Flashing Swords #10

Flashing Swords is a magazine of Heroic Adventure Fantasy. Fans of the genre should find a great deal to enjoy within the pages of issue #10. Certainly you get value for money with thirteen short stories, plus poems, art, and nonfiction. On the whole, I thought the stories were fine pulp adventures, either dark-and-grim or light-and-frothy, but some were let down by flaws in writing technique.

“The Hollow Kings” by Christopher Heath, labelled the “Featured Story” on the Flashing Swords website, is the inspiration for some impressive cover artwork, and it is the one story I actively disliked. In its favour, the underlying premise is good, and because of that, it makes an impact. If a warrior King should become too civilised, is he still likely to be successful as a leader of a savage people in a time of violence and sorcery?

After the death of his father, Brom has returned from Moongoth to take his place as the new King, but a neighbouring clan-king, Kossk, is coming to challenge him for leadership of both clans. The previous winter, Kossk slew a Wyrthrin Witch, but not before being hideously disfigured. This we learn in the opening scene, which consists of Brom and the shaman, Oktuun, standing around talking to each other for the sole purpose of explaining this backstory to the reader. I really did not care for such an undramatic, infodump preamble.

The remainder consists mainly of a long fight scene between Brom and Kossk. Much of it is fine, but I had a hard time accepting the moment when Brom comes to a sudden understanding of the true nature of his opponent, purely by taking a good long look into his eyes. This realisation seems to happen only because we’re at the point where the author wants it to happen, rather than because of any coherent plot development. Still, Heath can spin a vivid description, and the final outcome is likely to provoke an approving nod from a sizeable proportion of the fan base.

“A Stand in the Eye of the Needle” by Jason E. Thummel begins with Thorgrud, an aged and outcast warrior, coming to the aid of villagers as they prepare to flee from an approaching horde of wolf-creatures called the Vulf. Thorgrud agrees to defend a narrow mountain pass to buy them the time needed to escape.

Thummel expertly captures the cold, snow-driven setting, and Thorgrud’s history is deftly revealed as the action progresses. Bloody conflict ensues as Thorgrud battles the attacking Vulf, and his task becomes all the more difficult when he realises there is a powerful Hex Vulf among them. “A Stand in the Eye of the Needle” benefits from solid character motivation, and there are lots of small but effective moments along the way, including a clever little twist involving Thorgrud’s time spent as an outcast.

After the grim seriousness of the first two stories, Bruce Durham lightens the tone with “Abuse of Power.” When Moirya and her companion, Dalacroy, arrive at the city-state of Tenns, they are presented with the task of finding the First Citizen’s missing daughter, Agatana. Dalacroy is a mercenary and has a magical knife with which he divines some insight into Agatana’s whereabouts. In a vision, he sees a deserted town by a receded shoreline.

Somewhat implausibly, the duo set out alone to search for the missing girl. They cross paths with other parties also searching for her. Reaching the forbidden port town of Marwood, they find a charred body and encounter a fearsome monster eel creature that attacks from the water. House Jaluma has been implicated in the kidnapping, but all is not as it seemed, and the real culprit must be brought to justice. The final payoff seems a little subdued, but on the whole, this is an entertaining pulpy romp, and I enjoyed the banter between the characters.

Back to a grim, aging outcast next with “A Twist of the Knife” by Jeff Parish. King Ulrick has summoned the Lords of the Dawn to battle. The disgraced Knight Dyrkum of House Radke shows up to fight beside them but is not welcomed by anyone; Dyrkum had the opportunity forty years before to end the fight, but failed, and now the enemy has grown much stronger and the death toll immense. As he faces the same challenge again, can he hope to succeed this time?

The battle is action-packed and well realised. However, the enemy hordes consist of a hotchpotch of stock creatures—werewolves, goblins, cyclops, and troll—which is a shame, because at the same time, Parish seems to be reaching for something more original and metaphysical relating to the battle between light and dark, daylight and twilight, sun and moon. I would have liked to have seen those ideas come into focus more fully. Unfortunately, the whole thing comes to a crashing halt with a non-ending that didn’t work at all.

