[LMB] SP: TSK: Beguilement Chapter 3

[Lois McMaster Bujold]

[LMB] SP: TSK: Beguilement Chapter 3
Beth Mitcham mitcham.beth at gmail.com
Mon Nov 27 04:00:33 GMT 2006

   
On 11/26/06, Tzivia Adler <tadler at yeshivanet.com> wrote:
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 >  Chapter 3
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 > <viewpoint switch> dag realizes that fawn is  a malice-magnet, being
 > pregnant.  therefore he wants to tuck her away, all by herself, with no
 > protection whatsoever.   in case of possible danger, she should just hide
 > until she figures out they are ok.  this is supposed to be enough
 > protection.  huh?  is dag an experienced patroller/newbie trainer or 
what?
 > although he does realize that he is dizzy with fatigue, possibly 
stupid with
 > it too.

You are the second person to make fun of Dag for this decision, but I
disagree with this judgment.  Dag is juggling several important tasks
here, and finding the malice is a higher priority than her safety.
Groundsense is a limited range ability, so Dag leaving Fawn somewhere
that has already been searched by the malice is a reasonably safe
risk, not an insanely stupid move.

Yes, Fawn should have hid in the cellar, but that wouldn't have saved
her from the mud men, just from regular bandits returning to a sacked
farm for no apparent reason.  I do cut her some slack for having had a
really bad day and having absolutely no experience in hiding from
major bad guys.

I think there is a difference between letting characters guess wrong
and having them behave in plot-forcing ways.  I see Dag stashing Fawn
somewhere where he expects humans to come before more mud-men as the
former, not the latter.

For arguments sake, would would have been the smart thing for Dag to
do?  Abandon the hunt for the Malice and instead take Fawn all the way
back to Glassforge?  Which would mean giving the Malice a lot more
warning before it could be attacked.

Beth Mitcham


*** Indeed, I'm not quite sure what turn the speed readers are missing, 
here.

Dag has already compromised his mission to the limits he dare by taking 
Fawn to the Horseford farm -- which, be it noted, he expected to find 
populated.  His plan was not to abandon her there alone, but to turn her 
over to the farmers in residence, together with urgent advice (which, 
granted, he was not sanguine would be taken) for them all to seek 
shelter together at Glassforge forthwith.  He did not expect to find the 
farm deserted.

Finding it so, he was up against two time limits: daylight for tracking, 
and his own fatigue, either of which might shut down his search before 
he made it the then-unknown distance to the lair, which at that point he 
expected to be farther away than it proved.  Remember, in addition to 
being short on sleep the prior couple of nights and having ridden 
considerable distance and fought a scary night fight, and then ridden 
and tracked some more, he's been up for about 36 hours straight.  I 
don't know about the rest of you, but that's about the stretch at which 
I start getting little hallucinatory flashes of light at the corners of 
my vision, not the least of the signals from Mother Nature that I'm 
exceeding my warranty.  Dag's in way better shape than I am, but he's 
not a superman, and he probably has a pretty good idea just how far he 
can push himself before toughing it out stops working.

In Lakewalker SOP, he would also have had a partner at this point; one 
could have tracked while the other reported in, and incidentally 
delivered Fawn to what might pass for safety if you didn't think about 
it too hard, but of course we saw what happened to Dag's partner.  I 
think a person so inclined might reasonably blame Mari for not assigning 
Dag a new partner when she dispatched him after the mud-man, but she did 
rather have her hands full at just that moment.

Carry on...

Ta, L.



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