Critique #25 — Rachel Dunne 3
Kevin Andrew Murphy July 6th, 2006
Syralin stood alone on the bank of the River Kerth, the dark water roaring by on its long journey to the Gwythed Ocean. The river was wild here, crashing over rocks and thundering angrily between its confining banks, and Syralin judged it to be a half-mile from his side of the river to the other. It was a dangerous crossing, but one he’d made before.
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The bloated moon hung low on the horizon, and a light breeze stirred as Syralin lifted his crossbow. Allowing for the added weight and encumbrance of the rope tied to it, he loosed his bolt; it flew true, wobbling only slightly in the still air, and buried its head firmly in the ground of the opposite bank. Praying the bolt was buried deep enough, he quickly tied the other end of the rope to the sturdy bole of a tree. He lashed his crossbow to his pack and made sure the bundle holding his other weapons was tied just as tightly, then swung the pack over his shoulders and turned to face the raging river again.
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He couldn’t delay any longer.
Rachel — my first thought is that, unless this is a magic crossbow, there’s no way that a crossbow drawn by a human is going to shoot a bolt that will carry a rope over a 1/2 mile. My second thought is that, there’s no way a human could carry a 1/2 mile of rope (unless it’s ultra-light elven rope, but even then, that’s a lot of yardage to lug around).
Which lead me to some other questions:
Have you ever fired a crossbow/know someone who has? Do you understand how the rope is “tied” to the bolt and the impact of tying a rope onto the bolt? (Tying a rope onto a bolt/arrow will change the aerodynamics of the bolt’s flight, not just the weight — again making it difficult, if not impossible to launch a bolt across a 1/2 mile wide river with enough velocity to implant itself deeply enough into the (wet) river bank to withstand supporting some kind of creature’s using the rope to pull itself across a 1/2 mile wide river.)
Is the character human or another species? I’m not going to turn the page unless I can relate to the character in some way, and so far the character is boring.
How much do you understand your world’s geography (1/2 mile wide rivers aren’t “wild” typically — they’re too deep to have the behavior you describe nor do theyhave banks that are considered “confining”).
In general, I liked what you were trying to do — give a sense of other worldliness and of a different time/space. However, I fell out of the story because of what appear to be technical issues.
I liked this opening, but like Dani, I wondered if a cross bolt can shoot that far.
As I live in Southern California, which has no rivers, I have no idea how they behave, so I was okay with that.
Hi Rachel,
Check out this site: http://www.thebeckoning.com/medieval/crossbow/cross_l_v_c.html
This will give you a better idea of the type of power and distance that you can get out of a crossbow. I hope this helps.
In case anyone’s wondering — this set of lines is indeed by Catrin Tuathal. Rachel merely sent it to the Critique’s email address, as Catrin’s email service seemed to be having problem.s.
Who knew I could cause so much trouble? Sorry everyone!
No real trouble, Rachel. It does give me an occasion to remind everyone to put your actual name at the bottom of your story excerpt at the end of your email. I should have put that in the guidelines and now will. That way we can attribute the 13 lines to the person who actually wrote them.
In the hopes of redeeming myself for my terrible carelessness in the writing of this piece, I’ve done a major rewrite, which I posted uner the category of “CaitrÃn Tuathal #2.” Any feedback there would be greatly appreciated.