The next morning, Eragon went behind his tent, removed his heavy outer clothes, and began to glide through the poses of the second level of the Rimgar, the series of exercises the elves had invented. Soon his initial chill vanished. He began to pant from the effort, and sweat coated his limbs, which made it difficult for him to keep hold of his feet or his hands when contorted into a position that felt as if it were going to tear the muscles from his bones.As will surprise no one, Paolini has made a major mistake in his first paragraph of the chapter. Even without any knowledge of Tai Chi or yoga, the panting and muscles feeling as though they would tear from his bones sounded unlikely. Just to do my due diligence, I did double check this with our resident expert on Tai Chi,
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torylltales to make sure there wasn't some legitimate reason for Eragon to be so short of breath and experiencing such extreme pain. This was his response:
I don't know much about yoga specifically, but traditional/ fighting application Tai Chi certainly does make you work hard. I don't "pant", but I'm always a little bit sore in the legs and core, and slightly (emphasis on "slightly") out of breath after my 25-minute "Slow Form" practice. Especially for a beginner, which Eragon definitely is, the coordination of deep slow abdominal breathing with low stances and slow movement can be really taxing on your lungs and muscles. Especially the legs.
That said. Even when I was a beginner I never panted. Panting is a sign of a particular kind of aerobic-anaerobic exertion where the oxygen required/used by the muscles is greater than the oxygen gained from breathing. Panting is an adaptation that uses rapid thoracic gasping to quickly solve the problem of oxygen deficit during cardiovascular exercise, to prevent the person from fainting. In a scenario where a person may be running from a predator, you can see how fainting would be a disadvantage. It's a handy way to end a chapter, though. Lol.
Neither tai chi nor yoga nor pilates are cardio-focused aerobic exercises, and all three emphasise the importance of abdominal (deep) breathing over thoracic (shallow) breathing, so there should be no reason for Eragon to be running at an oxygen deficit after any reasonable amount of practice of something similar to them in slowness and emphasis on posture and stretching.
Second, if his muscles feel like they're tearing or about to tear, he's definitely doing it wrong. Any sort of slow stretching exercise, whether it's yoga, tai chi, pilates, aquarobics, resistance training or what have you, should only feel as bad as a dull deep muscle ache, not a sharp tearing pain. "tearing pain" only happens when you're causing damage to the muscles or tendons, as in damage that needs to be looked at by a healer, not the healthy kind of muscle 'damage' that the body naturally fixes by building more muscle.
Short answer: there is no situation where a person with no pre-existing injuries or conditions (arthritis, tennis knee/elbow etc) can practice tai chi correctly and properly and experience either oxygen deficit (panting) or sharp tendon or joint pain. Pain is more likely if they're doing something wrong (e.g. misaligning the knee or ankle joint when they step or pivot), but there are no circumstances that I'm aware of short of asthma or emphysema where an individual practising tai chi would need to pant.
From personal experience, I have never needed to pant after even a solid three-hour tai chi seminar, and I never experience pain unless it is an old injury that I've been reckless with, or I'm twisting a joint in a way in which it ought not to be twisted. Really, Paolini should have known this. If he couldn't find it online, he should have gone looking for a teacher and either asked them questions about Tai Chi/yoga or gone to a couple of classes to get some idea about the practical aspects of the art.
While a lesser problem than above, there's also the fact that Eragon either slept in his "heavy outer clothes" or woke up, dressed in them, left the tent, undressed and began his exercises. Had the events of the previous day been so overwhelming that he, say, sat down on his bed meaning to get up and undress in just a moment and falling asleep instead, then that might have been a good little bit of characterisation and a natural reaction to an overly long day. That didn't happen, though, so I'm going to assume that Eragon does everything as complexly as humanely possible, regardless of how impractical it is.
An hour later, he finished the Rimgar. Drying his palms on the corner of his tent, he drew the falchion and practiced his swordsmanship for another thirty minutes. He would have preferred to continue familiarizing himself with the sword for the rest of the day—for he knew his life might depend upon his skill with it — but Roran’s wedding was fast approaching, and the villagers could use all the help they could get if they were to complete the preparations in time.At this point it would have been nice to see Eragon actually learning the practical differences between a longsword and a falchion. The different balance and speed, the shorter reach and the alleged different way of holding the blade could all have come into play here and we could have seen Eragon practicing with one of his tame elves. We could have seen him losing much more frequently than he's accustomed to and realise the problem when using an unfamiliar blade. For one thing, his muscle memory is going to be all wrong for how Paolini imagines Eragon using the blade. Seeing Eragon keep on parrying with the blade would have emphasised the difference in Rider training vs regular training and, though it would still make him seem petty, have driven Eragon's desire for a longsword of his own again even more. Rather than Eragon wanting a longsword of his own because he likes shiny things, it could have been because he was too lazy!
