Rejectomancy Exclusive – The Barghest by Orrin Grey
As I mentioned in this post, my very talented writer friend Orrin Grey is re-releasing his first collection of short stories, Never Bet the Devil & Other Warnings through Strix publishing. You can check out the Kickstarter campaign right here. Orrin is a horror writer, and a damn good one, and he and Strix Publishing have given me permission to post one of the stories in the collection here. So, check out the “The Barghest” below for a taste of what you’ll get in the premium re-release of Never Bet the Devil & Other Warnings. If you’re a fan of weird fiction and horror in general, this is one you don’t want to miss.
The Barghest
By Orrin Grey
I was standing by the side entrance when they brought in the bones. Would you believe me if I said that as soon as I saw them I knew they weren’t human? Or any other indigenous animal? I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. It’s a difficult thing to credit.
It wasn’t any training that told me, or my experience at the museum. I didn’t see the bones long enough for that, just a glimpse of the brown skeleton–the wrong-size skull, the wrong-way legs–and some primal part of my brain said “monster.”
I threw away the butt of my cigarette and followed the men who were carrying the stretcher with the skeleton on it. I wasn’t surprised when I saw that they were carrying it to your part of the lab.
I remembered you on the phone, arguing with Kelso over a skeleton that was found out on the moors somewhere. You wanted it, you said. The museum had paid for the dig, and you were the senior paleontologist on staff so it belonged to you.
You were waiting when they laid the stretcher on the table. That’s when I got my first good look at it. It was the size of a big man, but it definitely wasn’t a human skeleton. Looking at the bones, I was hard put to say if it was a biped or a quadruped. I imagined that it moved like a bear, or like a great ape. Its hands were too big for a human and terminated in hooked talons, but they had clear opposable thumbs.
The skull was simultaneously apelike and doglike, a toothy muzzle like a baboon or a mandrill. I remember making some offhand comment about Lovecraft’s ghouls, but you were unfamiliar with Lovecraft. You never cared for anything you deemed “disposable culture.”
As the investigation into the remains went on I bought a copy of Tales of H.P. Lovecraft edited by Joyce Carol Oates, whose name I thought might lend it some credibility in your eyes, and gave it to you with the page containing “Pickman’s Model” tagged. I’ll bet it’s still on the shelf in your office, with the tag still on it. I’ll bet you never even picked it up.
If you had read it, though, you would have understood why I brought it up; you would have known what it was about the bones that left me at once intrigued and uncomfortable. How human they looked, and how inhuman. Not like the bones of some Neanderthal man, some earlier species of humanity, but instead like something that took an alternate evolutionary path, something that should have been human but became something else instead.
Those sorts of thoughts didn’t interest you, though. I know that. You were always dismissive of what you called my “supernatural thinking.” You always regarded the museum as beneath you, and me as beneath the museum. You treated me with a grudging tolerance, and never admitted that the reason we worked together was because none of the other interns would work with you.
“What is it?” I asked you that night, because for all your coolness you liked it when I asked you questions, and because I really did want to know what you thought. I was curious if you had some explanation that would take all the parts and somehow make of them something other than a monster.
“Something new,” you said, and that was all. It was less than encouraging.
Of course, it wasn’t something new, was it? It was as old as the dirt in which it was found, as old as men telling campfire stories. We learned that, you and I, but you learned it first.
#
I remember how carefully you cleaned the bones. The peat in which they were found had preserved them, like a fossil without the stone. They were perfect; no flesh left for us to macerate, just those ossified brown bones. I remember watching you work over them with your little brush, your magnifying glass, carefully turning over and examining each and every tiny piece.
I wasn’t allowed to do any of the real work, wasn’t to handle the skeleton. When I was in the lab, I stared at the skull.
As with most carnivore skeletons, the skull seemed too big for the rest of the bones. It dominated the table, drew the eye. Those teeth that seemed too big for the mouth they filled, those gaping sockets. If I looked at it one way it was pure animal, like a wolf or tiger, if I looked at it another it was disturbingly human.
I’ve spent a lot of the time since then wondering how it happened. You were so careful. Was it your eagerness that was your undoing, or did something else render you suddenly clumsy? Were the teeth simply sharper than you imagined they would be, after remaining buried for so long?
You know how, sometimes, when you walk into a room, you can tell that something has changed before your mind has processed what it is? When I walked back into the lab that night, I knew that something was wrong before I took in any of the details. From where I was standing in the doorway, I could see the skeleton on the lighted table, and my eyes naturally traveled to where the skull would normally have rested, only to find a blank white space where it should have been.
Only then did I notice that you weren’t there. I walked to the head of the table. The skull was on the floor, teeth and pieces of jaw scattered across the tile. And mixed in among them were fat red drops of blood.
I went to the break room then, but you weren’t there, just more drops of blood spattered on the back of a chair and the surface of one of the round Formica tabletops. The first aid kit on the wall hung open, and pills in individual packets lay scattered across the counter and the floor.
Why did you go to the ladies’ room, I wonder? Was it shame, fear of appearing mortal and fallible in front of the help? Or did you know, even then, that something was wrong, more wrong than the gouge in your palm or the blood you were losing from it?
I knocked on the door, and you knew it was me. “I’m fine,” you said, without my even needing to inquire. “It’s just a scratch. Go clean up the lab, and be careful.”
At the time I thought nothing of that “be careful.” I assumed it was concern over the integrity of the bones, displaced anger at the damage to the skull. But since then I’ve wondered. Did you know, even then? Was your concern not for the bones at all, but for me? It doesn’t seem like you, but then adversity sometimes brings out the best in people.
I have a lot of questions that I know will never be answered, but the one that troubles me the most is how soon you knew. When did you first realize what was happening, and how long did it take that realization to become knowledge, to become acceptance?
#
By the time you came out of the restroom I had already replaced the skull on the table and mopped up all the blood, both in the lab and the break room. If you were there I know you would have rolled your eyes at me, but as I put the skull back onto the table the black sockets looked darker and deeper than they should have, and I got the feeling that something was staring out of them at me.
I knew you’d been lying about it just being a scratch, I’d cleaned up too much blood for that, but it wasn’t until you came out of the restroom that I realized how bad it must have been. Your face was pale, the color bleached from it, like a person about a minute away from going into shock. Your eyes looked red, as if you’d been crying, and your right hand was swathed in most of the gauze and bandages from the first aid kit.
When you came into the lab you held your injured hand up to your chest like a cat with a hurt paw, and you put your other hand out to a table to steady yourself.
“That looks like it might need stitches,” I said, though of course I couldn’t see the wound itself. “You should probably let me take you to the emergency room.”
You nodded tightly but didn’t let me take you to the hospital until you’d examined the skeleton and verified for yourself that the damage wasn’t extensive enough to compromise the find. I noticed even then, though, that you were careful not to touch it.
#
The doctor at the ER put eleven stitches in the palm of your hand, and just like that I became necessary to you. With one hand out of commission, you couldn’t do the fine work needed to examine the skeleton, and so I became your hands on the job.
Did you ever stop to wonder why I worked with you when no one else would? Why I was willing to pull down the same preposterous hours that you insisted on? Did you think that I was attracted to you? Or did you just think that I believed you were the genius that you believed yourself to be, and that I wanted to ride on your coattails?
Maybe you didn’t think about it at all. That would be more like you.
Someone else might have noticed something different about you immediately, might have caught on sooner, for good or ill. Had I watched TV or read the papers I might have heard about the girl who was mauled to death in a park near your house that week, might have said something to you that would have forced a confrontation, elicited some response in you that I could have interpreted. But by the time I came home from the museum I was exhausted and all I wanted to do was to curl up with my ghost stories, which you regarded so scornfully, and then sleep.
Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered what I noticed, what I said. Maybe you still didn’t know yourself. I’ve not yet determined how aware you are when it happens, how much of you is left.
You always said that the surest road to combat superstition is study, but no matter how much we examined the bones I was never able to shake the sensation that they were not the remains of anything wholesome or natural, not even the bones of some mutation or aberration, some lusus naturae. You, of course, were no help.
I bought a book of folktales from the British Isles and took to reading it before I went to bed. I read about Black Annis, a cannibal witch who lived in a cave under an oak and ate children. She hung their skins in the branches to dry, and then wore them tied around her waist. I read about Black Shuck, a dog the size of a horse with eyes like saucers, and the more recent “shug monkey,” which reminded me more than a little of the thing on our table, with its mix of primate and canine features. I read about the shapeshifting Barghest, which may have inspired Dracula’s transformation into a monstrous wolf.
