LORD OF THE BRASS HOST, by Dariel Quiogue: In the stillness of a moonless night, the final sounds of picks breaking through stone sounded as loud as armies.  Five grave robbers knelt muttering eagerly around the hole they had made through the roof of a buried tomb, shining torches into the yawning vault below.  Glints […]

THE LAST FREE BEAR, by J.S. Bangs: The white bear stalked Tupiak across the ice, just as Tupiak stalked the twisted men. He did not see the bear except once or twice, a long ways off, as an ivory‑colored shape in the snow. The path of the twisted men ran in a straight line to […]

SHATTERING THE SPEAR, by P. Djeli Clark: Msizi clutched the leather straps, holding on for life as the great umkhombe thundered across the plain. Its powerful hooves broke dry and cracked soil, sending up billows of red dust in its wake. Umkhombe were familiar in his homeland, quick to anger and always in a foul […]

HEART OF MAN, by David Pilling: “Such was the murder of Evesham, for battle it was none.” The Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, August 1265 AD   I, Roger Godberd, a humble farmer of no account, survived the murder of Evesham by hiding under a corpse in a ditch until the killing was done. When […]

THE SEA WASP, by Robert Rhodes: An hour after sunset, I lingered by the ship’s rail.  The eastern sky had long since blackened, but in the distance, the King’s Lantern burned like a star trapped in mid-fall.  Tomorrow would bring us to the coast of Armitane and into Port Royal, the brightest and loudest of […]