“Great Hairy Boats” by Gustavo Bondoni is the comedic tale of Hans who, having failed to separate Freida from her dress despite getting her drunk with wine, has to sober up quickly when a fleet of ships arrives at sea, and large blond men with “a peculiar affectation in headgear” come ashore. Hans runs back to his village but discovers the hard way that the sturdy gates are barred, and he is not going to get back in. The attacking Vikings are so impressed by his hopeless attempts to storm his own village that they decide to adopt the hapless Hans. The village, naturally, does not fare so well.

The Vikings and Hans continue their journey to further comic effect, which I won’t spoil by recounting any more of the plot. It’s written in a clear, un-flashy style and succeeds in the most important aspect of any comedy, which is to say that it is funny.

“Wolves in the Forest” by Kevin “Jaqhama” Lumley starts with a pack of wolves as they close in on what they assume to be an easy kill. Four dead wolves later, they retreat. What follows is a battle of wits and ruthlessness between the man, Jarn, and the pack. They pursue him, the brutal conflict escalates, and the wolves continue to die.

Unlike some of the other writers in this issue, Lumley seems to have given serious thought to narrative point of view, with scenes told alternately from Jarn’s or the wolves’ viewpoint. Often, a single viewpoint works best for a short story, but here the interplay between the two perspectives serves to heighten the sense of conflict, and it works well. Choosing also to tell the tale in the present tense could be construed as pushing your luck, but again I thought it worked.

On the downside, Jarn is a one-note character with little depth, and the wolves are revealed to be more than just normal wolves for no great purpose; perhaps the idea was to show Jarn’s conviction in the face of temptation, but I found that scene rather gratuitous. Also, the ending was very confusing and unclear.

In “Sacrifice of the Utukki: From the Tales of the Barbarian Kabar of El Hazzar” by Angeline Hawkes, Queen Tiamat of Caldana seeks the aid of the barbarian Kabar to rescue a child, her nephew and heir, kidnapped for sacrifice under a blood moon in four days. But Kabar is away at war, so it falls to his wife, Adina, to pass through three guarded gates and demand that the Utukki, the seven demons of Sumeria, release the child. Adina accepts the task in the spirit of well-someone’s-got-to-do-it, which I actually liked, although her recklessness in taking on the task alone is quite spectacular given that “no one had ever returned from beyond the third gate.” Still, I suppose this is the stuff heroes are made of.

Adina’s task having been laid out for her, she embarks on her mission and the tale is well told by Hawkes. My only reservation has to do with a slight flippancy in the general tone, especially early on. Queen Tiamat does not seem worthy of Adina’s efforts on her behalf.

There follows a sequence of shorter stories, beginning with “Mo the Mountain” by Michael D. Turner. A swordsman learns that a bandit has taken control of a footbridge over a ravine on the road to Jin-po, exacting tolls from anyone needing to use the bridge. Since the bandit did not build the bridge but merely took it by force, the swordsman pledges to remove him.

Of course it’s not so simple, and while the swordsman may have superhuman abilities, Mo the Mountain is equally supernatural in his immovability. The Asian setting is a nice change of pace, and the fighting is entertaining. But the ending seems like a letdown. The last two lines in particular should have been replaced with something with more gravitas or cut out completely.

In “One Last Huzzah” by H. Earl Wilkinson, Lleciena, a cunning minx of a waitress, contrives to set the warrior, Rendev, against the wizard, Adando, with the intention of stealing their money and leaving town.

The three main characters are nicely differentiated from each other, and the ambiance of the Wailing Woman Inn where the action takes place is sketched in with just the right amount of detail. Lleciena schemes her way into the affections of both the warrior and the wizard, while deliberately stoking the fires of jealousy in them. The place is bound to erupt, sooner rather than later. Neither man can resist falling for Lleciena’s charms, even though she’s really a wrong ‘un.