If I ever told anyone but you what I’ve seen since then, what I’ve learned, they’d send me to a psychologist, and that psychologist would undoubtedly blame my “hallucinations” on those stories. They’d say that I’d been priming myself, and that when events occurred that I couldn’t deal with, I used those myths to give context to a truth that I didn’t want to admit. But, as you always said, psychology is a soft science, and what happened to you, to us, is anything but soft.
Looking back now, everything seems so inevitable. Maybe if you’d been allowed to keep the skeleton, things would have gone differently. Maybe the charade could have been maintained a little longer, but I think it was doomed to come down, sooner or later.
I remember when, just two weeks after the night you cut your hand, Ms. Trevayne asked you to come into her office. She didn’t draw the blinds, and I knew just by watching what she was saying to you. You stood in front of her desk, your wounded hand drawn into a fist at your side, your other hand gesturing as you shouted at her.
When you stormed out of her office you called her a cunt, a word I’d never heard you use before, and told me that she was taking the skeleton away from you and giving it to Kelso, which I had already guessed. This would never have set well with you, even before, but you would have approached it disdainfully, with an “it’s their loss” attitude, as though you were too good to get upset. Your desperate rage took me by surprise, and when you walked back to the lab you forgot yourself and slapped both your hands palm down against the table. That’s when I knew. Knew that you weren’t hurt anymore, that your hand had healed completely even though the stitches weren’t due to be taken out for another week.
“She can’t do this to me,” you said, an under-the-breath growl I wasn’t intended to hear. “She can’t do this to me. Not yet.”
#
But of course she could, and when I walked into the lab that night and saw the table empty I knew she had.
You weren’t there, and I assumed that you’d already left in a huff. I almost just turned around and went home. How differently would things have gone then?
Instead, I decided to head across to the other side of the wing, to the lab that Kelso normally used. It’d be nice to say that some premonition prompted me, but I don’t think it did. I think I was just curious. I’d never seen you defeated, I was curious to see what someone else’s victory over you looked like.
As I rounded the corner I could see the light from Kelso’s lab flickering and swaying, like the illumination of some sideshow spookhouse. I think I ran to the door, then, but I don’t really remember. As vividly as I can recall everything else, the order of the next few seconds are jumbled in my memory. It’s as though everything I saw exploded into my mind at once, a kaleidoscope of snapshots.
The half-smashed light fixture that had come loose from the ceiling and was swinging back and forth, throwing its funhouse illumination on everything. The blood, shockingly red against the tile and the table and the wall. Kelso’s arm, in one corner, the rest of him crumpled behind the table. All of those things, though, were driven out of my mind when I saw the thing you had become.
It had taken only a glimpse of the bones for my primate brain to realize that they belonged to a monster, a teratism, something that should not exist. Seeing you like that took even less.
The thick black fur. The way you stood, crouched and bent, like a man who has been forced to crawl on all fours for years. The snout, like a wolf’s only crushed in, the teeth too large to fit in the mouth. The hands like Halloween monster gloves, only the claws making them seem real, reminding me of Black Annis and her iron talons.
You looked at me, I remember that. Your eyes weren’t big as saucers, but they were red and bright and amazingly clear and strangely human. I believe, to this day, that I saw recognition in them. That you saw me and knew me and chose to spare my life. Then you were gone out the window.
#
I didn’t call the police. I stumbled over to the wall, hit the fire alarm, and then collapsed to the floor beneath it. The sprinklers kicked on and I sat in the artificial rain, with my knees drawn up to my chest, and didn’t move until the authorities arrived.
The sprinklers probably destroyed the crime scene, but the police would never have been able to understand what had happened there anyway. I don’t even remember what I was asked, or what I told them, but I know that I didn’t mention what I really saw.
I remember being told that I was in shock. I remember someone wrapping a blanket around my shoulders as I was helped into an ambulance and driven to the hospital. It was only then, while I was sitting in the emergency room in my wet clothes, that I remembered the thing that I had seen but not noticed earlier.
The bones, of course. They hadn’t been on the table, and in one of your big, misshapen hands you had carried a canvas bag just big enough to contain them.
They let me out of the hospital eventually and took me back to my apartment. They told me to stay there, but I didn’t. I changed into dry clothes and then took a taxi to your place.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been to your house, of course. You’d sent me to pick things up for you from the museum before. I even knew where you kept your spare key stashed, though it didn’t turn out to matter because the back door was hanging open, the knob torn out of the wood.
I can’t say what made me walk through that door into the dark interior of your house. Maybe I was still in shock.
I didn’t turn on any lights. I walked through the kitchen, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. There were smudges on the walls beside the staircase that looked like chocolate syrup in the dark, though I knew they weren’t. I followed them upstairs.
You were lying facedown on your bed. The blinds were drawn, but a wedge of streetlight came in through a gap in them. You were naked, your skin pale and human in the dim light, looking as smooth and new as the flesh of a baby. The bag of bones was on the floor beside the bed. I stood watching you for longer than I probably should have, measuring the rising and falling of your breath as you slept. Then I took the bag and walked back out.
#
I’ve not yet guessed why you wanted the bones so badly. Did you hope to extract from them the secret of a cure, some tincture of silver nitrate and wolfsbane? Or was it simply that you wanted to keep them close to you, your only connection to the thing you had become? Either way, it doesn’t matter anymore. I burned the bones in the incinerator in the basement of the museum before I made this recording. All but this one tooth.
Even if I hadn’t, though, it wouldn’t have made any difference. Cures are for movies, not real life. I don’t know what you are any more than I imagine you do, but I know it’s not something you get to come back from. Soon, though, you won’t have to be alone anymore. You’ll have something better than bones for company.
What does it feel like, when you change? I bet it isn’t like the movies, the gradual shifting and lengthening of bones, the sprouting of fur. I bet the beast just tears out of you, as though it’s been there all along and your skin is just a disguise that it’s been wearing. I’ll bet that’s what it’s like.
I don’t know if you’ll ever see this video. I don’t know how long it will take you to come for me, or even if what comes for me will be something that can properly be called “you.” But I know that you will come for me, sooner or later, and that when you do I’ll be here waiting for you, ready to meet you head on.
You see, I’ve torn my hand with this tooth, just as you did. I’m coming to meet you now, just as surely as you’re coming for me. I’m coming to join you in wherever you’ve gone, whatever you’ve become, and we’ll let nature–or whatever it is that governs things like us–take its course.
AUTHOR’S NOTES:
This one had its origins in, of all things, a terrible movie called Werewolf that I saw on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Maybe not the most auspicious of beginnings, but I thought the idea of someone becoming a werewolf because they were scratched with a fossilized tooth or bone from a werewolf was a setup that deserved some better treatment than a film starring Joe Estevez.
That was where it started, but once I was writing I realized that I didn’t want this to be a werewolf story exactly. At least, I didn’t want to use the word werewolf anywhere in the story. Giving something a name like that is an easy way to dismiss it. “Oh a werewolf, I know what that is,” so instead I decided to build the monster up using suggestion and allusion. I’d wanted to do something with some elements from British folklore like Black Annis and, of course, the Barghest, and I found that this was the perfect story for it. Throw in some more allusions to Lovecraft’s ghouls, and there you go.
Never Bet the Devil: An Interview with Orrin Grey
Orrin Grey is one hell of a horror writer, and I’ve had the extreme pleasure of working with him a number of times in my previous role as managing editor for Skull Island eXpeditions. He just gets horror, and creepy, disturbing things fall out of his head and on to the page like a burst pinata full of spiders. To bring his particular brand of darkness to the world, Orrin has recently partnered with another of my favorite people in the publishing biz, Simon Berman of Strix Publishing. Together, they are creating the definitive edition of Orrin’s first short story collection Never Bet the Devil & Other Warnings. I spoke with Orrin about this new project and some of the things that influence this master of the macabre.
1) Okay, Orrin, give us the quick and dirty on your literary career. Who are you main influences? And where can we check out some of your work?
Primarily, I write what I like to think of as “fun, smart horror.” At least, I hope it’s fun and smart. But I’m also a freelancer, and as you are no doubt well aware, Aeryn, freelancers will (and do) write everything. So I also do stuff ranging from work for Privateer Press to writing website copy for car dealerships…
When it comes to influences, I have a lot, and I tend to wear them on my sleeve. But Mike Mignola has a story that he likes to tell in interviews, about how when he first read Dracula he knew all he wanted to do in life was draw monsters. My similar moment of clarity came not with Dracula, but when I encountered Mike’s own work on Hellboy. Since I can’t draw, I had to settle for writing monsters instead.
As for where you can check out some of my work: My second collection, Painted Monsters & Other Strange Beasts, is available right now from Word Horde. I’ve got stories out or forthcoming in a bunch of exciting anthologies, including Children of Lovecraft (speaking of Mike Mignola, who did the cover) and Eternal Frankenstein, which features my story “Baron von Werewolf Presents: Frankenstein Against the Phantom Planet.” I don’t have as many stories online as I would like, but right now you can read my story “Black Hill” on the Strix Publishing website as part of our Kickstarter for Never Bet the Devil, or listen to it at Pseudopod.
