Sunday, March 18, 2012

Six sentences for March 18: Dragon Attack

For Six Sentence Sunday this week, I'm presenting an excerpt from Chapter 16 of The Bones of the Earth: Dragon  Attack. 

A little context: the hero, his mentor and his lover have arrived at a Roman outpost, a once abandoned fortress on the southern slopes of the Transylvanian Alps. Valgus, the commander of the Roman legion there, has allowed a group of local people to take refuge in the fortress temporarily, because they're running from a dragon.

The hero, Javor, wakes up in the middle of the night to a huge tumult. He runs out to find that his lover, Danisa, has taken his most prized possession. He catches up to her when:

They turned a corner and were suddenly in the hell of the courtyard. The noise was maddening: women shrieked, children wailed, men shouted and cried, soldiers shouted orders and replies and pleas for help. People were still running and fires leapt high, silhouetting the bulk of the dragon which had walked to the far end of the courtyard. It had dropped the two women it had held before; Javor didn’t know if they were alive or dead. The dragon deliberately swept down buildings and stepped directly on the well just to see it break. Spears and arrows continued to bounce harmlessly off its shiny reddish scales.

For more great six-sentence samples, check out Six Sunday. This week, I'm entry no. 161.

6 comments:

  1. I love the dragon being naughty...crushing the well just to see it break.

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    1. It's a mean dragon. I was tired of books with nice dragons.

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  2. Things do not bode well for the occupants of the fortress, do they? Great job with this, Scott. Just one question: how would the hero and the girl (in whose POV the scene started) know about the dragon holding two women before, or that he'd dropped them? They had just turned the corner into the courtyard, right? Maybe it's explained earlier or later in the text; sometimes with these short snippets it's hard to tell. But it jumped out at me so I thought I'd mention it--hope you don't mind. If I'm totally off-track just ignore me :)

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    1. In the scene immediately preceding, Javor, the MC (the story is HIS POV) had seen the dragon, run back to get his weapons, found them (like in the song about the French horn) gone, and then found them in his lover's hands ... but for more, you'll have to read the book.:)

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  3. This six is alive! Great job:-)

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  4. Great description of the dragon attack! Nice six! :)

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