I think it's also telling that Eragon only spent half an hour of shadow sparring with his new sword before going off to help prepare Roran's wedding. Eragon knows that his very life might depend on him learning how to use the falchion properly, but he decides to just up and go help out with the wedding for no other reason than the "villagers could use all the help they could get". If he wanted to help them, he should have made another golden ball and paid a few hundred of the camp followers to help out, rather than just lend a single set of hands. I can see what Paolini was trying to do, or at least I think I do. He wants to show Eragon being all concerned about his cousin's wedding and show Eragon's connection to the village. As others have pointed out before, and will point out again, we haven't really seen this connection before, and we won't again.
One way, though, to show the connection would be to have Eragon abandon his familiarization with the falchion because his own nerves about the wedding prevent him from concentrating on it, and he just needs to lose himself in the familiar. Remember, he's a 16 year old boy having to perform a wedding ceremony for his cousin, whom he allegedly loves like a brother. He should have butterflies the size of dragons on his stomach over performing such an important and personal role. This isn't acting as a figurehead for people he doesn't know, this is something deeply personal, where he has to get up in front of people he knows, cares about and respects and not fuck up. Rather than a desire to help, Paolini would have been much better off giving Eragon a bad case of the jitters to excuse his lack of practice and desire to mix and mingle with the people of
Emond's FieldCarvahall.
Refreshed, Eragon bathed in cold water and dressed, and then he and Saphira walked to where Elain was overseeing the cooking of Roran and Katrina’s wedding feast. Blödhgarm and his companions followed a dozen or so yards behind, slipping between the tents with stealthy ease.Why is Saphira coming along? She plays no role in the preparations, has shown nothing to indicate that she would be interested in them, and would either disrupt them by her useless bulk or would disrupt the flow of traffic around the camp though her useless presence just outside of the wedding preparations. And let's not forget Eragon's elven guard who watched him exercise for an hour and a half without bothering to tell him that he was doing the Rimgar wrong or offering to spar with him so he could learn how to use his pretty new sword, and are now acting like they're stalking someone or something. Paranoid much? Even the Aiel aren't that paranoid, and they think they're always about to be attacked.
“Ah, good, Eragon,” Elain said. “I had hoped you would come.” She stood with both her hands pressed into the small of her back to relieve the weight of her pregnancy. Pointing with her chin past a row of spits and cauldrons suspended over a bed of coals, past a clump of men butchering a hog, past three makeshift ovens built of mud and stone, and past a pile of kegs toward a line of planks set on stumps that six women were using as a counter, she said, “There are still twenty loaves of bread dough that have to be kneaded. Will you see to it, please?” Then she frowned at the calluses on his knuckles. “And try not to get those in the dough, won’t you?”My question is: why does Elain set Eragon to kneading dough? Apart from his knuckles being unsuited to the task (and, as
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torylltales pointed out before, would be at risk of ripping off during the process of kneading), what reason does Elain have to think that Eragon would be most valuable kneading dough? Sure, growing up on a farm away from town with no female family members, Eragon probably does know how to knead dough and bake bread, but surely he would be better suited to helping build the tables or directing traffic away from the wedding or helping with the butchering?
I think the reason is to be found in the next few paragraphs, where Eragon's fallibility is proven by his dough being a little sticky, and the women making dick jokes. The latter might be one of the most realistic and believable things in the series, but Eragon's dough being sticky is pretty much your average Mary Sue flaw. "Look, see, my character isn't perfect! Their dough is a little bit too sticky!"
