Father was dead. Not killed in glorious war. Died of a bloody flux in the holy land. 

Now the Order had brought his body home, and Elfrida must do honour to the dead.

She clasped her hands inside the sleeves of her robe and bowed her head as the knights lowered his body into the ground. She sprinkled earth on his coffin. 

The knights seemed grim faced, and Elfrida’s courage all but failed her until the tallest of them took off his helm and smiled at her. 

He had the bluest eyes. 

Eyes that he passed to their twin sons.

©️jj 2019

In the final days before the army of Qabal Vyazin began an improbable and historic winter march through the Great Tusk Pass, Caer found himself caught up in a continual stream of demands upon his time and energy. Having been involved in a manhunt most of the previous day, he slept briefly and rode at dawn to the mustering troops where he spent half the morning reviewing the supplies and arguing with one of the Warlord’s other commanders about the necessary provision and how best to transport it. Then he returned to Tabruth to speak with the Warlord himself; an interview which had not been very pleasant, focusing as it did on Caer’s shortcomings and his failure to find the Harkeran agents responsible for the murder of Ralik Vyazin. He had spent the afternoon looking over the apartments of Commander Brachios which had been broken into the night before. Brachios himself was with the army, but his catamite had been killed and Caer knew that once the Commander received that news he would be getting an extremely irate Brachios descending on him as well.
The Tabruthans, who should have been of the most assistance in this policing investigation, seemed to be oddly unavailable or firmly, but politely, unable to offer any insight. In the end, he took the problem with him to his own rooms where he dined alone with the woman he had desired and won on his own terms: the Caravansi Alexa, she they called ‘the Fair’.
As they were served the rich food she listened to the tally of his frustrations and humiliations over the past few days, starting with how he had nearly laid hands on the assassin, but the man had lost him in the streets of the city and then on through the catalogue of events of the day concluding with his inability to find any real clue to the identity of the second murderer. The beautiful face opposite him looked attentive and when he had finished, frowned very slightly. Alexa raised a goblet to her lips and sipped the wine.
“It seems to me,” she said pointedly, setting the goblet down on the table between them, “you may not be looking for two men but one.”
“I had thought of that,” Caer returned crossly. “But there is no more reason to suppose that is so than that there were two or even more men.”
Alexa watched him with her violet eyes.
“No? So there are two – or more – men presently wandering around Tabruth with the skill to break into and out of the castle at will and act as they please once inside. I am sure you will have been told that Brachios’ lover was well armed and that his death was no simple assassination.”
“I was also told,” Caer said feeling caustic, “that Ralik was killed by an energy pistol and Brachios’ catamite with a jewelled dagger – his own. Why would a man with an energy weapon use a blade?”
“If I were trying to suggest that there was more than one man involved in these attacks, I might choose to vary the way I killed,” Alexa told him, patiently, as if explaining something to a child. “Assuming, of course, I had the skill to do so.”
Caer was silent then, thinking.
“One man,” he said at last. “Not a group of Harkeran sympathisers?”
“One man,” she agreed, “who has the skill to kill even those trained to arms and who seems to want to speak to Commander Brachios very urgently.”
He looked at her as if seeing her for the very first time: the dark red hair in perfect loops, framing her oval face with its high arching brows and the clear violet eyes beneath them. Beauty and intelligence combined with an iron will and the competitive spirit that had made her the best caravansi he had ever served under in his days as a Zoukai. But now the tide had turned and it was he who held the whip hand and she who followed. She needed the favour of the Warlord and could only hold that through Caer. So she spent the winter with him whilst her caravan was secured in separate quarters in the city of Kharzabad.
“You think that our murderer might make a point of visiting Brachios then, if the Commander were known to be staying somewhere – more easy to get to?” Caer asked her.
She turned her head slightly to look at the darkening window. “I think you show some intelligence sometimes,” she said simply.

From Dues of Blood a Fortune's Fools book by E.M. Swift-Hook and the third volume in the Transgressor trilogy.

Pa appeared at grandma’s and grabbed Effie from the yard. He dragged her onto a slow moving northbound train and quelled her objections with a heavy clout. It was her good luck that he met two of his drinking buddies in the box car, and one of them had a jug of rotgut whisky. 

