The Heroes, Scene 5: The Nothing-ing (p. 48-55)

"Beautiful, ain't it?" said Agrick, big grin across his freckled face. 

"Is it?" muttered Craw. He'd been thinking about the ground, and how he might use it, and how an enemy might do the same. 

. . . 

"Doubt it. But I have a bad feeling." He frowned across Shivers' black outline, leaning against one of the Heroes, the valley drenched in sunlight beyond, and he put one hand on his stomach. "And I've learned to listen to my gut." 

Wonderful snorted. "Hard to ignore something so bloody big, I guess."

Ah, good ole Nothing. I've been waiting for Nothing to happen for awhile now, and finally, it arrives! Now, you'd think that Nothing would be easy to do, but you'd be wrong.

Harder than it looks.

The gist of my yammering is that according to those Writing Book People, stories (at least, your non-hoity-toity conventional variety) generally consist of two elements: scene and sequel. You've got your scene -- what with the action and the conflict and the hey-hey and ho-ho, and AFTER that, you've got your sequel.

Santa: Scene

Santa: Sequel. Did you really have to kill all those teddy bears?

What we have in Scene #5 is the sequel to Scene #1. There's no pressing Scene Question, for once; instead, we have the reactions of the crew to what comes next now that they've taken the Heroes.

Generally, sequel is in this order:

• Emotion
• Thought
• Decision
• Action

but in this chapter there's a lot more emotion and thought than there are decision and action. After all, there's nothing to be decided, really:

But then in Craw's experience, and he'd plenty, wars were made from ninety-nine parts boredom, usually in the cold and damp, hungry and ill, often hauling a great weight of metal uphill, to one part arse-opening terror.

Craw knows what he needs to do: sit on his ass, wait, and make sure nobody sneaks up on 'em. 

We're reminded of this in the very first paragraph -- Craw, our POV character, is pondering offense and defense. We learn in this chapter how each other 'main' minor character (Whirrun, Wonderful, and Agrick) is dealing with the situation:

Agrick: Cheerful, until Craw annoys him (to have some fun, and to sneak in some needed exposition for those poor souls who didn't read The First Law trilogy)

Whirrun: Living in the moment in the way only someone who thinks he's fulfilling some grand destiny can.

Wonderful: Thinking about her family, and choices made.

Craw: Thinking about a woman, Colwen, he had a thing for, and choices made.

The chapter ends with Shivers showing up (poor ole Shivers) and a bit of foreshadowing about how bad it's going to get, but nothing too dramatic. All in all, a nice little chapter: nothing dramatic, just something that gets in some exposition and character development. 

That said, it would not be incorrect to surmise that when we next visit Craw and company, the shit will start hitting the fan. 


Next Time: Meet Corporal Tunny!