet sounded ahead; behind, the gasps and cries of a gathering crowd and the calls of new watchmen for order.

                Hex pressed herself against one of the walls surrounding a manor. “Come here, I’ll boost you over.”

                “Hex—” 

                “Will you quit protesting and get over here.”

                Hex bent over and helped Bright onto her shoulders. With a grunt, she rose up and waited for the weight to vanish. An instant later Bright was laying atop the wall and offering Hex a hand up. With far more deftness than her companion, Hex scurried over the wall and the pair dropped down into a garden on the other side.

                 At least, Hex thought it was a garden. That’s what it was called when people put a bunch of plants together, but they usually had some sort of purpose. What these bushes with their awkward limbs and billowing leaves were for was anyone’s guess. A musky smell emanated from them that when combined with the stench of the sewer wafting from their skin and clothes was enough to churn Hex’ stomach.

 Whatever their purpose, they were good for hiding, and she pulled Bright down with her beneath the foliage and out of sight. Neither could see past the curtain of green, but sounds trickled over the wall like coins tossed into a well—clear but still indistinct. The sun set and the two of them waited, leaning against one another and breathing in tandem. Neither spoke except with their eyes, which said “keep quiet” and “I’m afraid.”

                When darkness had settled and the faint light of lamps trickled through the leaves and the sound of people beyond the wall had long since vanished, only then did Hex allow herself to stand and motioned for Bright to follow her. She pushed her way out of the garden and froze.

                Stretching before the garden was a yard backing up to a manor house of carved marble. A stone bench was positioned in the middle of the yard, positioned so as to look upon the plants against the wall. To either side of the bench lay a brindle mastiff the size of a colt with their heads up and forepaws crossed before them, as if waiting for Hex and Bright to emerge. If the noblewoman sitting on the bench with a glass of wine was any indication, they were.

                The woman was older and sat with rigid bearing. She was beautiful, as, Hex had noted, most noblewomen were, despite her advancing years. Her simple but elegantly coifed blonde hair was shot through with veins of silver starting at the temples and her dark eyes were ringed with crinkled crow’s feet. Her eyes and mouth put Hex in mind of the ornate dinner knives rich merchants liked to eat their dinner with to display their wealth. While her clothes were ornate the woman was not clothed in gowns or skirts, but practical men’s clothes in the form of a navy coat with gold buttons and trousers tucked into shiny black boots.

            Beside her the dogs shifted, as if readying to charge. The woman set her wine glass down on the bench and held up a hand, stilling the dogs. Slowly, she rose to her feet, picking up a straight cane as she did so. Her shapely form somehow made the men’s clothing feminine and Hex couldn’t help but wonder at what a beauty this woman must have been in her prime. She walked forward with a slight limp and aided by her cane. Hex only recognized it for the concealed sword that it was because it was the preferred weapon of the Rathbone heads. She towered over Hex and Bright like an icy spire, the very air around her seeming more crisp and chill by her presence as her dark eyes bore down on them, though she could not have been more than a few inches taller.

At some unspoken signal the mastiffs got to their feet and moved like tigers to flank her. They kept a respectable distance between their mistress and the vagabonds in her garden but made their presence felt, if only barely. The woman was overwhelming and her nearness made it difficult for Hex to focus on anything else.

Hex wanted to shrink beneath this woman’s gaze where others made her want to swell up and rise to challenge them. Her appearance was rarely a source of pride, but less often was it a source of shame. Covered in ash, blood, and the shit of untold number of citizens was enough to make her feel like a worm beneath this strange noblewoman. She hid her acid scarred hands behind her back, as much to conceal their ugliness from the woman’s eyes as to grab the small knife sheathed at the back of her belt. It wasn’t there. It must have come free when Maw grabbed the guardsmen.

                The woman’s expression never changed as she spoke. “It is about time you two decided to come out.”

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Thank you for reading.

Please leave your comments below. 

Weaponry Wednesday: The Staff

Often over looked as a melee weapon and instead perceived as a walking stick, the staff is the iconic tool of the wizard. And let’s face it, rare is the wizard who is complete without his staff. Okay, Rowling did an excellent job of making the wand cool in Harry Potter, but I think we can all admit that a bunch of teenagers with big sticks that they can whack each other with. Actually that sounds like regular high school so never mind. My point is the staff is not exclusive to spell-casters and monks of the Far East and is often short changed as a pretty bad ass weapon.

The greatest benefit? It’s about as idiot proof as you can get. At its most basic, a staff is a long club. Also a cool walking stick, but essentially a club. No edge alignment to keep track of, no expensive material to care for, easy to replace and hard to hurt yourself with. Perfect for you newly minted heroic but accident prone farm boy off to slay the Dark Overlord of Whatever Land.

The defensive abilities of the staff cannot be overstated. To put this weapon in perspective, shepherds used to spend weeks at a time in the wilderness protecting flocks of sheep with nothing more than one of these to keep wolves at bay. The shepherd’s crook is essentially a staff with a hook shaped design at the end for grabbing stray sheep, not especially intimidating but incredibly effective in the right hands. The simplistic design of the staff (shepherd’s crook or otherwise) makes it easy to learn to use, meaning mastery is achieved at a faster level. Combine that with the weapon’s impressive reach and a practiced wielder can create a veritable “no fly zone” around them in terms of weapons. Arrows may still be a problem, but if you’re taking a staff to a bow fight then you’ve got bigger problems to worry about.

