2,370 words today — yes, on Soldier of Dorsa and not any procrastination project. 139,073 total words for the manuscript. Still marching like a soldier towards the expected endpoint of about 200,000.
My goal for the month of November is to reach 148,000 words, yet I have squandered my time and now I have only four more days to add 9,000 words. But I have hope — it’s Thanksgiving week, and I’m thankful for a full week free from school and school.
Of course, I’m not *really* free from school and school. For grad school, I am using my Thanksgiving break to plan my approach to the edTPA, which is the actual teacher credentialing process. For high school, I am using my break to lesson plan for the three weeks between Thanksgiving break and Christmas break.
The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is going to fly by, and I’m going to miss my little babies when I leave them at Christmas (*sniff*), as I will placed at a different high school for the spring term. My students held a Socratic seminar on the novel Speak just before the break and they were so amazing and smart and articulate — I was so darn proud of them. It was one of those classes when you’re like, “Yes, I am 110% sure that being a high school English teacher is *exactly* how I want to spend the second half of my professional life.” (Hint for those of you who are not in the education field: Not every class is like that.)
But I digress. I’m posting because I have a Soldier of Dorsa excerpt to share with you.
So what I am posting below comes from pretty late in the novel — about 2/3rds of the way through — but I’m posting anyway because I think it won’t spoil anything. Still, you’ve been warned that this is from well into the novel. If you want Soldier to be completely full of surprises when you eventually read it (i.e., when I eventually finish it), then you might want to skip this excerpt.
Without further adieu…
“Weather’s turning,” a guard commented to his three companions. As if to emphasize his point, he stomped his boots against the flagstones and rubbed his gloved hands together. “Me ma says we’re in for a hard winter this year.”
“What’s yer ma, a seer?” a second guard asked derisively. He did not stomp or rub his hands together; he stood as one imagined a palace guard ought to, erect, with one hand on the pommel of his short sword. “Every winter’s hard.”
“Aye,” said a third guard gruffly.
The fourth guard said nothing. His gaze was fixed on the twin plumes of smoke that were still rising in the distance, visible in the night sky over the eastern wall of the palace.
Riots had arrived in Port Lorsin, and that did not bode well for anyone. But none of the guards mentioned that.
“When d’ye think they’ll get back?” the first guard asked. He didn’t need to explain that he meant the rest of the palace guard, the sixty-odd men who had left their posts and patrols to reinforce the city guard, a city guard whose own ranks had been thinned when they left Port Lorsin to quell the riots in the surrounding towns and villages.
“When it’s done,” said the third guard.
They fell silent again. The riots were a tricky business; many commoners (and almost to a man, the palace guardsmen were commoners) felt the riots were justified. After all, the Regent was supposedly ending the War in the East to relieve the burden the people had been carrying for twelve years, so why were taxes and the price of grain suddenly skyrocketing? With winter approaching, grain prices always rose a little, but nowadays grain was damn near unaffordable for the ordinary person — even for guards, who were paid well for commoners.
But on the other hand, it was the job of the guards to keep the peace. And Mother Moon knew that riots and looting wouldn’t solve anything. Most looters were commoners pillaging the shops and wares of other commoners, so how did that help?
If anything, it was the Regent who deserved the blame, and the palace was what deserved to be looted. But none of the four guards at the base of the Regent’s tower would ever dare to say such a thing out loud. In times like these, you never knew who you could trust.
The private thoughts of the four guards were interrupted by a sound — a strange, eerie sound. From the direction of the veranda that ran along the palace proper’s eastern side came…
Laughter.
It was unnatural laughter — grating, high-pitched, and echoing against the stone pillars and archways that formed the veranda.
And it stopped as suddenly as it had started.
“What in the name of all the gods was that?” asked the first guard, his words tumbling out in a single hoarse breath.
“Prob’ly just the boys, playing a game with us,” said the second guard. He tried to look unimpressed, but he shifted his weight and flexed the fingers of the hand that rested on the pommel of his sword.
By “boys,” of course, he meant the three guardsmen still patrolling the exterior of the palace, the massive grounds between the palace itself and the thick walls that stood between the palace and the rest of Port Lorsin. Normally, the night shift patrol consisted of at least twelve men — three patrolling each of the four cardinal directions. But tonight, the other nine were somewhere in Port Lorsin, chasing down rioters.
A second laugh came from the veranda, yards away from the first laugh. It was just as eerie as the first, but this one was even higher in pitch. Feminine, almost.
Which didn’t make sense, as there were no female palace guards. Not since the nomad woman who was always trailing behind the traitor princess like an obedient puppy.
“Oy!” yelled the second guard towards the veranda. “Stop messing around. Ain’t a time for games.”
Silence.
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