{"id":522,"date":"2011-06-24T06:31:39","date_gmt":"2011-06-24T11:31:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=522"},"modified":"2011-06-24T06:31:39","modified_gmt":"2011-06-24T11:31:39","slug":"desperation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=522","title":{"rendered":"Desperation"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is an excerpt from the third novel, Laeccan Waters. Currently, the main characters and their H\u00e1lsiend allies are trying to extract themselves from a raid that went badly wrong.<\/em><\/p>\n

\tCeinder fought desperately to defend those H\u00e1lsiends around her, but their numbers were getting thinner and thinner each time she looked. Even with her assistance on their strikes, there were so many of the enemy that exhaustion was killing many of her allies, as they became slow, and too tired to block the next blow. Indeed, she was reaching that same level herself, and if she did not collapse right then, she would do soon. Still, she had managed to hold the line, preventing the \u00deracian troops from overwhelming them here.<\/p>\n

\tOn the other flank of the battle, Atyniadol and the two warriors were all but fallen, their armour covered in nicks and cuts, and with red seeping out from several places on Atyniadol, for her thinner armour could not turn blades aside the way the mountain plate of Tri-Hauwcerton could. Atyniadol knew that soon she would need to step back from the battle to staunch her wounds, but there was never a break, never a moment when she could disengage and take that time, for they were so closely pressed by the enemy \u00c1\u00f0exe that losing the rhythm of attack and block would see her skewered on the end of a thrust. So she fought on as the crimson trails crept further up her arms.<\/p>\n

\tNext to her, Sawwaed and Bwyell could both see the distress that Atyniadol was in, but despite their best efforts, they could not carve out a pocket of peace in the centre of the maelstrom either, and so they lashed left and right with their hammers, the blows less well-timed and more wild, as they relied again and again upon their armour to save them. Their shields were chipped and dented in many places, for they were as much weapon as protection, and often their most effective assault was to slam a foe with the heavy boss upon the shield’s face, and finish the matter with a second strike from the war hammer.<\/p>\n

\tBy now, they had built a bulwark of corpses about their position, and the \u00c1\u00f0exe of \u00deracian were forced to climb over the bodies of their friends in order to get at the humans, but while that slowed the pace of the assault, it meant that the enemies came at the humans from on high, at the level of their heads, and thus were the humans continually forced backwards, into a tightening circle, their backs to their H\u00e1lsiendic allies.<\/p>\n

\tSawwaed risked a glance along the line of their retreat, and saw the dim figure of a man face down in the snow. Knowing that it could only be Tarranau, he shouted and bellowed over the field of battle, calling for all soldiers to pull back from the battlefield in a fighting retreat. They had probably left the matter for too long, for their were down to less than one hundred and fifty troops, but at least the casualties they had inflicted upon the \u00deracians were so grievous that their force could never been used again.<\/p>\n

\tThe H\u00e1lsiends now gave ground with every step, ceding the hilltop position to their foes as they clustered about the western edge of the rise. With them came Ceinder, still on her feet and still deflecting enemy blows, although now she staggered with each one that she pushed aside. Bwyell reached Tarranau’s body first, flipping him over and listening for a moment before nodding to Sawwaed. Sawwaed grabbed the two nearest \u00c1\u00f0exe, detailing them to carry Tarranau during the retreat.<\/p>\n

\tOf the \u00deracians following them, there were perhaps six hundred left, and while that matter meant that the casualties inflicted were far in the favour of the H\u00e1lsiends, the difference in size of force still looked to spell the end for the humans and their allies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is an excerpt from the third novel, Laeccan Waters. Currently, the main characters and their H\u00e1lsiend allies are trying to extract themselves from a raid that went badly wrong. Ceinder fought desperately to defend those H\u00e1lsiends around her, but their numbers were getting thinner and thinner each time she looked. Even with her assistance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[12,34],"tags":[25],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pRIK4-8q","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":280,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=280","url_meta":{"origin":522,"position":0},"title":"Names and Places","date":"September 24, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"So, after sitting around for a little bit, I've completed the mapping process for the next book in The Four Part Land. It's the second book in the Tarranau series, and will take place in a land called L\u00e6ccan. The book itself is tentatively titled \"L\u00e6ccan Waters\". Each of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Tarranau"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":315,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=315","url_meta":{"origin":522,"position":1},"title":"Joining the NaNos","date":"October 16, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"So, for the first time, I've decided to join up and try NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write 50k words in a month, from November 1st to the 30th. It should be rather fun, and a fair amount of work at the same time. Now,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Tarranau"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":389,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=389","url_meta":{"origin":522,"position":2},"title":"Today Is A Good Day","date":"November 30, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I have finished National Novel Writing Month as a winner, at 50700 words done for the month after the validation tool made me write another 700 to complete. That means I have done 86,000 words in two months, which is where Laeccan Waters sits today. I'm going to take a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flash Fiction"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":284,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=284","url_meta":{"origin":522,"position":3},"title":"The L\u00e6ccan Continent","date":"September 26, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The continent of L\u00e6ccan is a wet, dismal place, overrun by swamps and rivers and mangrove nests in the south, and cold and eternally locked in the grip of snow and ice in the north. Foetid jungles and pestilent lands cover the northern slopes of the great mountain range that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Tarranau"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":343,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=343","url_meta":{"origin":522,"position":4},"title":"NaNo, Day 1","date":"November 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"So here's a little update. When I said I wanted to be at 20-30k for the end of October, I was undershooting the mark. I ended the month slightly over 35k, after 5,700 words were added to the manuscript Halloween afternoon. Now begins the month of NaNo. The goal is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Tarranau"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":642,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=642","url_meta":{"origin":522,"position":5},"title":"Rumours of My Demise…","date":"February 11, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Yes, we all know how that particular saying ends. And like almost every time it is employed, it's true. I am not dead, and I have certainly not given up on writing. I just appear to have given up on blog posting for some time, although I can say the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Chloddio"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}