The people who would not be able to attend the wedding were as much on Eragon’s mind as those who could. He thought of Byrd, Quimby, Parr, Hida, young Elmund, Kelby, and the others who had died because of the Empire. But most of all, he thought of Garrow and wished his uncle were still alive to see his only son acclaimed a hero by the villagers and the Varden alike and to see him take Katrina’s hand and finally become a man in full.It's really difficult to feel any sadness for characters who never really existed. What I mean is, Paolini created those characters on the spur of the moment, purely to fill out the village. There's really no characterisation of them, and few of them appear before the second brick. There's no real evidence of Eragon associating with them, nor that he really feels their loss. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure this is the first time Eragon has brought up their deaths. If we had seen him interacting with them in the first book, and seen his stunned or disbelieving reaction in the second book, and now finally a sense of sadness, it would have some kind of emotional impact. I know that it can be really hard to give meaning to the death of minor characters who don't have long to make an impression on the reader but, still, Paolini really hasn't put much effort into giving us, the reader, any connection with the dead and has only put a little more effort into giving Roran and Eragon a connection to them.
A single horn rang out across the land, unnaturally loud.
Then again.
And again.
Everyone froze, uncertain what the three notes signified.
For a brief interval, the entire camp was silent, except for the animals, then the Varden’s war-drums began to beat. Chaos erupted. Mothers ran for their children and cooks dampened their fires while the rest of the men and women scrambled after their weapons.
Eragon sprinted toward Saphira even as she surged to her feet. Reaching out with his mind, he found Blödhgarm and, once the elf lowered his defenses somewhat, said, Meet us at the north entrance.
There are a couple of things here. To begin with, I thought that the horns were meant to be from the Varden and that they just hadn't told anyone what the signal actually meant. It takes a surprisingly long time for this to be clarified as the actions of the enemy. The next issue is the use of war drums to rouse the camp into action. Drums were only used in the later eras of medieval warfare, and trumpets were still primarily used to rally and give commands. What should be happening is that the Varden's trumpeteers, not the drummers, should be sounding the alert.
The last line is also an example of characters knowing something purely for the sake of the plot. Perhaps the drums told Eragon that he should be heading for the north entrance to the camp, or maybe he could tell the direction of the horn blasts, but there's no mention of this in the text and so, to us, the reader, it appears that Eragon has inexplicable knowledge of where the alert came from. This is really inexcusable on both Paolini and the editor's part. This sudden knowledge could be very easily explained, but no effort has been put into it.
Finally, it seems that the pet elves got bored of watching Eragon making bread and wandered off, because rather than yelling at them as he runs to Saphira, Eragon has to search them out mentally. They're really useless puppets, aren't they?
Eragon flung himself onto Saphira. The instant he got a leg over her neck, she jumped four rows of tents, landed, and then jumped a second time, her wings half furled, not flying but rather bounding through the camp like a mountain cat crossing a fast-flowing river. The impact of each landing jarred Eragon’s teeth and spine and threatened to knock him off his perch. As they rose and fell, frightened warriors dodging out of their path, Eragon contacted Trianna and the other members of Du Vrangr Gata, identifying the location of each spellcaster and organizing them for battle.
Someone who was not of Du Vrangr Gata touched his thoughts. He recoiled, slamming walls up around his consciousness, before he realized that it was Angela the herbalist and allowed the contact. She said, I am with Nasuada and Elva. Nasuada wants you and Saphira to meet her at the north entrance —
As soon as we can. Yes, yes, we’re on our way. What of Elva? Does she sense anything?
Pain. Great pain. Yours. The Varden’s. The others’. I’m sorry, she’s not very coherent right now.
It’s too much for her to cope with. I’m going to put her to sleep until the violence is at an end.
Angela severed the connection.
Like a carpenter laying out and examining his tools before beginning a new project, Eragon reviewed the wards he had placed around himself, Saphira, Nasuada, Arya, and Roran. They all seemed to be in order.Rather than fly to Eragon's tent, Saphira chooses to frighten already worried soldiers and make them even more disorganised. This also brings up, I think, the issue of just how big the camp is. Saphira must be making jumps in the region of twenty or thirty meters at a time, and even using the lowest theoretical density used for Roman army camps (480 men/acre, below the 690 men/acre used in 19th century military camps), the camp would only be 370 meters or so to a side if it was a square. Even at 100 men/acre, the camp would be under 900 meters to a side. Yet Eragon has time to contact all the members of the mage guild, speak to Angela and review his wards and the wards he has place on other people. If the camp was a rectangle twice as long as it is wide, Eragon would be able to go from one end to another within 60 seconds, based on Saphira's jumping abilities. This really doesn't seem like enough time for him to do all that.