All in all, “One Last Huzzah” is a solid and entertaining tale. There is only one scene, but there’s nothing wrong with that. The tone is irreverent but not throwaway.

“The Sea Kings’ Champion” by Bill Ward sees a return to the grim tone of the earlier stories. The forty-man crew of a longship are taking home the body of their king, killed while commanding a raid on distant shores, when they see another ship coming towards them, rowed unnaturally through high seas and against the wind. Hrodgar, King’s Champion and War Chief of the Ghotts, must rally his men to face their supernatural enemy.

The atmosphere of the sea and the ships is captured dramatically, and the fighting is suitably brutal. But Hrodgar’s crew’s ability to recognise their eldritch foes at distance, “from their likenesses in the sagas,” strikes an implausible note. The dialogue isn’t good, and the ending seemed rushed.

Caretha is in something of a predicament in Jessica E. Kaiser’s “Welcome to the Family.” Having had an “unfortunate overreaction to a casual insult from the champion of the City-Prince’s Guard,” she is required to fight in the arena, and unfortunately, she doesn’t know how to use a sword.

Caretha has a fascinating background, taken from her village at a young age and trained to join a hive-mind of witch-mages but ultimately rejected because she was unwilling to relinquish her individuality. Sadly, Kaiser makes little of this, and most of the focus is on the fight scene in the arena, in which Caretha and her opponent do their very best to avoid killing each other—which could work, but as written here, it doesn’t convince and lacks dramatic tension.

There were other interesting themes, particularly towards the end. How might one’s fate be transformed if you are willing to consider switching allegiance to a new deity? Mostly, though, Kaiser skirts around such weighty themes in favour of a lightweight adventure that never quite managed to grip me as it might have.

There is a school of thought that says that the best story in any collection should be placed as the next to last. I’m not sure I agree with this as it seems to me to be leaving it far too late, but certainly “The First Trial of Jermaish the King” by Michael Ehart is a real treat and one of the best here.

Ninshi and her adoptive daughter, Miri, are requested to travel to the aid of King Jermaish. Ninshi has a fearsome reputation, the truth to it being “much grimmer than even the songs.” She has lived forty lifetimes and has “been taken in bondage by a dreadful monster, which every few moons compelled her to lure men into the desert and kill them for it to feed upon.” Nevertheless, it seems that there is some history between Ninshi and Jermaish, and so she will help him in his time of need.

On arrival at the city of Ikizepe, Ninshi and Miri learn that a terrible killing force is loose in the city. Any woman who has not given birth to a child is at risk of being viciously killed. Ninshi formulates a plan to discover the killer or killers. The trail has twists and turns, a terrific fight with a genuinely scary creature (no stock werewolves or zombies here), and a convincing motivation for the killings. This is excellent work by Ehart, with memorable characters and sure-footed plotting. It is a murder mystery, of course. But also a terrific fantasy adventure.

To close this issue of Flashing Swords, “Hersirs and Heroes” by Chad Weiss is set in a monastery and concerns the meeting and eventual friendship between Styr and Halfdan, two men who, for different reasons, are unable to fight in the war against the Eireal, an army of walking corpses.

Styr has crippled legs and so has never been a part of the fighting, but Halfdan lost an arm in battle. Styr wonders why Halfdan, newly arrived at the monastery, is not being given any chores to do, but then realises that he is the chore; Halfdan has been assigned by the monks to help Styr with his daily activities. In turn, Styr is charged with the task of scribing Halfdan’s account of the war, but he seems reluctant to talk about his experience. Over time, this changes, but there can be no easy happy ending and no escaping the conflict for either of them; they must go out and face it, or it will come to them.

Weiss gets marks for seriousness of intent but is a little heavy-handed with unsubtle moralising about the nature of a true hero, which has less to do with strength of body than it does with courage and strength of will.