Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series soon.

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The twentieth chapter of Shaman’s Crossing, “Crossing,” begins with Nevare having a fitful night of sleep in advance of exams. At length, he gives up on the idea of returning to sleep and begins to make ready for the day, members of his cohort joining him. Spink muses darkly on the coming exams, and Nevare muses equally darkly on Old Thares, contrasting his present experience with the expectations that had been laid out for him and that he had taken to himself.

Following inspections and a desultory breakfast, Nevare and his cohort begin to sit for their exams. The first of them, for Captain Infal’s military history class, is described briefly. The next, for Captain Rusk’s* mathematics class, received more detail; after an exchange between Spink and Gord, Nevare is left to question whether they had colluded and cheated on their work. The following exam in Varnian is given less detail than Infal’s, and during the lunch period afterward, Nevare continues to chew over events in the mathematics exam.

After lunch, Nevare and his cohort report to Captain Maw’s engineering class where they are presented with a practical exercise: enacting a crossing of Tiler’s Creek on the Academy campus. Nevare is placed in command of his cohort, to his surprise, and he initially handles authority too gingerly to be of effect. Assessing the situation, he orders Caleb and Spink to accompany him across the creek, and the three cross. Efforts to have his cohort set up a structure to cross prove fruitless, and after a final effort in that line, Nevare realizes that the task is to cross the creek, not build a crossing. He voices the revelation, and other groups scramble to enact it, but by the time Maw ends the exam, only Nevare’s group has succeeded.

The exercise concluded, Maw dismisses all save Nevare. As he departs, Gord offers to have Nevare’s uniform cleaned, which offer he accepts; Gord also notes that Maw had ordered him to propose Nevare as the unit commander. In private, Maw reminds Nevare about his earlier offer to have Nevare commissioned as a Scout, and Nevare reiterates his refusal of the offer. Maw then opines on the role of the military in maintaining the status quo in Gernian politics, for which reason, the first-year cadets of Carneston House–Nevare’s cohort–will be culled. Nevare’s inclusion is by special request of his aunt. And while Maw acknowledges the unfairness of it at the local level, he notes that nothing is likely to change the practice, seemingly remaining convinced that such a thing serves the greater good.

After a reiteration of the commissioning offer, Maw dismisses Nevare, and the young man muses darkly on the limited fate he sees before him.

To address the chapter-length issue: the present chapter, in the edition of the novel I’m rereading, runs 23 pages in length, approximately 3.98% of the novel. It leaves 100 pages in the novel, as well. Hobb has a tendency to back-load her novels, events at the ends of them coming in rapid succession after abundant character development; so much seems to be the case for the present novel, as well, with events in the present chapter signalling a motion away from the story that has been set up for readers to follow.**

Also, for indexing purposes, the following: Cadet Captain Jaffers, Caleb, Captain Infal, Captain Maw, Captain Rusk, Carneston House, Carsina Grenalter, Colonel Stiet, Corporal Dent, Daraleen Burvelle, Dark Evening, Dewara, Epiny Burvelle, General Brodg, Gord Lading, Grand Square, Keft Burvelle, King Darwell, King Troven, King’s Cavalla Academy, Kort Braxan, Landsing, Landsingers, Lord Grenalter, Natred Verlaney, Nevare Burvelle, Old Thares, Oron, Plainsfolk, Rory, Scout, Scout Tiber, Scout Vaxton, Sergeant Duril, Sirlofty, Skeltzin Hall, Spinrek “Spink” Kester, Tiler’s Creek, Tobacco, Trist Wissom, Varnian,† War College. I note with some instance the prevalence of captains in the present chapter, as well as the mention of a general; there have only been a few mentions of the latter title (“Harbinger” and “The Academy” come to mind as offering examples) previously, which seems somewhat odd for a society evocative of the United States, the histories of which make much of the “great men” leading armies. But there is mention in the present chapter of limited opportunities for advancement, which makes sense in the context of hereditary military service; with as many people in uniform as would seem to result, there would be many more vying for promotion than there would be positions into which to promote them. Perhaps that explains matters.

Brodg has been mentioned before (see “Harbinger,” linked above), and not as a compliment. In the earlier mention, Keft notes that discipline is lax under his command owing to too much sympathy with the common soldiers from whom he is sprung (although there is an implication that he is descended in long line from noble blood, if “blood and breeding have thinned in his line” [44]). In the present chapter, Maw regards Brodg’s elevation to high command as an affront to natural order, saying “It goes against the grain, Burvelle. It rasps the sensibilities” (473). While such attitudes bespeak a classism that is, on its surface, at odds with the putatively egalitarian ideas of the nineteenth-century United States from which Gernia borrows, it must be remembered that

1. Gernia only borrows from the nineteenth-century United States; it is not the nineteenth-century United States.
2. The nineteenth-century United States was itself decidedly classist, even without a formal nobility or a hereditary monarchy. Class structures in the United States were (and, let’s be honest, are) heavily intertwined with concerns of race, ethnicity, and national origin; those structures center around ownership, particularly of land and means of production (and they still largely do, although with increasing abstraction).

It’s another point of tension in the novel between what should be and what is, something with which Nevare has had difficulty throughout the text.

Captain Maw (appropriately named; he serves as something of a mouthpiece for the quiet Gernian military establishment as well as the face of Nevare’s cohort’s consumption) does a fair bit in the present chapter. His political explication to Nevare reinforces earlier comments by Sefert Burvelle and others, driving home the idea that everything is political. Everything moves towards determining who is in power, who remains there, who does not, and what those are able to do who are there. And his educational explication is also telling; the idea that things have to be taught, that knowledge is not inbred, is one that grates against Gernian sensibilities, even if it is the case that that nation-state has had to adjust to those ideas. That equivalent training leads “less noble” people into better performance than “more noble” ones has implications for a caste-reliant society that it cannot readily face; if it is the case that literature offers its readers lessons for their own world, those the present chapter offers would seem to bear some consideration.

One other note: in the engineering challenge posed by Captain Maw, the difference between success and failure is one that relies on properly understanding the problem posed. Nevare stumbles upon it relatively late, but he does still get to that point, leading his patrol to (its ultimately futile) success in the exercise. This is of a piece with Hobb’s repeated emphasis on the importance of specificity of wording, something that pervades her work in a quiet sense even when it is not called out (as in such cases as are discussed here, here, and here, if not also elsewhere). It’s something to be expected from a professional writer, admittedly, joining an already-identified emphasis on the importance of writing‡ (and, indeed, closely akin thereto). But that it’s expected does not make it a bad thing.

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* It seems that the earlier issue regarding the name of this officer (see “Classmates“) really is simply a one-off typographical error. As noted in the earlier discussion, it happens from time to time, even with all the people involved in the professional production of text (discussed here).

** It must be noted that there has been some foreshadowing of this point. See, for example, “Letters from Home” (already linked above) and, in a more metanarrative sense, both “Magic and Iron” and “Harbinger” (also already linked above). Too, while there is value in “stock” narratives, their principle worth is in forming a base from which to work; much of the more interesting material comes in moving away from the standard and how that can be done well.

† A small note: while Nevare’s instructor in Varnian is named as he is introduced, the class he teaches receives little attention and he, himself, is not mentioned by name after the introduction. It is clear that Nevare devalues the course–and not because of its difficulty; military history presents problems for him, but he refers overtly to Infal and discusses the class in some detail, if not as much as some other classes. It might be wondered if Nevare’s attitudes, coupled with his difficulties, are a backhanded commendation of the value of humanistic study.

‡ See, for example, “Sword and Pen,” as well as “Letters from Home,” linked above.

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