Our Hero encounters danger, and welcomes it
Bardelys finally gives us his young hero’s reaction to losing his parents, sister, and home. It doesn’t seem adequate.
This though is a tricky subject. Too much time spent on ‘Oh dear! Oh my!’ will make our young Hans seem a weepy-eyed wimp. Too little will make us wonder at his stony-heartedness, and ask ‘What’s the matter with him?’ Bardelys has chosen to minimize the time – presumably in favor of action; now that he has (at last) begun the tale, he seems to want to carry us along with it. As I say, it seems too little to me. I don’t have a sense that Hans is too broken-hearted to lose everything he has. But on the other hand, maybe this is what Bardelys has in mind? We saw on the first two or three pages that Bardelys was critical of his hero, showing him to be lazy, arrogant, greedy, and self-centered. So maybe Bardelys merely wants us to add ‘uncaring’ to this list.
The glow of Yellow Socks’s lantern leads us to the great camp where the transformed Charcoal Burners (in greater numbers than Hans saw from his window when the nightmare began) have set up a great tent around which the common fighting-men stand or lie as wardens, burning fires to keep watch.
Hans enters the camp. It seems too easy, but the note that one of the dirty fighting-men might have called after him gives us a note of some worry. Have they followed Hans to the great tent? Are they spying on him even now?
He manages to worm his way under the flap of the tent, where he gets his first glimpse of the leader of the soldiers. I presume this is the Sooty Prince that the White Lady mentioned to Yellow Socks. And sure enough, Yellow Socks is in the tent, in the middle of some dispute with the man in the throne.
The ending of this chapter is one of those ‘bumps’ that break chapters in the middle of a scene. There is a small revelation – that it is indeed Yellow Socks. And there is the promise of more argument between the lad and the little ugly man in the throne, which just might answer some of the questions we have about this whole business – who these creatures are, what they want, why they have invaded the fields of men from the wicken-haunts of the Black Forest.
I like this chapter ending. I think I would find it very difficult to put the book down here. I am forced to (as are you) since Bardelys is only feeding me one chapter a day. But if I found it in a book, I would have to read at least the first page or two of the following chapter.
(Composed on keyboard Thursday 6 November 2008)
