I'm assuming Jagoth's pallid skin is a result of whatever happened to him after the hound's attack. Otherwise, living on the frontier, one would think that he'd gotten himself a nice tan.
I'm confused as to what happened at the end. Did Jagoth actually enter the city? because it seemed like he did, but I wondered how he'd gotten over the wall. And then, just to confuse things further for me, he thought about needing to get over the wall.
Other than that one complaint, I don't have much. It read well, and unless I'm forgetting something it seems like we make a little more forward motion here than in the original draft of this chapter, which is good.
I think we're at a point where we really need to start seeing hints of the main Plot come at us and I hope you take advantage of Jagoth's no-longer-isolated position in the city to do so. I wonder if chapter five might even a bit late for that, but I think that's as much with a problem with your earlier chapters as this on and nothing you don't know.
Some responses to what others have said: I also wondered why he didn't have a sword, as it seems to me like nobles would, even if those swords were just showpieces. Perhaps nobles just don't carry swords for some reason? That was the assumption I made, anyway.
I agree that while it's fun to watch Jagoth run around beating the crap out of these guys, other than the fun of "whee, action" there's not really a whole lot of tension in terms of the fight. I don't mean that it's boring; it's fun to watch, and the internal conflict makes up for the lack of tension in the fight itself, but if you want us to be holding our breaths waiting for the outcome of the fight, we're not. There's obviously not even a contest here. As LTU points out, he might as well be slaughtering peasants as trained soldiers.
It does seem kind of unrealistic, but given how little we know about Jagoth (as opposed to Baltier) and what happened to him after the hounds got him, I'm willing to let that slide. For now, of course; I expect an explanation in the fullness of time.
("In the fullness of time"? That sounds ... ridiculous, actually. I think I need to stop doing these soon.)
Okay. Regarding the non-linear story thing that you've suggested here. The artist in me goes, "Oh, squee, nonlinear story telling, cool!" I love non-linear story telling. In fact, I'm really glad you brought this up, because I've been reading your chapters and I've been wanting to suggest that you do something like this. To be honest, I've been biting my tongue on this one since chapter two.
Why have I been biting my tongue? Well...
As much as I love non-linear storytelling, and I'm guilty of doing some of it myself (I wrote a novelette about two years ago which, while totally different than this, used an almost identical technique), I think your readers will more easily forgive you if you have some purpose behind the two different timelines than just the cool factor. I would personally be willing to forgive you on that basis alone, but I think that I'm a minority there. So when I suggest that you have a purpose other than just the cool factor, bear with me while I try to explain using an example that you totally haven't read (because I can't think of any stories written by someone you might actually have read right now): In the case of my novelette, the non-linear technique was used to help drive home a thematic point. (Vague enough for you? Actually, let me know if that's too vague, because I want this to make sense.)
So I think that it's okay to screw with reader's expectations a bit, as long as you know that it WILL turn some people off, who probably would have otherwise read your story. Personally, as I've already said, I would be thrilled to read a story that did that; I love that kind of thing. Again, though, I think I'm a minority in this.
So I think that it's best to be able to give your readers some kind of extra payoff for that, if you can. I don't want to stress this too much because I think it can be important, but I don't think is necessary. (What is necessary is that you make sure you aren't doing this to your readers JUST to screw with them. If all it adds is your ability to better explore your characters and not some kind of extra payoff, I think that's enough. But it had better be a better story than it would have been if you had told it linearly.)
And yes, it is hard. It's probably one of the more difficult things you'll do. I still don't know if my novelette has the balance exactly right. (For the record, I think it's mighty close. But that's neither here nor there.) So it's not easy. You'll run into foreshadowing difficulties, definitely. It's a balance that is very difficult to achieve. But it IS achievable.
Another danger that you'll find that is peculiar to your story: You'll have your readers wondering just what the heck Jagoth and Baltier have to do with each other. This problem may be be smaller than I think it is, simply because we haven't seen that much of Jagoth yet, and as Chaos has said, that does seem to be the main meat of the story. But you'll want to somehow tie them together (certainly by the end of the beginning of the story, if that makes any sense, and probably sooner than that) in ways that go beyond just "psst, these guys are actually the same person! have you noticed yet?" This will be difficult for you particularly because of the isolation enforced on Baltier by the frontiers and the narrowness of your scope (at least so far) but I suspect you can get around that if you try.
Oh, speaking of scope. So far, Baltier/Jagoth has been our only POV. If you're planning on adding others, that could make things very difficult for you. (That's my first thought, anyway, is that it would make things more difficult for you. Then again, I've never tried this with more than two POVs--who knows? It could potentially make things easier.)
