Okay. For some reason I didn't get your revised chapter one, so I'm basically critiquing this as if it were the beginning of the story.
Frog has already commented that she thinks the chapters you've submitted here could stand as a first chapter, and I agree--with a caveat; I don't
know enough. About the world, in part, but more particularly about the characters. You can string us along on all kinds of things if we get to know the charactesr, but so far, I don't feel that I do. Add a bit more detail about the world and the situation and some more characterization, though, and I think you certainly would have a decent chapter one out of this.
Onto the specifics...
So, I'm kind of wondering why there are bloodied--presumably dead--peasants lying in the street while other people go about their merry business in an inn. Wondering isn't a bad thing, I suppose, as long as there's a plausible explanation for it that comes up soon enough to satisfy.
As Frog pointed out, the two thugs kind of came out from nowhere. In retrospect I suppose it makes sense that they were after his purse, but, I don't know, it seemed jarring at the time. Maybe there's some way you can set that up so that it makes a little more sense, as it were.
Breaking into the fortress--something which I have no idea why he's doing or what the fortress is--Kale finds a headstone that reads "dead, carry on", and inexplicably, apparently unquestionably, assumes that it means his friend Arion is dead. If there's a connection between what seems to me to be a random find and his friend Arion, I don't see it.
JadeEyes doesn't seem at all reluctant or remorseful when he tells Riel that his sister is dead.
When JadeEyes says that the other guards were elsewhere, it strikes me as odd that Riel didn't seem to want to question him ab out it. Likeiwse the little guy that was running after him reminding him of his meetings or whatever somehow didn't quite seem credible to me. Also, on that subject, this line: "Huffing and puffing, the man kept on rushing after him, not used to this much exercise" seems like a POV error--the sort of thing that should be coming from the little man's thoughts, when we're still in Riel's point of view.
Reading other peoples' comments: What's the deal with people hating on windowless rooms? =P
Ahem. Seriously, you can build rooms without windows even if they're facing outside (Trust me on this one. I went to a high school where the only windows were the cracks on the walls.). In fact, if this is supposed to be a medieval setting, rooms iwthout windows are far more believable, since rooms WITH windows would probably bankrupt whoever comissioned the buildings. Just sayin'.
(This might not hold true for settings in a later time period--Renaissance etc--so take that with a grain of salt. But still.)
I didn't have so much trouble with the innkeeper being nervous about Kale carrying a weapon. Seems an armed man in a war-torn land would be plenty cause to make someone nervous, since the law's probably gone to pieces. Of course, all that is extrapolation on my part, and while I think it's a reasonable enough guess, it might be a good idea to put some hints of that into the text. The bloodied peasants on the street might be enough... if we ever figured out why the heck they were lying in the street in the first place.
I see your comments about making Kale more sympathetic later. That's fine, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you have to make him more sympathetic
now. Your readers need some reason to care about him or they won't read onto the later. I think it is possible to have mostly unsympathetic characters as POVs (though I have the impression that I'm in the minority here, so that's something to be considered) but that means you're raising the bar considerably on just how interesting that character has to be. The less we like him, the more we need some other reason to spend time with him. And we haven't seen enough of Kale's character in this section to let us kow if that's going to happen, so our inclination is to not connect with him very much.
It can be done, and it would be great to see you do it. Just be careful--it's a fine line to walk.