The other disadvantages of having such a large camp are the difficulty of keeping it defended, both in terms of the extra defences needed and the lower number of men who can be sent to each section of the wall, and the long time it takes to shuffle reserves around during an attack. Smaller camps are much more efficient, even when not organised along Roman lines. Based on the estimated population density of Aggersborg (447/acre), medieval military camps probably weren't much more sparsely populated than the lower bounds of estimates for Roman camps, so I'm not really sure what kind of density Paolini is imagining.
In this section we are again reminded that Eragon has knowledge of where the attack is coming from ahead of everyone else - even Nasuada seems to have learned after him - and we find out how many wards Eragon has placed on people. How, I wonder, is he fueling these wards? They must have been imbued with a very limited pool of strength, because they would kill Eragon if he went too far away from any of them, and the drain of them during battle would dramatically weaken Eragon. If he's only put a limited store of energy into them, then how is he still connected enough to them to review the wards he placed on the others? Stuff like this really makes a mockery of his system of magic.
Saphira slid to a stop before his tent, furrowing the packed earth with her talons. He leaped off her back, rolling as he struck the ground. Bouncing upright, he dashed inside, undoing his sword belt as he went. He dropped the belt and the attached falchion into the dirt and, scrabbling under his cot, retrieved his armor. The cold, heavy rings of the mail hauberk slid over his head and settled on his shoulders with a sound like falling coins. He tied on his arming cap, placed the coif over it, and then jammed his head into his helm. Snatching up the belt, he refastened it around his waist. With his greaves and his bracers in his left hand, he hooked his little finger through the arm strap of his shield, grabbed Saphira’s heavy saddle
with his right hand, and burst out of the tent.
Releasing his armor in a noisy clatter, he threw the saddle onto the mound of Saphira’s shoulders and climbed after it. In his haste and excitement, and his apprehension, he had trouble buckling the straps.
Saphira shifted her stance.Hurry. You’re taking too long.
Yes! I’m moving as fast as I can! It doesn’t help you’re so blasted big!
She growledWhere are Eragon's squires/dragon saddlers? He's an important person, and he might need to mount up at any time in order to defend the Varden. If he has to saddle Saphira himself every time, and arm himself as well, then that's going to be a delay that might prove costly. Nasuada should really have provided him with men to help him with one or both of these tasks, or else his useless bodyguards should be fulfilling that role. Seriously, why aren't at least one or two of them with him right at this moment? He might have sent some on ahead to the northern gate, but that's no excuse for his paranoid elven bodyguards to all abandon him. Good bodyguards are protective to a fault and would have insisted on sending at least one or two of them with Eragon even had he protested.
We also see Eragon's utter disregard for his new sword. Rather than treating it with respect and putting it on his cot, he throws it in the dirt, seemingly deliberately. Now, swords may or may not be worthy of glorifying or mythologising depending on your point of view, but at the very least they should be treated like you would any other weapon. That is to say, with care. You might drop a weapon during battle if it was damaged or the conditions have rendered it useless, but when you're not under attack, throwing it into the dirt is a pretty bad sign. Along with Eragon's habit of not cleaning his armour and running off without orders on a whim, he really presents a pretty bad example of a soldier. If that was the point, then it would be entirely appropriate, but he's presented as a paragon of virtue.
Oh, and we don't really need a description of the sound mail makes - which I doubt is actually anything like Paolini suggests - or how it feels. It's armour, he's arming up and there's no plot or thematic point to describing it in such detail.
The camp swarmed with activity, men and dwarves streaming in jangling rivers toward the north, rushing to answer the summons of the war–drumsI'll let this pass because they're meant to be a rag tag rebel group with little actual military experience, but everyone running to the point of an attack is a bad idea. Sure, it happened in history and sometimes it was a disaster for the side who sent most of their men to a single point, but there are also clear examples where such actions were forbidden. The Knights Templar, for instance, had everyone go to a central location (the chapel) when an alarm was sounded, except for those closest to the alarm, so that orders could be given.
