(edited to write the right "write"
![Rolling Eyes :roll:](./images/smilies/icon_rolleyes.gif)
Moderators: lucimay, Onos T'oolan
Pust mentioned the phrase Chain of Dogs. Now we learn what it is. The name of a march whose nobility and horror are unsurpassed in fiction. Only rl examples, like the Cherokee Trail of Tears, can be more moving.Duiker sank to his knees, suddenly overwhelmed, his emotions a cauldron of grief, anger and horror. Speak not of victory this day. No, do not speak at all
Someone stumbled onto the bank, breath ragged. Footsteps dragged closer, then a gauntleted hand fell heavily on the historian's shoulder. A voice that Duiker struggled to identify spoke. "They mock our nobleborn, did you know that, old man? They've a name for us in Dhebral. You know what it translates into? The Chain of Dogs. Coltaine's Chain of Dogs. He leads, yet is led, he strains forward, yet is held back, he bares his fangs, yet what nips at his heels if not those he is sworn to protect? Ah, there's profundity in such names, don't you think?"
The voice was Lull's, yet altered. Duiker raised his head and stared into the face of the man crouched beside him. A single blue eye glittered from a ravaged mass of torn flesh. A mace had caught him a solid blow, driving the cheek guard into his face, shattering cheek, bursting one eye and tearing away the captain's nose. The horrifying ruin that was Lull's face twisted into something like a grin. "I'm a lucky man, Historian. Look, not a single tooth knocked out - not even a wobble."
I'd dearly love to find better writing anywhere.The count of losses was a numbing litany to war's futility. To the historian's mind, only Hood himself could smile in triumph.
The Weasel Clan has awaited the Tithansi lancers and the godling commander who led them. An ambush by earth spirits had taken the Semk warleader down, tearing his flesh to pieces in their hunger to rip apart and devour the Semk god's remnant. Then the Weasel Clan had sprung their own trap, and it had held its own horror, for the refugees had been the bait, and hundreds had been killed or wounded in the trap's clinical, cold-blooded execution.
The Weasel Clan's warleaders could claim that they had been outnumbered four to one, that some among those they were sworn to protect had been sacrificed to save the rest. All true, and providing a defensible justification for what they did. Yet the warleaders said nothing, and though that silence was met with outrage by the refugees and especially by the Council of Nobles, Duiker saw it in a different light. The Wickan tribe held voiced reasons and excuses in contempt - they accepted none from others and were derisive of those who tried. And in turn, they offered none, because, Duiker suspected, they held those who were sacrificed - and their kin - in a respect that could not survive something so base and self-serving as its utterance.
It was unfortunate for them that the refugees understood none of this, that for them the Wickans' silence was in itself an expression of contempt, a disdain for the lives lost.
The Weasel Clan had, however, offered yet another salute to those refugees who had died. With the slaughter of the Tithansi archers in the basin added to the Weasel Clan's actions, an entire plains tribe had effectively ceased to exist. The Wickans' retribution had been absolute. Nor had they stopped there, for they had found Kamist's army, arriving late to the battle from the east. The slaughter exacted there was a graphic revelation of the fate the Tithansi sought to inflict on the Malazans. This lesson, too, was lost on the refugees.
For all that scholars tried, Duiker knew there was no explanation possible for the dark currents of human thought that roiled in the wake of bloodshed. He need only look upon his own reaction, when stumbling down to where Nil and Nether stood, their hands gummed with congealing sweat and blood on the flanks of a mare standing dead. Life forces were powerful, almost beyond comprehension, and the sacrifice of one animal to gift close to five thousand others with appalling strength and force of will was on the face of it worthy and noble.
If not for a dumb beast's incomprehension at its own desturction beneath the loving hands of two heartbroken children.
Lucimay wrote:and i'm still not ready, but i'm doing it anyway.
god...i totally forgot the first couple of paragraphs!!!! mannnnn.
i was on the bus when i started reading. i read the dedication, then looked at the maps, then started reading.
i noticed an older woman next to me looking at my book. the dedication is nice and big. its a trade paperback so i figured she was reading as i did.
then i read the first couple of paragraphs.the priest of Hood, if you'll remember...and the flies. heh.
suddenly i heard the woman next to me on the bus gasp! and she said "oh my god" softly and i look up. she's been reading along too!she was looking horrified first at me and then at the book.
then she MOVED over and put a seat between us!!!![]()
yeah. first few paragraphs of DG. freakin Heboric and Felisin. arg.
You find out why that happened in Memories of Ice. I was annoyed as well when it occurred. It reminded me of the lame-o scene in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when Santa Clause appeared. I read an interview with Erikson the other day, and it sounds like he actually started writing MOI first, but halfway through the book his computer ate the manuscript (duh! Ever heard of a back-up?). He couldn't face re-writing everything right then, so he turned to DG instead and finished it before MOI. That scene in particular would have worked better if MOI came first, in my opinion.drew wrote: One plot device (Or D.E.M...although I think that term is Dumb) was that Karpolen traveling merchant guy, who showed up the nick of time and hleped everyone out.
I'm sure he will come into play in the future, but the way he showed up, to me, wasn't overly creative.
It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage.Murrin wrote:As for Fiddler: yeah, Erikson's character sdo seem to change sometimes. Fiddler goes from young to old between the books too, iirc.