Grimdark Magazine Issue #4 ePub Read online

  [PVB] I don’t think of any of my characters in that way. They are all fully realized people in my mind with complex motivations, the products of upbringings I have mostly shown on the page. I would never try and write a character to fit a descriptor. People often ask my advice on writing “morally gray” characters, and my response is usually a variation on “you’re putting the cart before the horse”.

  [GdM] If you could hoist a couple of beers with any 2 authors currently writing, who would you choose and why?

  [PVB] I can happily say I have actually done that with most every author I care about. It’s kind of become a thing. People in publishing love to drink, and I see most of the authors in SF on the con/tour circuit, or when they pass through NYC, where I live. I’ve never met CS Friedman, though, or Joe Hill. Those would be pretty great. Odds are everyone here knows who Joe Hill is and why he is awesome. If you haven’t read CS Friedman, go pick up the Coldfire trilogy the moment you’re done reading this magazine. You won’t regret it.

  [GdM] When you find any time to read, which writers do you turn to?

  [PVB] Here’s a list of books I love, in no particular order. Many are series books; in those cases I just list my fave:

  A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin

  Crown of Shadows by CS Friedman

  Shogun by James Clavell

  The Elfstones of Shannara by Terry Brooks

  Homeland by RA Salvatore

  The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan

  His Majesty's Dragon or Uprooted by Naomi Novik

  The Runelords by David Farland

  The Hobbit, by JRR Tolkien

  The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

  Master of the Five Magics by Lyndon Hardy

  The Subtle Knife Philip Pullman

  Half the World, by Joe Abercrombie

  [GdM] You are very friendly and interact frequently with your fans both in public and on social media. Was there anything about becoming a best-selling author that caught you off guard? Anything you expected to happen that didn’t?

  [PVB] The “bestselling” part caught me pretty solidly off guard, I can tell you. It was a huge shift to go from “please someone, anyone, read my book and tell me what you think” to having long lines of people show up at signings.

  I think the hardest part was learning to be more extroverted on command. Most writers I know are introverts. Not unfriendly, but socializing can tire us, and we need alone time to recharge. I was often the guy at the party standing awkwardly off to the side pretending to be super-interested in the décor because I suck at small talk.

  But then you sell your book, and the publisher is like, “Oh, by the way we need you to travel around and dace on a ball in front of crowds. Go!” That took some getting used to. I used to get incredibly anxious hours or even days before an event. Thankfully, I’ve been to the rodeo enough times now that I’ve learned to relax. My readers are all awesome people I honestly enjoy interacting with. I only wish there were more hours in the day to give them all my full attention while still producing books, being a good father and partner, and having a life.[GdM]

  Excerpt: The Liar’s Key by Mark Lawrence

  Petals rained down amid cheers of adoration. Astride my glorious charger at the head of Red March’s finest cavalry unit, I led the way along the Street of Victory toward the Red Queen’s palace. Beautiful women strained to escape the crowd and throw themselves at me. Men roared their approval. I waved—

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  My dream tried to shape the hammering into something that would fit the story it was telling. I’ve a good imagination and for a moment everything held together. I waved to the highborn ladies adorning each balcony. A manly smirk for my sour-faced brothers sulking at the back of—

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  The tall houses of Vermillion began to crumble, the crowd started to thin, faces blurred.

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  “Ah hell.” I opened my eyes and rolled from the furs’ warmth into the freezing gloom. “Spring they call this!” I struggled shivering into a pair of trews and hurried down the stairs.

  The tavern room lay strewn with empty tankards, full drunks, toppled benches, and upended tables. A typical morning at the Three Axes. Maeres sniffed around a scatter of bones by the hearth, wagging his tail as I staggered in.

  BANG! BANG—

  “All right! All right! I’m coming.” Someone had split my skull open with a rock during the night. Either that or I had a hell of a hangover. Damned if I knew why a prince of Red March had to answer his own front door, but I’d do anything to stop that pounding tearing through my poor head.

  I picked a path through the detritus, stepping over Erik Three-Teeth’s ale-filled belly to reach the door just as it reverberated from yet another blow.

  “God damn it! I’m here!” I shouted as quietly as I could, teeth gritted against the pain behind my eyes. Fingers fumbled with the lock bar and I pulled it free. “What?” And I hauled the door back. “What?”

  I suppose with a more sober and less sleep-addled mind I might have judged it better to stay in bed. Certainly that thought occurred to me as the fist caught me square in the face. I stumbled back, bleating, tripped over Erik, and found myself on my arse staring up at Astrid, framed in the doorway by a morning considerably brighter than anything I wanted to look at.

  “You bastard!” She stood hands on hips now. The brittle light fractured around her, sending splinters into my eyes but making a wonder of her golden hair and declaring in no uncertain terms the hour-glass figure that had set me leering at her on my first day in Trond.

  “W-what?” I shifted my legs off Erik’s bulging stomach, and shuffled backward on my behind. My hand came away bloody from my nose. “Angel, sweetheart—”

  “You bastard!” She stepped after me, hugging herself now, the cold following her in.

  “Well—” I couldn’t argue against “bastard,” except technically. I put my hand in a puddle of something decidedly unpleasant and got up quickly, wiping my palm on Maeres, who’d come over to investigate, tail still wagging despite the violence offered to his master.