2) You’re currently working with Simon Berman and Strix Publishing to breathe new life into your first collection of short stories, Never Bet the Devil & Other Warnings. Tell us about it.
Never Bet the Devil & Other Warnings originally came out from Evileye Books back in 2012, but they recently decided to stop publishing prose books entirely, so it unceremoniously dropped out of print at the end of last year. When that happened, I knew I wanted to get it back into print, but also that I wanted to do so in a way that would reward those who had already picked up the original edition. Enter Simon and Strix Publishing, who are helping me put together what I think is going to be the definitive edition of Never Bet the Devil: hardcover, cloth-bound, gold-foil-stamped, fully illustrated, and with a new introduction by Nathan Ballingrud, to name just a few of the features.
3) Which is your favorite story in Never Bet the Devil and why?
You know, I just got asked this on a podcast. I told them it was “The Seventh Picture,” and that’s definitely a favorite of mine, though right now if I had to pick a favorite story from Never Bet the Devil, it might be my odd take on a haunted house tale “Nearly Human,” which is one of those stories that seldom gets singled out by reviewers but that just really feels like it did exactly what I wanted it to do.
4) Are we getting any new stories in this premium collection?
There will be at least two new stories in the deluxe edition of Never Bet the Devil. One of them was previously published in The Mothman Files back in 2011, but has never been collected before. I wanted to include it in the original release of Never Bet the Devil, but rights issues prevented it, so now here it is, incorporated into the collection as I had always intended. The other is entirely new, written exclusively for this edition, and is a story about kids exploring an undertaker’s basement on Halloween night called “Goblins.” We’ve got several other stories planned as possible stretch goals, so if the Kickstarter does really well, who knows how many new stories might be in the final book?
5) I hear there are some truly kick-ass illustrations in the book. Tell us about the artist.
There are some truly kick-ass illustrations in the book! The original publication of Never Bet the Devil had a cover and some great interior spot illustrations by Bernie Gonzalez, which I loved, but they stayed with the previous publisher when the rights to the rest of the collection reverted back to me. When it came time to choose a cover artist and illustrator for the deluxe edition, M.S. Corley was my first and only choice. I’ve been a fan of Mike’s illustrations and cover design work for years, and we had previously worked together on a little chapbook called Gardinel’s Real Estate. For my money, Mike might be the best cover guy in the business, and when it comes to his interior illustrations, let’s just say that you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!
6) Who are the people that absolutely need to back this Kickstarter? What would you say to them?
Anyone who enjoyed my work in Painted Monsters or any of the recent anthologies that have featured my stories but never got a chance to pick up the previous edition of Never Bet the Devil. Anyone who has the previous edition and likes it well enough to upgrade to a fancy hardcover with more illustrations and new stories. Anyone who loves old-fashioned ghost stories, creaky old horror movies, fun weird horror, or Mike Mignola comics, I think you’ll find that I’m speaking your language in Never Bet the Devil. And even if not, I can guarantee that Mike Corley’s illustrations will be worth the price of admission all by themselves.
Orrin Grey is a writer, editor, amateur film scholar, and monster expert who was born on the night before Halloween. His stories of monsters, ghosts, and sometimes the ghosts of monsters have appeared in dozens of anthologies, including Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year. He’s the author of Never Bet the Devil & Other Warnings, Painted Monsters & Other Strange Beasts, and Monsters from the Vault. You can visit him online at orringrey.com.
Fightin’ Fiction: 5 Melee Myths
One of my many hobbies is HEMA, or historical European martial arts, wherein folks study various fighting manuals from the medieval and renaissance periods and attempt to recreate these martial disciplines as accurately as possible. Once you swing a sword the way it’s meant to be swung and then do a little historical research, you quickly find popular media presents combat with swords, axes, maces, and other crushy, stabby, pointy things . . . well, uh, incorrectly would the nicest way to put it.
So, from the author’s perspective, if you wanted to portray your melee combat more realistically, how would you go about doing it? Well, research is always the best answer, and it couldn’t hurt to at least watch some HEMA sparring to get an idea of what certain types of sword fighting probably looked like (or even take a few classes yourself). That said, I think the five “myths” I’m going to debunk below are a good place to start. At least, they’re things that jump out at me when I’m watching movies or TV that feature sword-fighting and such.
Let me preface this list by saying I have probably violated every one of these “rules” in my own writing for various reasons (“cuz its cool” being at the top of the list), so, please, don’t take this as me laying down the gospel. The idea here is not to remove the fun from fight scenes but to identify a few easy fixes if you wanted to present melee in a slightly more realistic fashion. If that’s not your thing, you’re not wrong by any means. There’re a lot of ways to write good action scenes in fiction, and ultra-realistic is not everyone’s cup of tea.
Okay, here we go.
1) Swords don’t go SCHWING! when drawn.
Go get a butter a knife, wrap it in the sleeve of your leather jacket, and then pull it free. What noise did it make? None, right? Yep, unless the sword is pulled from a metal scabbard, that cool SCHWING! sound you hear in every single movie doesn’t happen. Most scabbards are made of wood and leather, and even with a metal throat they don’t produce much noise at all. Swords also don’t sound like angry tuning forks, buzzing and hissing every time the hero flicks his wrist.
The fix: Easy; let your swords be silent, and let your hero’s deeds do the talking.
2) Back scabbards are impractical for big swords.
It’s a simple matter of physics, really. If you stick a big sword in a scabbard across your back, say a longsword with a 36-inch blade, your arm simply isn’t long enough to pull the sword up and out of the scabbard. You’ll get about halfway and then have to do some weird bodily contortions to get the sword all the way out. Even with a shorter blade, it’s going to take you a lot longer to draw the sword from your back than it would if it was on your hip. Not to mention, returning the sword to the scabbard is going to be a real bitch if you can’t, you know, see the scabbard. I see many unfortunate heroes dying from self-inflicted stab wounds to the top of their heads.
The fix: Honestly, including back scabbards in fantasy fiction is a pretty minor sin, all things considered. They do look pretty damn cool. But if you want to be more realistic, there’s some evidence that big two-handed swords were carried on the back to transport them from place to place, but they were probably discarded before battle began. So, if you use back scabbards like that, you’re within the bounds of reasonable historical use.
3) Armor works.
Oh, man, this is a big one for me. Yes, armor works, and it works really, really well. So well, in fact, that most swords are useless against good armor unless used in very specific ways (half-swording, for example). Blades just don’t cut through metal (generally), and that means someone in chain mail or plate armor was pretty well protected from sword blows. Armor became so good that a bunch of specialized weapons developed to defeat it, mostly polearms that put a lot of pressure on a very small area, puncturing or crushing rather than cutting.
There are tons of videos on YouTube demonstrating the resilience of metal armor (and even padded armor) against sword blows, but here’s a couple of great videos on the subject from Falchion Archaeology to get you started:
Cluny Falchion vs Maille – This an excellent cutting test with a falchion, a sword known for its fearsome cutting power, against padded armor and chain mail. He doesn’t test the falchion on plate because it’s kind of a foregone conclusion.
Polearm Test 1 – Want to see what types of weapons could actually defeat plate armor? Here are some great examples.
The fix: This is a tough one because sometimes you need the hero to cut through a bunch of mooks without describing every little detail. I’d say it would be enough to show armor working from time to time for both heroes and bad guys. You might also show the hero using half-swording and other techniques designed to defeat armor (and maybe stating that’s what they’re doing). Or, hell, dispense with the every-hero-must-have-a-sword trope and give you’re protagonist a poleaxe because they know they’re going to be fighting dudes in armor.
4) Shields are also really, really good.
You rarely see a hero with a shield. Why is that? Trust me, the ability to places a small, mobile wall between you and a guy trying to hit you is awfully handy. There’s a reason the shield is so ubiquitous throughout history—it works. That said, the personal shield was largely abandoned once plate armor became the norm because it was kind of redundant at that point, and you had a better chance of defeating the other guy’s armor with a two-handed weapon, like a poleaxe (see point three).
The fix: Use them where appropriate, and like armor, show them being effective once in a while. Shields were used offensively too, so there’s a lot of cool opportunities to let the hero use her shield to knock bad guys off their feet or smash their faces in.
5) Fewer instant kills.