She slipped off the train at the Springfield crossing and as she sat waiting for the next southbound she heard the sound of a familiar truck.

It was grandma, in her rusty old Holden, come after Pa with a ten gauge and murder in her heart .

©️jj 2019

Tempest Blades: The Withered King is the debut science fantasy novel from Ricardo Victoria which is now available on preorder.

The sky was raging in fury, lightning slashing across the dark skies, the wind blowing away the mist. The square was being emptied, the townspeople trying to get as far away as possible from the giant creature, whose red eyes were locked on the man standing in front of him in defiance. Any other mortal would cower before the behemoth, but this one was smiling. The creature started a conversation, its deep, booming voice echoing all over the place.
“Why don’t you run like the other mortals?”
“Not really my thing.”
“I will crush you.”
“You can try.”
The creature roared with anger, stomping its way across the plaza. Fionn didn’t waste time and jumped into the fray, slashing it with Black Fang. The creature replied in kind, raising its massive right claw and trying to shred Fionn like paper. He parried the attack with the sword, but the strength behind it almost broke his arm. He got ready to parry the second one, biting his lips to tolerate the pain, when an attack by Gaby on the creature’s back interrupted the exchange between them. Gaby’s twin blades were out of their sheaths and each shone with a clear, bright light, one glowing blue and the other red.
“Are those Tempest Blades too?” Fionn asked with an incredulous stare.
“Yes,” Gaby replied with her crooked smile. “Their names are Heartguard and Soulkeeper.”
“How did you…”
“You are not the only one with secrets, Greywolf,” Gaby said. “But that will have to wait, there is work to do.”
Both Fionn and Gaby jumped, attacked, dodged and parried the blows coming from the creature. But after every attack that the creature suffered at the hands of Fionn and Gaby, it regenerated immediately. It was growing angrier by the moment, picking up trash cans and throwing them, breaking walls and destroying the windows of the shops and pubs. The creature kept throwing things at them, forcing them to take cover behind a semi-crumbled wall. Behind the cover, they saw the men-spiders returning, attacking the scared patrons who were trying to get away from the creature.
“Those civilians need help. Would it be too much to ask you to help them?”
“As much as I would hate to leave you with all the fun you are right. They need me more than you do.” Gaby winked at Fionn. “Be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
Fionn could only smile at her with admiration in his eyes. Gaby ran towards the running people, not losing a second in attacking the men-spiders. Her blades were streaks of red and blue light in the dark. Parts of the spider-like creatures started to fly off. She was efficient, Fionn thought, too efficient even for a Sister of Mercy. There were so many things he wanted to ask her. But that would have to wait. A girl, running away from the conflict, broke a heel and fell in front of the path of destruction of the larger creature. Its collection of sharpened teeth was in full sight in a mockery of a smile. Seeing that, Fionn ran towards the girl, covering her with his body as the claw descended upon her.
“Oh shit,” Fionn managed to say before the creature hit him fully in the back with all its strength, sending him flying away with the girl in his arms. He managed to twist his body mid-air to absorb the blunt force of the imminent impact when they hit the ground. His jacket and the skin of his back were torn to shreds and he was bleeding profusely. His head was spinning. Fionn looked at the girl who was scared and crying, but safe. He shook his head to clear it and smiled at her.
“I will distract him while you escape. Can you run?”
The girl only replied with a nod and Fionn let her go.
She ran away into the streets. It was then that Fionn noticed a faint cut on his right cheek, a cut that started to heal amidst tiny green sparkles of energy.
This is gonna hurt tomorrow.

A Bite Of… Ricardo Victoria

(1) You write science fantasy with an anime feel to it, what were the biggest influences on your writing?

Anime wise? Probably Vision of Escaflowne, Slayers, Ruronin Kenshin, Robotech, Saint Seiya and Shadow Skill. But my influences also come from similar sources, namely old school RPGs such as Final Fantasy VI and VIII, Secret of Mana, Baldur’s Gate and even Xenosaga.

(2) If you didn’t write in that genre, what genre would you most want to write?

The easy answer would probably be Science Fiction or perhaps horror. But in reality I have been suffering from an itching to write either Slice of Life stories with a touch of fantasy (again due out anime influences) or something pulp/researchy set in the real world, in the vein of Indiana Jones. I’m not sure if I would be good at it though.

