Although Heroic Fantasy Quarterly is an international affair, its physical headquareters are in Central Oklahoma, and it has been full-on winter here in central Oklahoma! A weird kind of winter, too, cold, but no snow or sleet or anything.   Just the cold, and the wind and the threat that any little spark will light up […]

WHITE RAINBOW AND BROWN DEVIL, by Raphael Ordonez   Francisco Carvajal y Lopez, vagabond of the Tashyan badlands, conquistador in his own mind, emerged upon a caliche bank from thickets that sang sweetly beneath the sun. The gravel floodplain stretched from north to south before him. Several sycamores, the first trees he had seen that day, […]

THAT SLEEP OF DEATH, by Mary-Jean Harris   “There is no religion higher than Truth,” Lady Wickham spoke as she raised her lace handkerchief to her eyes. Before I could comment on the great sensibility of such a phrase, she exclaimed, “Isn’t it blasphemous!” As a philosopher, I could by no means agree with that, […]

THINGS OF SHREDS AND PATCHES, by Norman Doege   Muffled voices and broken songs seeped like slow passion around a carved birch door. Scori, courier to the Lord-Apparent of Bremland, had ridden through the northlands to find himself in the cold dark staring at a brass knocker nestled between a pair of wooden breasts. Over […]

THE WASHER AT THE FORD, by James Matthew Byers   The hooded crow flew overhead, Confusion followed suit. Announcing menace, full of dread, Abiding her salute, The men below her in the field Engaged in arts of war Fermented furor, axe and shield, Dismemberment and gore. A side, so chosen in her jaunt, As Babd […]