In movies, you often see the bad guy take a single cut from the hero’s sword (slicing through armor like it was made of tissue paper) and then fall down stone dead. The truth is that most deaths on a medieval battlefields were probably from blood loss and infection rather than instantly fatal wounds. Humans are actually kind of hard to kill, and unless you inflict a really catastrophic wound, like behead someone or crush their skull, instant death is unlikely. That means even a mortal blow leaves the bad guy quite a bit of time to do some damage. It’s why historical European martial arts teach continued defensive measures AFTER a telling blow is struck. Basically, you want to stick your opponent and then get out of the way while he bleeds to death.
If you’d like to read a very thorough and engaging article on this subject, “The Dubious Quick Kill” by Frank Lurz is about as good as it gets.
The fix: Another tough one because you don’t want every bad guy lingering around after the hero has effectively defeated him. Your hero is special, and she should be able to kill the bad guys in a single blow now and then. That said, it’s pretty simple to get the idea across by dropping it in occasionally. Have your hero strike a mortal blow and then continue to defend himself as the bad guy slowly bleeds out. Show the aftermath of a battle where some men have died from blood loss and infection rather than skulls cloven to the teeth and such (not that that didn’t happen every once in a while). Also, it never hurts to do a little research on wound trauma for this kind of thing; the more you know how the body works (and what stops it from working), the more realistic you can make your fight scenes and any resulting wounds.
Of course, there are lots more melee myths out there, and I may explore some in future posts, but these five are a good place to start. If you have any experience in this area and want to share some of your own melee myths (or point out something I’ve missed), please do so in the comments.
My Latest Publication: “The Father of Terror.”
My story “The Father of Terror” took second place in the The Molotov Cocktail’s Flash Icon contest. You can read it (for free) right now and all the other excellent stories by the top ten finalists in the Flash Icon mega-issue. And, if you’re of the writerly persuasion, don’t miss The Molotov Cocktail’s next flash fiction contest, Flash Fear, for your own shot at cash and glory. Details and deadlines to be announced on the Molotov website soon.
One Year of Rejectomancy & Strange Search Terms
Rejectomancy has been up and running for over a year, and I’d like to offer a big thank you to those who have followed the blog here and on Facebook and Twitter. Your tolerance for my blathering borders on the supernatural, and I hope you’ve taken something useful away from all my rejections and dubious writing advice.
Looking back over the last year, one thing I find interesting is what exactly brings people to the blog. Luckily, WordPress saves all the terms put into various search engines that bring people to Rejectomancy. Most of these are what you’d expect: folks searching for info about rejections letters or even searching on my name or rejectomancy itself. But there are a few head-scratchers among all those search terms, so I thought I’d share four of the more interesting ones with you. As with most things on the Internet, these are 75% pornographic.
1) “rejected penthouse letters”
I don’t know about you, but I would kill to get my hands on some of those rejection letters. I can only hope they would be long personal rejections that are overly clinical about the magazine’s particular subject matter. The person who ended up on my very unsexy blog must have been really disappointed.
2) “summon succubus without letter”
Well, you can summon a succubus without a letter, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Demons require at least one formal reference from each summoner and generally eat those without one.
3) “where can i get free wet dream stories”
Uh, not here. Again, I can only imagine the WTF moment this person had when they arrived at my blog.
4) “lunar monkey madness:the legend of korra xxx”
I had to Google The Legend of Korra. It’s an animated fantasy show on Nickelodeon. It does not feature lunar monkeys or deal with the subject of literary rejection as far as I know. I’m pretty sure it’s not rated XXX either.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the blog thus far, and if you have, click the ol’ follow button (if you haven’t already). And if you have any suggestions for future posts, please tell me about it in the comments.
Acceptance Letter Archive: The Acceptance + Edits Letter
So, uh, I haven’t received any rejection letters lately. Note, this is not because I’m such a better writer now; I’ve just failed to send any submissions. Since I’m short on rejections to talk about, I thought I’d add another entry into my much smaller (minuscule, really) acceptance letter section on the ol’ blog.
The letter I’m going to talk about today is the acceptance + edits letter, which, in my experience, is not too uncommon. Basically, it’s a very polite (and welcome, I might add), “Hey, we dig your story, and we’re going to publish it, but fix this stuff first.”
Here’s one from my collection.
Thanks for your submission, “XXX.” I’m happy to say that I’ve acquired it for XXX issue! I’ve attached your story with my edits. Once you’ve read through and addressed every suggestion to the best of your ability, send your polished version to my associate editor, [name], and she’ll work with you to get your story ready for publication. I’ve also included [name], XXX’s production manager, so she can send you your contract when it gets closer to our publication date.
If you have any questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to let me know.
In this particular case, the edits comprised of a dropped word and the editor’s request that I remove the profanity from the story. These guys are a family friendly market, and I missed that in the submission guidelines (negative Rejectomancy XP for me), so I had absolutely no problem making the changes.
In my experience, most of the changes a publisher will ask for after an acceptance are minor and amount to proofing rather than actual editing. That’s not surprising, really. Smaller markets don’t usually have the resources to overhaul a story, no matter how much they like the concept. In other words, they’re looking for stories that don’t require a lot of editing. Keep that in mind when you’re polishing up your work for submission.
So what happens if you don’t agree with a publisher’s edits? I’ve run into this a couple of times, and the answer is really simple: let the editor know, politely, that you disagree with a suggested change and then explain why. In my experience, you’ll then have a dialog with the editor that will result in a) you keeping the story the way you want it or b) coming to a compromise that works for both of you. Remember, editors are often writers too, and most are quite willing to work with an author so he or she is happy with the published story.
Have you received an acceptance + edits letter? Tell me about it in the comments.
Ranks of the Rejected: Miles Holmes
Hey, folks, meet Miles Holmes, the next courageous author to share his deep, dark secrets in Ranks of the Rejected. I’ve known Miles for some time, and I worked with him quite a bit in my role as managing editor for Privateer Press’ fiction line. Miles’ work is highly imaginative, and the author himself has a kind of frenetic energy that definitely translates to his work, an element on full display in his most recent novel, Tales of the Invisible Hand. I spoke with Miles about the usual rejection stuff, his new book, and what it’s like to be a media tie-in author. Check it out.
1) What genres do you typically write? Do you have a favorite? If so, what about that genre draws you to it?
Over the last five years, I’ve alternated between science fiction and fantasy pretty steadily. If we’re counting back from grade school, it gets a bit more eclectic. I absolutely consumed Stephen King as a kid, so I was inspired to try horror myself on a few occasions, even recently. My middle school friends and I played a variety of RPG’s and were comic book fiends, so writing adventure modules or comic books was standard operating procedure for our Friday night sleepovers. Probably the most unusual genre I’ve ever written was the result of a high school assignment in English Lit with a teacher who also happened to be a published author. I desperately wanted to impress him, so rather than turn in an analysis of Greek tragedies as he requested, I attempted to write one instead. His response to that effort is a huge reason I kept writing. If pressed to choose a favorite genre to write, I have to go with science fiction. More than any other genre, sci-fi demands you bring the rules of your world along with the story. Nothing may be presumed; you’re on the hook for all of it. But there’s freedom in that too. Anytime, anywhere, any technology or species, any socio-political condition you can imagine, your choices and how they might provoke self-reflection in a reader are a powerful lure for me.
2) What does your typical writing work day look like? Do you have daily goals? Word count targets?
I’m relatively new to writing as a full-time endeavor, so I’ve been hyper-vigilant of both my peers and my idols to establish methods that don’t burn me out or fall short of the mark. It’s nerve wracking! Besides making sure I put the hours in, there are quotas like daily word counts to consider. Moreover, I’ve arrived at distinct phases in writing a book, each with its own challenges. Having begun my career in games development, I found parallels in this. Like a game, I consider each book I write either to be in pre-production, production, or post-production. During production, I do try to maintain a word count of 1500 words a day, but I found this measurement doesn’t translate well in the other two phases. In pre-production, I’m writing my outline and gathering research or reference material. It’s no less work, but it’s hard to set a quota beyond just working efficiently when you can. Where other stakeholders are present, you might well take a month of correspondence to produce an outline of only a few pages, for example. Once I’ve completed a draft, I’m into the post-production phase, and it becomes a question of efficiency in responding to the revision notes before me. These can vary from repairing a bad turn of phrase to chopping out a chapter and replacing it wholesale. My quota then turns from word count to a page or a comment count. How many comments are left to address? How many do I think I can I hit today? That sort of thing.
3) Much of what you’ve published recently is media tie-in fiction for Privateer Press. Can you tell us a bit about writing media tie-in and how it differs from writing your own, original fiction?
