Short preview - opinions?

[Tony Greyfox]

This is a snippet that I'm trying to base a new story on. I'm curious to know if anyone finds it intriguing at all. It's being a bit stubborn in terms of ease of writing, so I thought I'd check and see if it's interesting...



Rumbles and sullen thumps crawled their way up along rolling hills. Forty pairs of ears perked, and thirty-nine heads turned towards the sound, a soft whisper of fur joining the percussion from below as positions were shifted. No voices were raised, though, and after a moment eyes turned back to the head of the group.
The leader lowered his long-sight tube thoughtfully. His mount turned her head and whuffed quietly, and he reached forward, placing a calming red furred paw against her neck absently. She silenced, her brushy grey tail wagging slightly as his own, thick and curled, waved back and forth slightly. He lifted the tube again, and focused on the activity below.
At the base of the hill below, the top of a tree wavered, then slowly toppled, crunching to the ground below. The grey metallic mass at its base rumbled as it turned, approaching another of the thick oak trees that made their way along the bottom of the hill, its attendants pushing the massive, chugging machine around towards its next target. Behind it, another machine awaited as the other members of the crew, long-legged and clad in dark tunics with protective hoods drawn up over their heads, long, blunt noses extending out from them, wrestled the freshly fallen log towards its gaping maw. The squirrel leader watched as it fed into the machine, steam pouring from its stack, and with a distant buzzing sound slowly disappeared to emerge as rough planks behind it, where more of the equines drew them onto yet another machine, this one made for transport.
His squad held their canid mounts similarly quiet, black eyes focused on their leader as he lowered the tube and slipped it into its holder on his saddle.
"The time ... is now."
The leader's voice was quiet, intent, and his followers shifted, paws going to their saddles. Stiff leather whispered as bronze blades slid free and were prepared. Hard-pointed lances were prepared. And a whisper arose from the squirrels flanking the leader, echoing his words.
"The time is now."
"The time is now."
"The time is now."
The words rolled from front to back in the small squad, then slipped forward again. As the squirrels silenced, anticipating, the leader raised his sword, then dropped it, pointing forward.
As one, the squad lunged forward, their mounts crouched low as they flowed over the hillside, using the trees, grass and rolls of the hillside to mask their approach towards the work crew of horses below, the wolves they rode moving quickly and as silently as the death they would soon become.

[Unition]

It's really well written, good job!

It's a snippet, so understandably there are missing parts - what I think you could add before the snippet is a better sense of the setting.  I'm trying to figure out where they're looking and which direction they're going, and while everything that is happening is very well described I'm having trouble picturing where everything is and how it relates to each other.

That's a very advanced level of fine-tuning, your story is great!

[Tony Greyfox]

Cool, thanks for the input. Yeah, this is a *really* short clip - basically it's the scene that I visualized in my head while on a lunch-hour walk one day. It's like "Squirrels riding wolves. Okay, that's unique..." and then turned into a kind of interesting culture clash - late bronze-age, early iron-age warrior tribes fighting over land with not terribly combative but inventive almost steampunk plains dwellers. I haven't developed more than just the above piece yet - just trying to figure out if it's interesting to people. =)

[Kitten]

wow that sounds good..................when will you be writing more??

I would love to read more!

(It just proves that squirrels will be taking over the world...........)

[Tony Greyfox]

I'm still trying to figure out exactly how I'm going to do this one, but the feedback so far is pretty good so I'll start working on it soon... got another quick piece to get out of the way, then I can focus in on this a little more. Glad you like the idea!