BURYING THE PLOUGHSHARE, by Bethany Powell: Failure — wide open failure, scent of hot dust and sunrays on the green of weeds baking where they’re harvested all together, walling this plot. The dark king’s warfare has salted the ground. This is expected. Nothing is coming up but the most perverse of weeds, grasses hard enough […]

LEGEND, by Colleen Anderson: Decrepit rust, creaking scales weigh heavily on ancient bones. Burdens scar where past dreams shone. Cries beneath corroding teeth. Clanking nails on frozen mounds, unfurled wings now molder closed. Fancy flights ended long ago. Weary sighs in cataract eyes. Wispy smoke, old brimstone breath, memories of golden flames, gone — defiant […]

The winter solstice has come and gone, and to beat back the long nights we present the 11th issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly!  Here’s what we’ve got for you: Fiction Contents GOOSE AND CRADLE, by David Austin One last game and one more night in a besieged city where regrets rain down like catapult stones. […]

THE GOOSE AND CRADLE, by David Austin: Fewer and fewer people were stopping by the Goose and Cradle.  Everyone that had anyone was at home holding them close, waiting for the walls to crumble.  Mirsare was under siege, and massive chunks of rock rained steadily down.  The walls were strong; the boys could hold them […]

THE PRINCESS TRAP, by Peter Darbyshire: Saleema was an orphaned sheepherder until her seventeenth year, when a talking dragon landed in the mountain meadow one summer day and ate all her sheep. Then Saleema was just an orphan. Saleema, however, liked to imagine herself not as a mere orphan, or even an orphan sheepherder, but […]