It’s been a fun challenge writing tie-in fiction for Privateer Press. Each piece has required me to adapt to a prescribed format, which does present challenges apart from writing my own fiction. Meanwhile, the collective goal of these pieces is that they fit a coherent narrative, which is something dear to my heart and totally in keeping with my original work. I started with the novella, “Way of Caine.” This of course was the origin story for the fan favorite warcaster Allister Caine and began his adventures in the Iron Kingdoms setting. Next I wrote the serialized novella “Cold Steel,” for which Caine would cameo to establish a connection with the mercenaries featured. Then I wrote the short story “Devil in the Details” and a No Quarter Gavin Kyle piece, both featuring the gun mages of the Black 13th. All of these pieces, even Doug Seacat’s Blood of Kings have been planned to set the stage for Caine’s upcoming trilogy of novels, starting with Mark of Caine in October. As I say, the process has been a fun challenge, and I can’t wait for readers to see where we’re going with it.
4) You’ve just had a novel released, a cool, high-flying pulp adventure called Tales of the Invisible Hand. Give us the quick and dirty synopsis, and tell us a bit about how you came up with premise.
As genres go, Tales of the Invisible Hand is probably best described as pre-historic diesel-punk sci-fantasy. In my head it plays a little like a John Carter or Conan the Barbarian style serialized adventure, while pairing the origins of the Tower of Babel story with an actual near-extinction event from our pre-history. The premise was the result of reading years of pulp, classic sci-fi and fantasy, along with an abiding love of UFO conspiracy theories and WWII aviation. More than this, the book pokes at real and fascinating questions I think we tend to overlook in modern times. I also wrote a free short prelude piece to introduce this world called “First Wave.” It’s a glimpse of what happens a few years ahead of our protagonists Zekh and Gaur’s first meeting, but hints at the grief they must overcome. It’s free, so by all means check it out!
5) This blog is called Rejectomancy, so let us indulge in some schadenfreude at your expense. Tell us about a memorable rejection you’ve received as a writer.
The first piece I ever tried to sell was a hard sci-fi novella called Chimera: Prelude. It marks the beginning of the end of the stories I want to tell, set in roughly 4,000 AD. After I wrote it, I submitted it to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I expected it would be swiftly rejected, and so it was! However, my rejection letter was personalized, rather than a form rejection. I took this to mean I might have come close. Thus encouraged, I kept the letter and the story both, while plotting my next steps. As the Chimera series is the climax I’m working towards, I decided to move to the beginning, while vowing to return to the Chimera in a few years’ time as the best author I can be!
6) What’s next for you? More novels? Iron Kingdoms?
A bit of column A, a bit of column B, as a matter of fact! I’m hoping to keep a pace of two books a year give or take for the next few years. Tales of the Invisible Hand is intended as the first book in a series of course, and as I’ve mentioned, the Mark of Caine begins a trilogy. I also intend to continue writing expansion books for my tabletop miniatures based car combat game, Road/Kill for as long as I can!
Miles Holmes is a game designer with experience in the industry going back more than fifteen years. He’s worked on a lot of games, including well-known franchises like Mass Effect, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Full Auto. He has also played tabletop games since he was a kid, and has spent far too much money on games like WARMACHINE. He writes fiction on his website, http://www.infinitygate.com, where he offers free content for interested parties. He’s currently putting the finishing touches on the manuscript for his next Iron Kingdoms novel, The Mark of Caine.
July 2016 Submission Statement
This submission statement is going to be short and sweet. Yep, no rejections, no acceptances, and only two measly submissions. Sad, I know. I do have an excuse, though; my first novel, Flashpoint, was released last month, and a lot of my writerly efforts went in that direction. I aim to get back on track in August and fill the next submission statement with rejection letters and bitter, bitter tears.
July Report Card
- Submissions Sent: 2
- Rejections: 0
- Acceptances: 0
- Other: 0
- Publications: 2
Publications
Just publications this month, but they’re both pretty cool.
Publication #1 – 7/13/16
The first publication was my Iron Kingdoms novel, Flashpoint. I’m not going to beat you over the head with the details here (there’s plenty of that on the blog already). I’ll just point you at the cover and places you can buy it if you so choose.
Publication #2 – 7/15/16
The second publication was my story “Paper Cut,” which was published by Red Sun Magazine as the feature story for their inaugural issue. I even snagged the cover. “Paper Cut” is one of my favorite stories, and though it took me a while to get it published, I’m glad it ended up with the good folks at Red Sun. If you’d like to read an excerpt from the story go here. If you want to check out the magazine (and you should; it’s cool), here are some links.
Red Sun Magazine: Issue 1, Vol. 1
And that was my July. How was yours?
Iron Kingdoms Freebie: Wayward Fortunes
I have a new Iron Kingdoms story in the July issue of No Quarter magazine from Privateer Press. The story is part of a loosely connected series I’ve been writing off and an for the last five years about a misfit bunch of dwarves, or Rhulfolk, who have been stationed at a place called Baram Fort at the ass-end of nowhere guarding a pass no one cares about. They’re all drunks, miscreants, thieves, and worse, and I’ve had a lot of fun writing about them. The story below, published in 2012, is one tale in my “Dirty Dwarves” saga, and Privateer Press has given me permission to post it here. You can read the new story, “Peace of Mind,” in the July issue of No Quarter magazine, which hits the shelves (both digital and regular) on July 27th.
By the way, there’s lots of cool stuff in this issue of No Quarter for the Iron Kingdoms fan, including a Gavyn Kyle Files about Major Elizabeth Maddox (who appears in my novel Flashpoint), and the first theme force for the new editions of WARMACHINE and HORDES.
Wayward Fortunes
By Aeryn Rudel
Captain Corleg Ironforged removed his helmet, upended it, and poured a thin stream of sweat into the mud. He stood ankle-deep in the stuff at the edge of a vast bog that stretched as far as he could see, in the middle of the route he and his men had been following for a week. Their march through the northern Thornwood and the Bloodsmeath Marsh had provided limited visibility, and he was no longer certain they were going in the right direction to reach the human city of Corvis. The heavy canopy of the trees they had just passed through had offered some respite from the intense summer heat, but he knew the murky water would be like standing in a warm bath. To make matters worse, his heavy Forge Guard armor would intensify the sun’s burning glare in the more exposed region ahead, although it might also keep the hordes of biting insects at bay.
He propped his two-handed mechanikal hammer over one shoulder and glanced around. There seemed to be no clear way through the swamp, which was filled with thick stands of moss-laden trees. He turned to see that the rest of his Forge Guard had halted as well. Behind his own men a small group of High Shield Gun Corps slogged through the muck, axes in hand, shields and rifles stowed across their backs. Mixed within the Gun Corps were a dozen farrow, scouts hired to see them through the Thornwood.
“Captain Vornek!” Corleg said. “A moment, please.”
One of the members of the Gun Corps nodded and raised one hand to halt his men. His black pauldron marked him as an officer, but Vornek Blackheel was perhaps the sorriest example of a Rhulic commander Corleg had ever encountered. His men, drawn from remote Baram Fort in the Thunderpeak Cliffs, were a collection of drunkards, layabouts, and incompetents—that they had been allowed to keep their commission within the Gun Corps defied reason. But with conflict mounting throughout the Iron Kingdoms, resources were stretched thin, and a commander had to make use of the resources available to him.
Vornek squished through the mud toward him, swatting at the cloud of biting flies that hovered around his head. He was tall for a Rhulfolk and still fit despite being well into his sixties. His nose was a squashed mass of red veins that spoke of a life of violence and a predilection for strong drink. His weapons were in good shape, however, and their owner still looked quite capable of using them.
“What do you want?” Vornek asked. “Need a break?”
“No, Captain. I do not need a break,” Corleg began. “As you are no doubt aware, we are clearly lost.” He pointed one finger at the greenish-brown expanse of the swamp before them. “That is a swamp. I thought we had left the marsh behind us. Our guides don’t seem to be ‘guiding’ us in the right direction.”
The other man frowned, scratched at his beard, and then spat a chewed wad of yellow bitterleaf from his mouth. “Well, what did you expect? They’re farrow.”
Corleg wanted to throttle the Gun Corps captain. They were nominally of the same rank; although how Vornek had attained anything above latrine scrubber was a mystery to him. The Searforge, however, knowing the condition of Vornek and his men, had granted Corleg command of their joint operation. “Yes, Captain,” Corleg said through clenched teeth. “Correct. They are farrow. Farrow you said could lead us through the forest, so we could avoid the Khadoran blockades watching the Black River. By my estimates we should be at the ruins of Fort Rhyker by now.”
Vornek reached into a pouch on his belt, fished out a new pinch of dried leaf, and stuffed it into his mouth. “Aye,” he said at last. “They led us to a swamp instead.”
Corleg drew in a deep breath and shook his head, fighting the urge to scream at the Gun Corps captain. The situation was not entirely Vornek’s fault. They had lost their only detailed map of the region during a skirmish with a Khadoran patrol after they had entered the northern forest. This had added weight to the argument in favor of hiring the farrow as guides, a decision Corleg now regretted.