(3) Street food – what’s your favourite and why?

Pizza. Although I can’t eat much of it anymore. But pizza, in the immortal words of the poet known as Michelangelo from the Turtles, is “a flying saucer food delight”. And technically can have all the basic food groups all bundled together.

Born in the frozen landscape of Toluca, Mexico, Ricardo dreamed of being a writer. But needing a job that could pay the rent while writing, he studied Industrial Design and later obtained a PhD in Sustainable Design, while living in the United Kingdom and working in a comic book store to pay for his board game & toy addiction. He is back now in Toluca, living with his wife and his two dogs where he works as an academic at the local university. He has short stories featured in anthologies by Inklings Press and Rivenstone Press, and he was nominated to a Sidewise Award 2016 for the short story “Twilight of the Mesozoic Moon”, co-written with his arch-nemesis, Brent A. Harris. He also won a local contest for a fantasy short story during college. But hey! That one doesn’t count, does it?

Tempest Blades: The Withered King, his first novel, has been in the works for quite some time. He really hopes you get awed by its kickassery now that is available for preorder. While you wait for it to appear you can check out his other published writing, read his rants, some fiction and opinion pieces on his own website and stalk him on Twitter. 

It had been eleven months since he wrote a word and his publisher was getting antsy about the six-figure advance which seemed to have evaporated in the company of his muse.

What could have gone wrong?

Was it the six-foot Swedish glamour model who now shared his bed?

Was it the fact he hadn’t seen his kids for ten of those eleven months?

Was fate smacking him in the eye for his arrogant hubris?

Or was it none of those?

Was it simply that every word of his seven bestsellers was written by the wife he left behind? 

©️jj 2019

The quiet that fell in the room was interrupted by the chatter of a printer going full pace not too far away. Sam quirked an eyebrow.
“Reports of exactly what I’ve found. Four copies. Can you?”
“Yeah. You go on digging.”
Jim looked at his older sons. “Twins. You wanna take the little men into the sitting room and maybe play a computer game with them.”
The twins each picked up a small brother. “Okay you two. Wanna go kill some aliens?”
Charlie turned his round-eyed and strangely wise gaze on his father. “You hunt the bad men. I will keep an eye on this lot.”
Jim barked out a reluctant laugh.
Sam quickly collated the reports and the four adults read them carefully, with Jim passing each page to Jamie as he finished with it.
When everyone had finished reading Rod made a disgusted noise in his throat and Jim swore bitterly.
“Okay. We now know who. But what the fuck are we gonna do. The man has money coming out of his ears, and it don’t look as if he is gonna rest while there is a Cracksman left alive.”
Patsy turned haunted eyes on her husband.
“I don’t even mind that much for me, but the boys…” her voice cracked.
“You can stop that right now, Mrs Cracksman,” Anna’s voice had quite the bite of a whip. “We need you out there fighting, not crawling up your own ass because you are afraid.”
Patsy sat up straighter in her chair, and her eyes flashed dangerously.
“Better.” Anna said briskly. “I’ve been talking to people in Russia, and I have some ideas.” Every eye turned to her as she ticked off points on her slender fingers. “One. This particular oligarch is actually clean. Two. No mafia connections. Three. No connection to organised crime. Married. Settled. Four. Devout member of the Orthodox Church.” Jim opened his mouth and she silenced him with an upraised hand continuing in a dry emotionless voice. “Yeah. I know. Turns out the two men shared a mother. But the dead guy was fathered by a vicious paedophile who had mother between the ages of ten and twelve. Threw her out when she fell pregnant. The ‘family’ took her in and adopted the child. Oligarch came from a later marriage. But our boy was raised by papa from the time he was seven.” She stopped and drew breath. “So. We have to persuade little brother of exactly what his older sibling was like. It’s our only chance this side of all out war.”
“And just how do we go about that?”
“It’s not going to be easy. But we do have some levers. Firstly, there’s a rather nasty little video on the darknet. It shows an unconscious Bill in a room full of instruments of torture with a voice over explaining what has been planned for him. My sources say the voice is recognisably your man. We need to get that to our oligarch’s parish priest. Secondly, Patsy gets to speak to a very old lady in Cannes and persuade her to tell her remaining son how she got his big brother.”
Jim looked mulish. “Why does it have to be Pats?”
“Because the lady has retired to a convent. No males other than sons and brothers allowed to visit.”
“Oh. But. She can’t go in there alone.”
“She ain’t gonna be alone. I’ll be with her.”
Sam opened his mouth, then shut it again.
“Fine. But me and some boys get to sit outside the place in case you need the cavalry.” It was Rod who spoke in a low dangerous rumble. “And yeah it has to be me. Jim needs to be with the kids. And Sam needs to be with Jim.”
Anna and Sam shared a look. It was Sam who spoke.
“Okay. But if you get yourself killed, Anna Henderson, me and Bonnie will never forgive you.”
“Fair enough. Now shut up while I try to find a conduit to a Russian orthodox priest.”

