THE NATURE OF DEMONS, by J. Kathleen Cheney: The town elders left the corpse untouched for us to view, now more than a day dead.  That the demon had fled the town already, I didn’t doubt.  Even so, the elders refused to enter that small house on the edge of the woods, retreating with murmurs […]

JIRO, by Peter Fugazzotto: Boots poked out of thick undergrowth within a stone’s throw of the heavily rutted country road. What was visible of the armor – a bronze plated lamellar jacket – was congealed with blood. Jiro – hungry, cold, and tired – saw the armor as the means to fill his aching belly. […]

LORD OF THE TATTERED BANNER, by Kristopher Reisz: By the time they took Orsten Keep, the pretender had already escaped over the mountains with half her army. After the battle, the smell of blood and smoke lingered. It was a strangely fertile smell, like fresh-tilled earth. Fengr Tall-As-A-Mounted-Man felt his war-rage cool, leaving him with […]

NICOR, by Matthew Quinn: Crows cawed in the distance. The Danes sitting in the longship began muttering ominously. Geiri Jorgenson, a dark-haired beardless boy of thirteen summers, leaned forward to listen. “Is that the other ship over there?” he asked his friend Halvor Skallagrimson, a big red-bearded man who sat across the aisle. Halvor nodded. […]

THE LION AND THE THORN TREE, by J.S. Bangs: My husband’s voice came through the door of our house in the night. It was a ghost voice, muddled with the baying of wild dogs, and so I knew he was dead. I was four months pregnant. I followed the echo of his voice for half […]