He tried to remember the particulars of this area. He thought the map had shown a swampy area around a sizable lake west of Fort Rhyker, marked with warning sigils. That would put them more than twenty miles off course. He turned back to Vornek. “What do you propose now? We can’t pull our wagon through a swamp, and the Avalancher will be slowed considerably by the water.”
“We could manage the ’jack, but the wagon’s a problem. Sure as hell won’t float,” Vornek said, glancing back to where half a dozen ogrun warriors in the service of Horgenhold were hauling a wagon piled with crates and boxes through the muck. Behind it, a grimy and mud-splattered Avalancher trudged, barely keeping pace with the ogrun. “Maybe we should go back and try to find another route.”
Corleg shook his head. “No. We’re short on food and fuel as it is, and between Khadoran patrols and Tharn encampments, it was blind luck we got here intact. We can’t go wandering through the woods.”
Vornek looked around for a moment, squinting through the trees. He pointed ahead and to the left, in what might have been a southeasterly direction. “I think I can see a more solid region up ahead that way. We should cut through the swamp and make for the Black River. Get our bearings.”
“And abandon our cargo?” Corleg said in disbelief. “The Searforge hired us to deliver weapons and munitions to Corvis. I will not simply—“
“I said nothing about abandoning the cargo,” Vornek said, cutting him off. “Don’t get your unders in a twist.”
Corleg opened to his mouth to loose a blistering retort, but a blood-curdling scream from behind Vornek stopped him short. The Gun Corps captain whirled around, drawing his carbine from his back in one smooth motion.
Corleg stuffed his helmet back on his head and took his hammer in both hands. Ahead, a group of large, scaly humanoids had risen up out of the swamp. Corleg recognized them as gatormen—primitive reptilian men known for their great strength and savagery. The gatormen had surprised two members of the Gun Corps near the edge of the water and had hacked them down with heavy axe-like weapons.
Vornek positioned his shield in front of him and fired his carbine one-handed. A gatorman standing over the corpse of one of his men staggered backward, clutching a gushing wound in its throat. “To me, boys!” Vornek shouted and rushed forward. The rest of the Gun Corps pulled back and locked their shields together around their leader.
More gatormen emerged from the swamp, and eight of the scaly brutes now charged forward at the Gun Corps. Corleg waved his hammer over his head and heard his men moving up from behind. “Left flank! Move!”
As one, the ten Forge Guard moved toward the Gun Corps line, and as they approached Vornek’s booming voice rang out. “Shields and shooters, boys!” In response, each member of the Gun Corps dropped his shield into the mud and braced his carbine atop it.
The farrow, having no desire to engage the gatormen in melee, pulled back and opened fire with the crude heavy rifles they carried. Twelve shots later, they managed to kill a single gatorman and had pulled back to a point well behind the Gun Corps.
The dwarves opened up on the gatormen with their own weapons. Four gatormen went down thrashing and hissing beneath the fusillade, and the rest slowed their advance, now wary of the dwarven guns. Their hesitation allowed Corleg and his men to reach them, and those Rhulfolk advanced in close order, hammers held high.
Corleg whipped his hammer around his head to build momentum and then smashed the heavy weapon into the first enemy he encountered. The head of the mechanikal hammer flared on impact, and the eight-foot-tall gatorman was knocked from its feet and sent flying. It collided with one of its fellows, and they both went down in a tangle of thrashing limbs. The carbines of the Gun Corps fired en masse half a second later, and the two downed gatormen went still and floated silently in a widening nimbus of scarlet.
The remaining two gatormen, seeing they were outnumbered and outmatched, attempted to escape beneath the water. One of them was shot to pieces before it could submerge; the other disappeared beneath the surface of the swamp.
The battle had ended so quickly that the ogrun hauling the wagon hadn’t even had time to grab their weapons and join the fray. They now moved up and created a protective barrier around the dwarven troops, their pole-cleavers creating a small but lethal hedge.
“Reload!” Vornek shouted. “Keep ranks. There may be more of those scaly bastards in the water.”
“Captain,” Corleg said and splashed through the mire to stand beside Vornek. “Your men acquitted themselves . . . very well.”
“Surprised, eh?” Vornek said with a sour smile. “I know we’re not what you’re used to in Horgenhold. We’re dirty, ugly, and foul-mouthed, and most of us drink enough to pickle an ogrun, but we can get the job done in a pinch.”
Corleg coughed and nodded, somewhat embarrassed by Vornek’s blunt appraisal of his men. “Yes, well—”
Vornek turned away without waiting for a reply. “You!” he shouted, pointing at the largest of the farrow. “Come over here.” The farrow moved to stand before him.
“I hope you’re better with those shooters than you’ve shown so far,” the Gun Corps captain said. “There’s bound to be more gators out there in that stinking bog.”
“Lersh can fight more . . .” the farrow grunted in broken Rhulic, and then his tusked face broke open in a ghastly smile, “. . . if pay more.”
“Pay more!?” Corleg said. “We paid you to lead us to the Black River, and you led us into this swamp!”
The farrow shook his misshapen head. “Then we leave short shields and go away.”
“That’s fine, piggy,” Vornek said with a shrug. “We had a pretty easy time with those gators, and there’s enough of us that they probably won’t attack again. A dozen farrow on their own, though? You’ll get eaten before you make it half a mile.” He poked his carbine at the big farrow to drive home his point.
Lersh crinkled up his snout, glanced at the scaly corpses floating in the mire, and scratched his stomach. Finally, he grunted and said, “We fight for short shields. No more pay.”
Vornek chuckled. “Good. Maybe you aren’t as stupid as I thought.”
“I take it you want to continue on through the swamp,” Corleg said to Vornek after Lersh had walked away. “How do you propose we do that?”
Vornek looked back at the dwarven wagon and smiled. “Easy. We make a boat.”
###
Mortitheurge Helkara stepped from the reed raft and onto a large mossy island situated near the west shore of Blindwater Lake. The island was covered in the squat grassy huts of the gatormen, the single largest village of the reptilian creatures she had ever encountered. As a paingiver taskmaster, it was her duty to command the formidable, if primitive, gatormen in battle, and she had had many dealings with them in the past, but she knew this time it would be different.
Ahead, a trio of gatorman warriors led the way through the village. Her sizable force of bloodrunners had been left a mile or so behind in the swamp; the gatorman leader, a powerful bokor called Bloody Barnabas, had requested she come alone. She might have refused if it had been anyone but Barnabas making the demand and if her need had not been so pressing. The archdomina had commanded her to make contact with the gatorman nation that populated the swamps around Blindwater Lake within the Thornwood and commandeer a number of their warriors—and perhaps one of their most powerful shamans—to serve the Skorne Empire in the next major campaign in the west.
She could not simply walk into Bloody Barnabas’ domain and demand tribute as she had done so many times with lesser groups of gatormen. By all accounts, Barnabas was a mighty gatorman bokor, with martial and magical skill rivaling that of the most formidable skorne tyrants. He was also known to be utterly unpredictable, prone to fits of murderous rage, and possessed of delusions of grandeur that included aspirations of godhood. In short, he was just as likely to murder and eat Helkara as he was to listen to or bargain with her.
In the past, she had dealt with Barnabas’ second, a bokor named Calaban, when she needed gatorman warriors. In her experience, it was Calaban who was the true mastermind behind the gatorman alliance, and it was he who coordinated its expansion. Calaban had even instructed her to avoid dealing directly with Barnabas, but the ancient gatorman bokor had, for some inscrutable reason, taken an interest in her arrangement with the Blindwater Congregation. This time, Barnabas had demanded she speak with him instead.
They had reached the center of the village, a clear open space that held a great hut, like a longhouse, festooned with what could only be trophies from Barnabas’ past exploits, from the bones of massive, unrecognizable beasts to bits of the machines humans called warjacks. There were so many that the foundations of the longhouse were almost completely obscured, giving the impression that Barnabas’ abode was constructed from the remnants of his fallen enemies.
Barnabas himself sat upon a throne of sorts positioned in front of his longhouse. It was largely constructed of bones, skulls, and the shattered remnants of broken weapons. Atop the throne rose a colossal fanged skull whose empty reptilian sockets looked down on the clearing. Barnabas sat forward, taloned fingers wrapped around the haft of a savage two-handed axe. His face was obscured by a ragged leather hood, but Helkara had a clear view of the long ivory fangs that projected from the upper and lower jaw of his reptilian snout.
