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 […]

DUSTS OF WAR, by Ben Godby: The cart creaked, its wheels full of summer dust, as the peddler pushed it gently up the slope of the road, past the first houses, and onto the main street of the village. It was late afternoon, nearly dusk, and the sun had a lazy warmth to it. It […]

SHADOWS AND HELLFIRE, by R. Michael Burns: “Dive heedlessly into death, and you will wake up.”                              — Yamamoto Tsunemoto,                              Hagakure All around him, the dead drew closer, faces ash-pale, sunken eyes blazing with hatred. Hokagé’s hand went instinctively for his sword — but of course he wasn’t armed, not in the dead of […]

KINGDOM OF GRAVES, by David Charlton: Plague had come to the lands west of the river Elakk, and so Rakhar the Half-Orc came, too. He came to their towns with only his spade slung over his shoulder, taller than any man and uglier than most. His brow was heavy and hung low over dark, sunken […]