In terms of versatility, you will be hard pressed to find a more variable weapon. The staff lends itself to simple sword-like swings from one end, spear-like thrusts, and spiraling twirls from a central grip, each of which are simple to switch between. This means that the staff is adaptable, capably of being used indoors or out, against a singular opponent or multiple, and the wielder can readily adapt their strategy depending upon their opponent’s armament and attack patterns.

The staff’s greatest flaw is its lack of lethality. While its versatility and reach provide for a staggering variety of attacks and combinations, rarely does a staff kill. That’s not to say that a staff can’t kill; only that it’s not a likely candidate for this year’s Miss Lethality Pageant. This was one of the reasons for the staff’s popularity among Far East monks and why there were rarely any legal issues with traveling with one. Staves could bruise or even break bones, but most wielders were forced to wear their opponent’s down or disarm them.

In short, the staff is an excellent weapon for anyone who is looking to either not kill their opponent or to simply escape. It’s versatile, simple, and provides a defense that is difficult to overcome, but lacks ready lethality. What are some of your favorite staves from mythology and fantasy literature? Gandalf’s is a given, but I got to hand it to the Monkey King, Sun Wukong for his Riyu Jingu Bang a staff that could adjust its length and weighs an easily manageable 17,550lbs. Comment below!

Weaponry Wednesday: War Hammers

Smashing its way into this new Wednesday tradition is the war hammer. Seems like a simple enough place to start. Stick some heavy metal on the end of a stick and start get to smashing. I mean, who doesn’t like smashing? The war hammer features heavily in fantasy literature and has gained a greater degree of recognition through Marvel’s Thor. However, the war hammer almost always plays second fiddle to the sword, often vying for this position with the battle axe, and rare is the weapon that is so misrepresented. 

Take Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir for example. The head is massive and the handle short. With virtually no reach, the weapon may as well be a glorified gauntlet and it’s actually the inspiration for Mike Mignola’s character, Hellboy. If it weren’t for its magical properties, and let’s face it, I don’t care how flawed a weapon is, if it let me fly and throw bolts of lightning I would take it, which is pretty much what Thor said, because in the original Norse legends, Mjolnir is flawed. The dwarves making it screwed up and made the handle much too short.

This was actually a pretty major problem. The reach of a weapon matters a great deal. While up close fights are dramatic for purposes of storytelling, most warriors preferred to be able to kill from the safest distance possible. The longer a weapon’s reach, the less chance a warrior was to get murdered before he could unleash some hurt. This is one of the many reasons for the popularity of the spear as an infantry weapon.

The other classic mistake in portraying a war hammer is to make the head absolutely ridiculous. I mean seriously, google “war hammer” or “fantasy hammer” and you will see that these heads are absolutely massive. Soldier’s couldn’t afford weapons that would force them to work that hard to wield them. Just hauling some of these designs to the battlefield would leave pretty much anyone exhausted. In actual combat, the weight of a weapon matters for two primary reasons, how fast it could be wielded and its penetrative powers.

I’m going to interrupt here to remind readers of a physics formula. I know—MATH! It’s absolutely terrifying and I will be the first to tell you that I am beyond horrible with numbers, but bear with me, this should be fairly painless. When taking the power of a blow into account, remember: FORCE = MASS x ACCELERATION. What this means is that speed is a critical part of the equation for dealing damage. Something too heavy, and you’re stuck relying entirely on its mass to power the attack. A second downside to tremendous amounts of weight is an inability to parry, or defend oneself. In short, it was much easier to make a weapon that could rely on speed dangerous than one that relied on pure weight, to say nothing of other practical considerations.

 

I think by now I’ve harped on the representation of war hammers enough, let’s take a look at what makes these things awesome. They’re WRECKING BALLS. As blacksmiths and armorers grew more skilled at working with metal, a lot of weapons had to work a lot harder to get at an enemy’s fleshy bits. The war hammer did not suffer this problem. Think of them as medieval can openers.

One side of the head was your traditional hammer, meant for crushing and use as a tool. The other side was a gigantic spike. The mixture of speed and weight focused on this singular tiny point could punch holes in pretty much anything. Have you ever had a woman in high heels walk on a hard wood floor? The floor gets completely wrecked no matter how dainty she is. Take that to the x power and you begin to understand the lethality of this weapon.

And the blunt end was no slouch either. While not as penetrating, armor didn’t really do a great job of absorbing the power of the strike before it reached the wearer inside. A blow that would be glancing from a sword or spear could crush a knight’s bones. This end tended to leave its victims alive more often than the other, but crippled. Monks in the far east actually liked using similar weapons because they could break men’s legs and not have to worry about killing them and breaking their vows. Of course, with the traditional weapon, this was very easily remedied with a follow through from the other end.

FAVORITE WAR HAMMER IN FANTASY LITERATURE

 

My favorite fantasy war hammer comes from Robert Jordan’s famous Wheel of Time novels. The character Perrin Aybara (who spends a great deal of the novels debating between the axe and the hammer—sounds kind of familiar, yeah?) forges a magical war hammer he names Mah’alleinir. A bit of a mouthful but still pretty dang cool and suitably intimidating. While this weapon is described as being more of an oversized blacksmith’s hammer than a traditional war hammer, it’s supernaturally light for its wielder and makes the enemies it strikes explode. That’s right, the bad guys EXPLODE. Seems a fair trade off for that spike to me.

What are some of your favorite war hammers, whether from history or fantasy? Let me know!