Anna worked on, with Jim and Jamie at her side doing drone tasks without complaint. Some three hours later it seemed she must have done all she could as she leaned back in her chair and groaned.
Sam went round behind her and rubbed her knotted shoulders while Jim looked around with a fierce light in his eyes.
“We have a workable plan,” he said with some satisfaction evident in his tones. “Now I need to talk to some people about insurance. Then maybe somebody will feed me.”
“You mind if I forage?” Pats asked.
“Be quite honest I’m so wrung out I’d even let Rod loose in the kitchen.”
“But I wouldn’t let him near the booze,” Sam capped Anna’s mild jest.
As a mechanism to release tension that worked as well as anything could have and the twins eyed Sam with ever growing respect. Cy even went so far as to offer a high five, which Sam accepted before ambling off to find liquid refreshment.

It was late that night before anybody got to bed and Anna lay across Sam like a limp dishrag. He stroked the velvet skin of her narrow torso and worried quietly.
“I’m sorry Sam,” she said softly. “I know that you must be beyond worried, but I have to go with Pats.”
“I know you do. But that doesn’t help with the pain in my chest.”
She stirred in his arms and plastered that chest with tiny kisses.
“That help?”
“Honestly not a lot. But I know I’m being a wuss and I need to get over it.”
She crawled up his body and kissed him with some intent…

Jane Jago

Sometimes it was hard to remember life before we fled the pogrom, although the endless foot slog and almost perpetual hunger served to remind us that we were welcome nowhere.

It was black winter when we fell in with a group of apostates. They had firewood, wagons, food, and they seemed willing to share.

Once we were warm and fed, Mother called us to her.

“The master says we can stay with this wagon train if I…”

“Can you?” Japheth asked.

“I can do anything to keep warm.”

When spring came we left, but Mother and the little ones stayed.

©️jj 2019

Let mine be the hands
That hold you as you sleep
Let mine be the arms
Into whose warmth you creep
Let mine be the feet
That walk each path you do
Let mine be the eyes
That watch the stars with you
Let mine be the strength
Upon which you rely
Let mine be the heart
That loves you till we die

©️jane jago 2019

Jonas got to the Hiring Fair just after dawn and headed straight for the place where soldiers’ widows could be found.

He saw her immediately, with the early morning sun setting her hair aflame. She was sitting on her trunk with a small girl child playing some complex game in the dust around her skirts. He strode over, and she came to her feet, albeit somewhat uncertainly. The child hid behind her, becoming all but invisible among the folds of shabby cloth.

“I’m looking for a housekeeper. One who won’t mind hard work and who don’t crave company.”
“Farmer are you?”
He nodded, suddenly feeling that his hands and feet were too big and his boots were too dusty. But she smiled.
“I’m a farmer’s daughter. Three-day ride to the nearest neighbour.”
“I’m not that far out. Just a day from town, so long as the roads aren’t frozen or flooded.” He found himself feeling unaccountably cheered by the idea this woman might consider him.

Before he had the chance to say any more he was roughly shoved aside by two big rough-looking men. They made way for a middle-aged man of the merchant classes, whose clothing proclaimed him as well-to-do and whose small close-set eyes stripped the woman of both her clothes and her dignity.
“You are hired,” he said.
“I’m sorry sir. I have already given my token to this gentleman.”
The man spat on the floor at her feet.
“Your loss,” he snarled before passing along the line of waiting women assessing each with his hard little eyes.