Another gatorman stood to the right of the throne, his scales painted with white swirling patterns that covered him from head to toe. He gripped a short, barbed spear in one hand, its stone head hung with feathers, bones, and scraps of metal. Helkara noticed that this gatorman appeared to be the only one in the village that dared venture so close to the mighty bokor.
Barnabas shifted in his throne as Helkara approached and waved away her escort with a casual flick of one hand. The guards held their heads almost straight up, baring their throats, and then retreated. Helkara now stood, alone and unarmed, not more than ten feet from what was arguably the most powerful gatorman in western Immoren.
“Mighty hok-shisan,” Helkara said in the rumbling syllables of Quor-Gar, the gatorman tongue, baring her throat in the same manner as the guards. It was an incredibly submissive gesture and one expected by gatormen when being addressed by an inferior, who, quite to her disgust, she was. “I offer greetings of my great chief, the strongest warrior of my people.”
“Red scale,” Barnabas said. His voice was a deep, hungry growl that filled Helkara with a nameless dread. She had never before felt so threatened, so vulnerable. She realized she had never before felt like prey. “You have come for my warriors. Yes?”
Helkara was quite familiar with the gatorman language and had no difficulty understanding Barnabas. Speaking Quor-Gar was another matter, however, as it incorporated complex body language and guttural sounds in addition to spoken words. Since she lacked a tail and other vital pieces of gatorman anatomy, her answers would have to be brief and simplistic.
“Yes,” she said. “My chief has need.” She paused and took a breath. “She asks, will the hok-shisan bring his axe also?”
Barnabas’ eyes narrowed, and his tail twitched from side to side like that of an angry ferox. “Impudent! Your chieftain was unwise to send an inferior to treat with me,” he said, then snapped his jaws together with a menacing clack. His long, scaled fingers tightened around the haft of his axe, and Helkara could feel the air grow thicker, the world somehow smaller against the tide of his displeasure. “And what do you offer for this favor? Surely your ‘great chief’ did not send you to beg before my throne with nothing.”
Helkara gritted her teeth. Dealing with this savage creature at such a disadvantage was infuriating, but she dare not antagonize him. She scraped the ground with her right foot, digging a shallow hole in the mud, and again bared her throat. It was the most submissive gesture she knew, and one that was meant to convey desperation and need. “I offer weapons of fine steel,” she said. “And the friendship of my chieftain.”
She stood still and silent. Any movement might be construed as an insult—or worse yet, a hostile action. She was glad the gatormen had confiscated her weapons; she doubted she would have been able to keep her hands from them out of pure survival instinct.
Barnabas suddenly stood and surged across the short space between them. He was gigantic, the size of a cyclops brute, and the smell that accompanied him—a foul mixture of spoiled meat, swampy earth, and reptilian stink—was all but overwhelming. He strode within a few feet of her, and her senses, honed through years of study with the mightiest of skorne mortitheurges, were all but overwhelmed by the strength of his will, his ancient, indomitable spirit, from which his own magic was surely derived.
“You are lucky, little red scale,” Barnabas said, staring down at her, the rotting stink of his breath washing over her like a warm, stagnant wind. “Today, I have chosen to be generous.”
Helkara dared to look up at the gatorman bokor. “You will send my chieftain warriors?”
Barnabas took a step back and let his jaws gape open, the gatorman equivalent of a nod. “I shall,” he said. “But first I require a service of you.”
“Speak it,” Helkara said, relief flooding through her body—relief because she had a chance to complete her mission, and relief because she might avoid being eaten alive.
“Interlopers intrude on my domain—dwarves, well armed with steel and fire,” Barnabas said. “I know not why they approach, and do not care. You will slay them for me.”
“Yes, hok-shisan.”
“Garvak will show you the way,” Barnabas said, pointing one taloned finger at the bokor standing next to his throne. Helkara could feel strong magic in this gatorman as well, although nothing as potent as his master.
She bared her throat again. “It is an honor to slay these interlopers for you, hok-shisan.”
“Then waste no time,” he replied and walked back to his throne. “Return when it is done, and your chief will have the warriors she requires. Serve me well and perhaps we may speak of more personal assistance.”
###
Vornek slashed his arm down, and the Avalancher’s cannon went off in a blast of smoke and flame. The explosive shell struck a group of gatormen not twenty yards away, flinging their broken bodies in all directions. The rest of his Gun Corps had lined up in front of the warjack, kneeling in the water and firing their carbines at the swarm of reptilian marauders that had suddenly appeared from the swamp.
Corleg and his Forge Guard stood ahead of the Gun Corps with half a dozen ogrun warriors. Vornek, of course, knew the reputation of the Forge Guard, but he’d never seen them in the heat of battle. Vornek watched as Corleg and his lieutenant, a stocky dwarf named Borl, stood in the center of the Forge Guard line, their heavy armor shedding blows from gatorman poleaxes with nary a scratch. Behind the Forge Guard line stood the ogrun warriors; they attacked over the heads of their dwarven compatriots, cutting down gatormen with each slash of their pole cleavers.
Corleg wielded his hammer as if it were made of lightweight tin and wood instead of forty pounds of mechanika-enhanced steel. It blurred around his head and struck each mark with exceptional speed and precision. Where it landed bones were crushed, flesh pulped, and gatorman lives extinguished. The rest of the Forge Guard fought nearly as well as their leader, and despite the number of enemies, the combined might of dwarves and ogrun had forced the gatorman back and was holding them at bay . . . for the moment.
Ogrun and Forge Guard were spread out enough that the Gun Corps behind them had a clear view of the enemy through the gaps in their line. The farrow guides stood near the Avalancher as they’d been directed and were firing their rifles at any gatormen that got past the Forge Guard and ogrun to engage the warjack. They were also protecting the Searforge cargo, a dozen wooden crates on a crude barge that had been cobbled together from the remains of the dwarven wagon.
Vornek stood behind the Gun Corps, next to the Avalancher so he could command it. It had been quite a while since he’d marshaled a warjack, but once the battle had begun, the techniques had come back to him.
Shortly after midday, they’d been attacked by an overwhelming force of gatormen supported by—and this is the part he still couldn’t get his head around—skorne warriors. The attackers had come barreling out of a large stand of cypress trees and charged into the middle of the surprised dwarves. They’d lost half the Gun Corps right then and there, plus a couple of Forge Guard to boot. He and Corleg had sounded the retreat and their band had managed to reach a defensible position, with their backs against an impenetrable tangle of swamp trees. The explosive shells from the Avalancher’s cannons, the constant fire from the Gun Corps and farrow, and the efforts of the Forge Guard and ogrun had kept the enemy back—but that wasn’t going to last forever.
A gatorman shaman accompanied the combined enemy force, with a towering bipedal gator that was the size of the Avalancher. The bokor had kept his beast out of the battle so far but had lashed the dwarven ranks with bolts of black energy that withered the flesh of any dwarf struck by them. As far as Vornek could tell, the skorne were led by a tall female armed with a polearm of some kind, a bladed crescent moon set upon a stout metal pole. She stood next to the gatorman shaman and seemed to be casting spells of her own, although Vornek couldn’t discern any offensive elements to her sorcery. She also commanded a small force of skorne warriors armed with daggers that were horribly fast and nimble enough, it seemed, to dodge bullets.
A cacophony of squealing and grunting caused Vornek to whirl around. The farrow were aiming their guns at another of the giant gator beasts as it came charging through the swamp behind their position. Its target was obvious. The pig-men fired their rifles in unison but either missed or failed to penetrate the thick hide of the beast.
“Turn around!” Vornek howled at the Avalancher. The warjack responded and swiveled its cumbersome bulk toward the oncoming warbeast. It got off a single shot with its cannon at point-blank range, splattering a portion of the beast’s insides across the swamp. The wound was mortal, but it didn’t slow the enormous gator, which plowed into the Avalancher’s shield, gripped it tightly with its claws, and then rolled onto its back. The weight of the beast pulled the warjack down into the water, and a huge billowing cloud of steam went up as the Avalancher’s boiler was flooded and extinguished.
Vornek moved away from the huge gator; it had pulled the crushing weight of the warjack down on top of itself and was thrashing out its death throes. Without the Avalancher, he knew they were in serious trouble.
“Get the barge!” Vornek shouted at the farrow and pointed his carbine at the cargo-laden skiff that had somehow avoided the charging warbeast. The pig-men obeyed and moved to surround it.
The fallen warjack had galvanized the gators and skorne, and they charged forward en masse. The Forge Guard and ogrun cut down the first few, and then Corleg waved his hammer above his head, signaling his men to retreat.
“Keep firing, boys!” Vornek yelled. “Keep ’em off the Forge Guard!” The remaining Gun Corps laid down a blistering hail of gunfire that stalled the enemy advance for a few precious seconds, allowing Corleg and the ogrun to move behind them.