Eragon collected his abandoned armor off the ground, mounted Saphira, and settled into the saddle. With a flash of down-swept wings, a jolt of acceleration, a blast of swirling air, and the bitter complaint of bracers scraping against shield, Saphira took to the air. While they sped toward the northern edge of the camp, Eragon strapped the greaves to his shins, holding himself on Saphira merely with the strength of his legs. The bracers he wedged between his belly and the front of the saddle. The shield he hung from a neck spike. When the greaves were secure, he slid his legs through the row of leather loops on either side of the saddle, then tightened the slipknot on each loop.This here is another example of Eragon being an idiot. If he was in such a rush to fly that he didn't bother putting on his limb armour, he should have left the greaves for when he was back down on the ground. There's a reason for the leg loops, and unless you're strapped in some other way, you should really be using them in case your dragon is suddenly attacked or lands unexpectedly. If you must put on armour while flying, at least make sure it's your arm armour, not your leg armour. And, again, the time it would take for Eragon to do all this makes the camp seem considerably larger than it should be.
Eragon’s hand brushed against the belt of Beloth the Wise. He groaned, remembering that he had emptied the belt while healing Saphira in Helgrind. Argh! I should have stored some energy in it .
We’ll be fine, said Saphira
Hahahaha, no, you won't be. This is what not taking care of your equipment gets you: the sloppiness attributed to one aspect of your life slowly infects the other aspects. In not looking after his mail or sword, Eragon has also neglected his magical arsenal. Saphira, at this point, could also have avoided spouting platitudes and reminded Eragon of Brom's ring. At least then the ring would have served some sort of purpose, acting as a counter to Murtagh's Eldunari.
He was just fitting on the bracers when Saphira arched her wings, cupping the air with the translucent membranes, and reared, stalling to a standstill as she alighted upon the crest of one of the embankments that ringed the camp. Nasuada was already there, sitting upon her massive charger, Battle-storm. Beside her was Jörmundur, also mounted; Arya, on foot; and the current watch of the Nighthawks, led by Khagra, one of the Urgals Eragon had met on the Burning Plains. Blödhgarm and the other elves emerged from the forest of tents behind them and stationed themselves close to Eragon and Saphira. From a different part of the camp galloped King Orrin and his retinue, reining in their prancing steeds as they drew near Nasuada. Close upon their heels came Narheim, chief of the dwarves, and three of his warriors, the group of them riding ponies clad with leather and mail armor. Nar Garzhvog ran out of the fields to the east, the Kull’s thudding footsteps preceding his arrival by several seconds. Nasuada shouted an order, and the guards at the north entrance pulled aside the crude wooden gate to allow Garzhvog inside the camp, although if he had wanted, the Kull probably could have knocked open the gate by himself.It's nice to see Nasuada including Orrin in things for once. It's almost as though he's a king or something. Also, Saphira just destroyed part of the camp's defences, Eragon's useless bodyguards have finally shown up and the Varden's camp has some pretty weak gates.
What I want to know is how Orrin is able to gallop his horses up to the embankment. The camp is written as being full of men all rushing in the same direction as Orrin, which would suggest that a gallop is out of the question for him. A trot might be possible, if he didn't mind trampling anyone who got in his way, but that would hardly endear himself to the Varden.
In the interest of time and formatting, I'll just summarise what happened from here on out: The enemy has only just landed their boats, numbers under 300 men and are two miles away. The group discusses why the soldiers are so few in number and are announcing themselves so brazenly, and the decision is made just to sit behind the defences and send Orrin's cavalry around to attack the enemy from behind once they commit to a full scale assault. The soldiers then announce themselves once again through a magical horn blast and we're treated to a particularly nasty piece of purple prose:
Eragon forgot what he was going to say as he saw a stir of motion on the far side of the Jiet River, behind a veil of sorrowful willow trees. Red as a ruby dipped in blood, red as iron hot to forge, red as a burning ember of hate and anger, Thorn appeared above the languishing trees. And upon the back of the glittering dragon, there sat Murtagh in his bright steel armor, thrusting Zar’roc high over his head.What sad story has he given those willows? Why would a ruby dipped in blood be any redder than a normal ruby, and red hot iron is actually pretty dull and not all that "red" at all. The same goes for embers, which are pretty dull red when it comes down to it. And "languishing trees"...ow. Just, ow. The whole passage makes my head hurt.
And there, I think, I'll end the spork. Tune in this time next week for
Fire in the Sky by none other than myself, and the week after for
Man and Wife by Pipedream