Under the cover of this rude bustle the woman quietly handed a small copper token to Jonas. He smiled ruefully.
“I won’t refuse this, although it isn’t much of a compliment being preferred to him.” He indicated the merchant with a jerk of one thumb.
Her answering smile brought a furtive dimple to one cheek.
“It truly isn’t, but I was going to accept you. If you offered.”
“I’m offering now. Twenty-five silver coins. Bed and board for you and the little girl. Plus fabrics to clothe you both.”
“That is more than generous.”
“Oh. You’ll work for it. The place hasn’t seen a woman’s hand since my sister married her man at Eastertide. Now. How do they call you?”
“I’m Hannah and this is Hepzibah”
The child gave him a gap-toothed grin and he responded with a smile of his own.
“I’m Jonas. Well met Hannah and Hepzibah.”

He bent and shouldered their trunk.
“Buckboard is this way.”

After a night spent on the road, they entered the farm at just before noon on a brisk morning.
“The house is about two miles now.”
Hannah smiled at him and he felt warmed by her smile.

He looked at the log and fieldstone cabin with suddenly critical eyes.
“It ain’t much,” he mumbled, and Hannah actually laughed.
“It looks nice and homely to me. If there were flowers growing in those beds by the door it would be perfect”

When the horses stopped, gratefully scenting their own stable, Jonas jumped down, turning to lift Hannah and Hepzibah onto the grassy bank that fronted the cabin. Hepzibah looked to her mother, and Jonas laughed.
“Let her run, she can come to no harm here.”
The little girl needed no second bidding and set off to explore, accompanied by one of the farm dogs.

Hannah walked into the house and set to work.

***

Three months later, with winter drawing in, the house and garden looked almost the way Jonas remembered it as looking when his mother was alive, and he derived a great deal of quiet pleasure in watching Hannah about her work. Being by nature both shy and taciturn he said little, although anyone with eyes in their head could notice how his face warmed and softened when he looked at his housekeeper and her child.

It was time for his last trip into town before the road became too difficult, and he found himself reluctant to leave the womenfolk behind. Hannah laughed kindly.
“Go on with you. We have the dogs and Jim Shepherd. We will be fine.”

On his way into town, Jonas mused on how much more pleasant was his life with two females in his house, and he remembered his father’s words about womenfolk with an inward smile. And then it was as if he heard his mother whisper in his ear.
“You know what you need to do, son.”

He hurried his business, eager for the comfort of his own fireside, and was home inside four days. Jim Shepherd came to the horses’ heads and the cabin door opened. Hepzibah flew out and he lifted her to his shoulder before grabbing two bags from the back of the buckboard. Jim led the horses away and Jonas carried the little girl into the cabin. Hannah was waiting for him with a smile and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to kiss her smooth brown cheek before sitting in his accustomed chair and drawing off his boots.
“It’s good to be home.”

Little more was said until after supper when Hepzibah was in bed asleep. Jonas took a sheaf of packages out of his inside pocket and handed them to Hannah. She took them, and then coloured with pleasure as she saw they were packets of flower seeds.
“I know my garden is plain and bare, and I know these will be no use until the spring…”
He got no further because Hannah surprised herself by kissing him on the lips.
“Thank you.”
He captured her face in his big hands.
“My father used to say that a house without womenfolk is like a garden without flowers. Will you and Hepzibah plant some flowers in my heart to go with the ones you will plant in the garden?”
Hannah couldn’t speak for the tears that clotted her throat. But she could nod.

And that was enough…

Jane Jago

Heavy footed men, their malice fuelled by false piety, surrounded the tumbledown cottage. The woman they called ‘witch’ awakened as their heavy boots entered the woods that surrounded her garden.

By the time they burst open the door and broke the windows the place was empty and silent. At first there was disappointment. Then somebody found the beer, the applejack, and even some precious usquebaugh. 

So they set fire to the cottage and had a party.

A crow in the mightiest oak watched the forest dwellers gut the drunken men with their bronze knives. 

Then she cawed and flew away.

©️jj 2019