“We can’t hold them off without the warjack!” Corleg shouted, pulling his helmet off to gain brief respite from the stifling heat.
“No we can’t,” Vornek agreed. “There’s too many, and once that bokor looses his beast on us, we’re gator food.”
“Then we shall die honorably,” Corleg said.
“Hah!” Vornek snorted. “I’m not planning to die honorably or otherwise. Just hold those bloody gators off for a few minutes.”
Corleg nodded and stuffed his helmet back on his head. “Forge Guard! With me!” The armored dwarven warriors formed a rough wedge around their leader and waded back into the fray. The ogrun joined them and the Gun Corps continued to lay down suppressing fire.
Vornek splashed through the marsh to the inert Avalancher. The warbeast beneath it was quite dead now. He squatted down next to the warjack’s cannon protruding from the water and opened the breech. Inside was an unfired shell. He reached in and removed and pulled it free, grunting at the effort of lifting the thing. The shell was a foot and a half long and weighed close to twenty pounds.
Vornek hefted the Avalancher cannon shell and turned to the farrow guarding the cargo barge. “Lersh!” he shouted at the farrow leader. “Push that barge over here.”
###
Helkara grinned as the warjack toppled into the swamp. Without it, the dwarves would be easy targets. “We should attack with all our force now,” she said to Garvak, the gatorman bokor Barnabas had sent with her.
His jaws gaped in agreement. “The prey is weak now.” He turned toward the hulking gator beast and she felt his will expand like a sudden pressure in the air as he gave it an unspoken command. The beast moved forward behind the wall of gatormen pushing forward into the ranks of dwarves and ogrun.
Helkara raised her staff and pointed it at the dwarves. Her bloodrunners needed no further encouragement and began moving around to the right and left. They would strike from the flanks once the gatorman had engaged the armored dwarves and ogrun in melee. She felt no need to enter battle herself; instead she followed behind the advancing gatormen, using her mortitheurgy to enhance their strength and resilience. This was her role and her purpose: enlivening the primitive flesh of the savages who served the Skorne Empire.
The battle was becoming a slaughter, and many of the armored dwarves and ogrun had fallen to the gatormen or the great beast fighting alongside them. More dwarves, and what appeared to be farrow, were positioned behind the melee, firing short rifles at any unengaged enemy. She paid them no mind—they would fall once the dwarven heavy infantry was destroyed.
Helkara heard one of the dwarven voices rise above the din of battle. She did not speak their crude, guttural tongue, but the meaning was clear enough. The heavily armored dwarves and most of the ogrun pulled away from combat and began a fighting retreat back toward the dwarven gun line and what appeared to be a floating barge laden with boxes and crates. Three of the ogrun, in an ultimately useless bit of heroism, charged the huge gator warbeast, killing it with multiple strikes from their heavy polearms. The ogrun were cut down seconds later by gatormen and bloodrunners.
There were enough bodies in the water now that some of the gatormen had stopped to take trophies or tear off hunks of flesh to devour. This slowed their advance and allowed the dwarves time to rally around the skiff. The dwarves had halted their retreat, however, and were trying to salvage a portion of their cargo by unloading some of the crates and transferring them to the waiting arms of ogrun or farrow.
Helkara poked her staff into the back of a gatorman chewing on a dwarven arm torn from a floating corpse. “Move!” she shouted “At them!” The gatorman hissed but dropped its prize and obeyed, moving toward the fresher fare around the dwarven skiff. A few more motivational prods from her staff had the rest of the gatormen advancing once more, and again she followed, urging them on with her mortitheurgical power.
The bokor Garvak paced alongside Helkara and raised his taloned hands as he summoned his will to manifest a spell. She felt its power and understood it would heighten the predatory nature of the gatormen it affected. She lent her own power to the spell, ensuring it would endure longer. Helkara’s bloodrunners were moving swiftly around the flanks of the gatormen; they would finish any dwarves left alive after the initial rush.
The dwarves were roughly a hundred yards away, and they had now abandoned the skiff and were retreating into the swamp. They weren’t firing their weapons any longer and appeared to be focused on escape, but they had not abandoned the crates and boxes they were carrying, and their retreat was ludicrously slow.
As her bloodrunners neared the skiff and the gatormen flowed around it, Helkara noticed the cargo had been arranged in a very specific way. Four large boxes sat in the center of the barge, and the rest of the boxes and crates were positioned around it in a crude circle. Additionally, what appeared to be a large metal cylinder with a rounded end was wedged between the central crates, half a foot of its length projecting above them.
The arrangement of the metal cylinder and the crates suddenly clicked within her mind, sending a cold wave of dread coursing through her entire body. This turned into outright horror when one of the dwarves turned and pointed his rifle at the skiff—which was now positioned in the center of the gatormen and bloodrunners.
Helkara opened her mouth to shout out a warning, but the sharp crack of the dwarven rifle sounded before she could utter a single word.
###
Corleg watched Vornek aim his carbine at the Avalancher shell wedged between two crates of blasting powder and held his breath. Very little of the shell was visible, and the skiff was fifty yards away. He wasn’t sure it would detonate if struck by a bullet, and he was even less sure Vornek’s plan would have the effect the Gun Corps captain hoped.
They’d taken the most valuable cargo from the skiff and positioned crates of weapons—short swords, daggers, and axes—around the blasting powder. In a perfect world, the weapons would act as lethal shrapnel once the shell was detonated, increasing the kill radius of the bomb.
The gators and skorne were now swarming around the skiff, and Corleg heard Vornek draw in a deep breath and then release it slowly. He saw the rifle buck against the Gun Corps captain’s shoulder and heard the crack of the discharge, and then the world dissolved into thunder and fire.
The shell detonated and then set off the blasting powder around it. The secondary explosion was an enveloping roar that Corleg felt more than heard; the shock wave from the blast slammed into him and Vornek and hurled them both from their feet. Corleg splashed down into the muck ten feet away, for once thankful they were in the swamp.
It began to rain pieces of debris and chunks of gatormen and skorne, and Corleg saw one of the Forge Guard go down after being struck by a limbless gatorman torso. He rose to his feet and looked back to where the skiff had been. The barge had been annihilated, and most of the gatormen and skorne had vanished—although their splattered remains hanging from the trees were a ghoulish enough reminder.
A handful of gatormen had survived, including the bokor. These lucky few had likely been shielded from the blast by their fellows. The skorne leader had also survived, and Corleg watched her climb to her feet, using her staff to brace herself.
“That went well,” Vornek said loudly as he hauled himself out of the muck to Corleg’s right. The Gun Corps captain wiggled his finger in his ear and shook his head.
“Don’t get me wrong, Vornek,” Corleg began. “Your . . . plan . . . saved our lives, and I’m grateful, but we’ve lost more than half our cargo. I don’t think the Searforge would consider this the best outcome.”
“We’re alive; our enemies are dead. That’s about as good as it gets,” Vornek replied with a shrug. “These things happen. My guess is that the Searforge will be happy we managed to salvage anything at all.”
“Perhaps,” Corleg said with a sigh. “What now?”
“Short shields, we must leave,” Lersh, the farrow leader, said. The big farrow had come up behind them. When they turned at the sound of his voice, he pointed his rifle at the gatorman bokor retreating along with the skorne leader and the remaining gatormen. “That one is belong Barnabas, strongest gator warrior.”
Vornek grimaced. “There’ll be more gators on the way, then.” He looked back in the direction of the retreating enemy and added, “At the least.”
The farrow nodded, grunting. “More gators soon. Yes. Maybe others, too.”
“Very well,” Corleg said. “Let’s gather what cargo we can and get out of this swamp.”
Vornek fixed Lersh with a stare. “Can you lead us to the river? Without running into the Khadoran blockade north of Corvis?”
Lersh offered the Gun Corps captain a tusk-filled grin. “No worry, short shield. Lersh knows way now. River is east. No Khador men there. Lersh has no doubt . . . this time.”
©2012 Privateer Press, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Red Sun Magazine #1 Now Available
The first issue of Red Sun Magazine is now available. My story “Paper Cut” is the feature story, as well as the inspiration for the cover art. There’s also a lengthy interview with yours truly in the magazine where I ramble on about writerly things. But, hey, it’s not all about me. There’s a ton of cool stuff in this first issue, and if you’re a fan of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror, then you should definitely check it out. Within, you’ll find three more great stories, fantastic artwork, informative reviews, and interviews with New York Times Best Selling authors.
Red Sun Magazine: Issue 1, Vol. 1
Effectively Wild – A Baseball Horror Story
Night Walk & Other Dark Paths
Acts of War: Flashpoint
Acts of War: Aftershock
Acts of War: Stormbreak
Aeryn Rudel's Rejectomancy 