Novel Update – The Final 100

I’m now within the final 100 pages of my fourth draft edits. Estimation for completion of the fourth draft has been revised from end of August to mid-August. After the fourth draft is complete, the novel will be much closer to the finished product. I still want to go back and do some minor touch-up work and add some details here and there, but that’s about it. So I’m pretty close to the point where I’ll shop it around to an agent, perhaps by the end of the year if all goes well.

I’ll leave you with a couple of excerpts from my novel. The first comes from the start of Chapter 16, the chapter where I moved into the final 100 pages just last week. The second excerpt is from chapter 17, and it takes place during the final siege of a key stronghold.

***

Caelen went to the chapel after all. He would have welcomed a draught of ale, a pint or two or three was tempting, but he had given up drinking long ago. He had seen what it had done to his father, and he would need his wits and a strong sword arm and the blessing of a saint if he were to kill Cobus. If not a saint, then he would settle for the blessing of priest, but he didn’t see either in the chapel.

Where was Mathieu?

It was an hour past Compline, so the priest had probably retired for the evening to the monastery in the eastern quarter of the city, too far away to go and find him and drag him out of bed and ask for a blessing. He would have to pray for his own soul and hope that his prayers were heard.

He walked down the nave of the chapel and up to the altar. He grabbed one of the candles and touched the flame to the candle beside it, and the wick took the flame, and the golden light rose and flickered, the shadows pulsing on the walls and the stained glass windows and the saints’ faces carved of granite. He sat the candle back on its stand, and he knelt before the altar, the smoke rising and the wax slowly dripping into the stand’s base.

The chapel of St. James was quiet, nothing but the dripping and the wind breathing between the cracks in the stone and the wind rattling the glass of the windows and the sound of his own voice whispering his prayers – protect me, give me strength, give me victory – while outside, he knew death awaited with the sounds of steel and screams and crying. The army was coming, and it would soon surround the city, and there would be no escape.

***

The trebuchets momentarily ceased their firing while the engineers reloaded the machines, and so Caelen turned and leaped up the stairs to the top wallwalk that overlooked the ramparts, where he could view the enemy encampment on the far side of the field. He saw the great war machines, the counterweight boxes hoisted up and the long arms drawn toward the ground by windlass and rope, all four winched down and ready to fire. He heard the hammers strike, releasing the beams, and then another peal of thunder filled the valley as the lead weights fell, and the arms of the trebuchets swung upwards, releasing their loads.

Four streaking arcs of fire seared the night sky. Caelen realized the enemy was no longer slinging rocks at the walls but barrels filled with flaming pitch, tar, and animal fat. He ducked as the missles cleared the ramparts, and he heard the hiss of flames as the barrels passed overhead and then the crunch of wood and thatch as they struck the houses. Even though it had rained often over the past several weeks, the last three days had brought a hard wind, and the thatch was dry enough to burn.

And burn it did.

Black smoke quickly filled the southern quarter of the city, and groups of peasants and soldiers worked to put out the rapidly spreading flames, but the closeness of the houses made the fire difficult to contain, and the wind aided the enemy’s cause as it carried the sparks from one roof to the next. Women were at the well filling buckets with water and passing them off to the men, and the men dumped the water on the blazing thatch, but it did little good. The stench of ash choked the air, wood strained under the intense heat and cracked and then collapsed, women and children screamed in terror, and the thunder of the war machines continued to shake the earth.

Nothing could stop the storm of fire that rained down on Chermon. The trebuchets pounded the city, and the inferno grew. And in the pre-dawn, hours before the sun’s light touched the eastern sky, the barrage finally stopped, and the southern district of the city was left to smolder and melt inside a black cauldron.