One thing I DON'T think you have to worry about is losing the internal conflict of Jagoth/Baltier. You can't name the human part of Baltier Baltier, obviously. But even if you just refer to it as the human part or his old self or whatever you can still keep the core of that conflict. It will change things, obviously, not knowing that Baltier and Jagoth are the same. But I don't think it will make things less interesting.
The other thing that might be difficult to conceal in that case would be Baltier's exile mark; it's distinctive and might be problematic. On the other hand, the different timelines (that your readers won't know about) and the name change will be enough to throw people for a loop, so perhaps it will be less obvious than it might seem. If you play your cards right, you could get people thinking that Jagoth's actions as a fugitive are going to have some effect on Baltier and family waiting at home (while still preparing them for the reveal later). That's just an example; I don't know the shape of your story, obviously, so I hope you won't take suggestions like this too seriously. (Uh, unless they work. Then, by all means, take them as seriously as you'd like.) But I hope you can use them as a springboard for where you'd really like to go.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh! If you could lead us to think that the story was gearing up for some sort of confrontation between Jagoth and Baltier, and then do your reaveal... that might be reasonably awesome.
I think your biggest problem if you went this route would be deciding where to place your reveal. It seems like a climactic kind of thing. In which case it should go at, uhh, the climax. Which means that you would have to draw out Baltier's story rather more than you have, and while I certianly think you can draw it out more (more on that in a sec) I don't know if you can draw it out to match Jagoth's story. It's hard to gauge, though, since Jagoth's story is just beginning. If you DON'T want to place this at the climax, then you had just better make sure that your actual climax has something even more awesome to offer.
All that being said, I think there are a couple of obvious advantages that you would get from doing your story in this non-linear fashion:
a) You'll get the time you need to develop Baltier, Mariana and Marshall as a family. If you're going to spend as much time as you already have on them, then I think you need to do a little more. (We've already talked about the time jumps in the previous chapters and you could smooth that out here.) You'll have to justify that with their own internal and external conflicts, of course, and the external conflicts should be linked to what Jagoth is doing/the main story somehow.
b) You'll get more time to develop Baltier before he's sent off to the frontier. What happened with him and Jake, yes (which should probably go at the beginning of the story, if you do it this way; don't mess around with your readers
too much) and particularly happened at Jaksune, after he was captured and before he was sent to the frontier. I really do get the sense that something significant happened to Baltier between his capture and his exile (I could be wrong, of course) and would like to see it.
c) As long as you're careful to make Baltier's story have interesting in/external conflicts and you're careful not to let Jagoth out-bada--ahem, out-badboy Baltier (well, even if you do let him, which you shouldn't) you'll be able to spend some time on Baltier's development and get the faster-paced Jagoth segments at the same time. If you do it right, we won't begrudge you if you have your cake and eat it too; after all,
that's what cake is for (thanks Howard).
d) It will be totally awesome if you pull it off.
All of that is the long way (sorry) of saying that it isn't easy to do, but that I think you should give this option some serious consideration. Whether you do or don't will depend a lot on how well you can make it fit with the rest of your story, and how much all that stuff that comes before Jagoth really matters. If all that stuff is only there to make Jagoth seem like less of a jerk, then there's no real reason that it can't go in flashbacks (though that will make Jagoth a less-than-sympathetic character at the start, and the flashbacks may not change that for people who are determined to hate him, even if they understand him a little better. That isn't necessarily a negative effect, but it is a significant one).
I also wonder how Baltier survived. At the moment, hey, it's magic. Cool by me. I assume that this has something to do with Bathsin, which has something to do with the hounds. I also assume that you'll explain that this later. See that you don't disappoint me. *shakes finger*
Hmm... it did occur to me to wonder, briefly, if his family might have survived in the same way he did, but we saw their corpses, so it wasn't much more than a fleeting thought. It DOES make me wonder why they chose Baltier, particularly, to possess/reincarnate. Something else you can explain later. (Incidentally, Chaos, I should sure hope you guessed that, since I don't see how anyone could have missed it.)
Didn't really have a problem with flattering the lieutenant/captain thing. Though after the lieutenant made a point of correcting him, it would be kind of silly for Jagoth to keep calling him Captain.
I would like to adopt Andrew's "holy crapload" as an official unit of measurement. That is all.
As to why Jagoth tried to blend in with the crowd: I assumed one of a couple of things; that he was hoping the nobles would get less flack at the gates, and/or that he wanted to sneak a bunch of dudes in with him. Though the latter doesn't hold up so well now that I think about it, since he could just have them all join the line and pretend that he didn't know them.
...
I, uh...
Yeah. I think I'm going to stop talking now. Sorry. I'm just going to slink away from the computer and disappear...