  “Hedwig ver Sorren?” Astrid had murder in her eyes.

  I kept backing away. I might have half a foot over her in height but she was still a tall woman with a powerful right arm. “Oh, you don’t want to believe street talk, my sweets.” I swung a stool between us. “It’s only natural that Jarl Sorren would invite a prince of Red March to his halls once he knew I was in town. Hedwig and I—”

  “Hedwig and you what?” She took hold of the stool as well.

  “Uh, we— Nothing really.” I tightened my grip on the stool legs. If I let go I’d be handing her a weapon. Even in my jeopardy visions of Hedwig invaded my mind, brunette, very pretty, wicked eyes, and all a man could want packed onto a short but inviting body. “We were barely introduced.”

  “It must have been a pretty bare introduction if it has Jarl Sorren calling out his housecarls to bring you in for justice!”

  “Oh shit.” I let go of the stool. Justice in the north tends to mean having your ribs broken out of your chest.

  “What’s all the noise?” A sleepy voice from behind me. I turned to see Edda, barefoot on the stairs, our bed furs wrapped around her middle, slim legs beneath, and milk pale shoulders above, her white-blond hair flowing across them.

  Turning away was my mistake. Never take your eye off a potential foe. Especially after handing them a weapon.

  From The Liar’s Key by Mark Lawrence, published by Ace, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2014 by Bobalinga, Ltd.

  Purchase Link: http://www.penguin.com/book/the-liars-key-by-mark-lawrence/9780425268803[GdM]

  The Halfwyrd’s Burden

  A Steelhaven Story

  Richard Ford

  Around early autumn the border trail west out of Valdor was windy as a nobleman’s t
rap and cold as a devil’s heart. It was two hundred leagues of forested inclines and boggy descents, with bears and wolves and worse lying in wait to fill their bellies before the long, hard weeks of winter set in. Sometimes there wasn’t even a path to see, and anyone who didn’t know the way would be lost quicker than a priest in a whorehouse. It was hard land, untamed by cities or farms, and it was a rare kind of man had any business making a trade in a place so remote, when the rain pissed down like it was trying to drown you, and the wind howled and roared till it frayed your wits.

  A rare kind of man indeed would make his business in such a place.

  But then Oban Halfwyrd was one of the rarest.

  He’d roamed these trails most of his life, from a boy at his father’s knee to a man now turning to grey. Before the first hair had even grown on his chin he’d been made one of the Wardens. It was an honour he’d been born to, and a duty he’d live for till he breathed his last.

  The Wardens were an old order, old as the Sword Kings some said, and the Wardens of the North were the oldest of them all. They’d patrolled the border with Golgartha since the War of the Red Snows, back in the dark days when the northmen had come down with their stone axes and their wytchworkers looking for blood and slaves. It had been up to the Wardens of the North to put the call out then, summoning the five armies to smash the Golgarthans back to their icebound holdfasts.

  Nowadays, the northmen were too busy fighting each other to worry about those on their southern border, so Oban spent most of his days stalking brigands and trapping bears. It was work he was uniquely suited to; hard and grim.

  But then Oban Halfwyrd was a hard man. . . and the grimmest.

  It was why he was so keenly suited to it; work other men, ordinary men grown soft in the cities and towns and villages of the Free States, would never last long at. Keeping the King’s Peace was no easy task, and those most fit for it were cut from a very particular cloth. Dispensing the King’s Justice was a duty not bestowed on just anyone.

  There were some though, that thought it their own duty, that took it upon themselves to act without the dispensation granted the Wardens. Some that believed themselves bestowed such a duty by a power higher than that of the Crown, men who claimed to act for the poor and downtrodden but who answered to no one, not even King Cael himself.

  Today, atop the border trail heading westwards into Dreldun, it was just such a man Oban found himself hunting.

  There was little sign; the man was clearly practiced at covering his trail, but Oban had known these ways for decades and had tracked men and beasts of all kinds. It was said even the birds would have trouble hiding their passing from him; there wasn’t a man alive could evade his pursuit. When his blood was up and the hunt was on, no bloodhound’s nose was keener nor falcon’s eye sharper than Oban Halfwyrd’s.

  As he reached the top of the ridge that led down onto the flatlands and the border with the Northern Steppes, Oban knew there was only one place his quarry could be headed. Harrowgard was the last frontier town before the territory of the Khurtas. More a fort than a town, it was one of many that lined the northern extremes of Dreldun, giving early warning of any attack from the savage lands.

  With renewed vigour Oban made his way down the pass toward the town, his tread as practised and sure as a mountain goat. It was treacherous underfoot, and a broken ankle could easily be the death of a man up here on the high trails, but Oban hadn’t lived so long because he was a lumbering fool.

  It wasn’t long before Harrowgard came into sight. The town was little more than a maze of thatched huts, surrounded by a palisade of rough-cut pine trees, but Harrowgard’s fame didn’t come from her looks. She’d seen off attacks from the Khurtas of the north for over a hundred years, and in all that time had never once been overrun, which couldn’t be said for most of the other border towns.

  The Khurtas were a savage breed, persistent, sly, and sooner or later they’d find a way to breach a town’s defences so the slaughter could begin. Not so with Harrowgard. Its militia were a hardy lot, the trappers and hunters that did their trade there the roughest bunch a man could meet. It was due to this that Oban checked his knife was loose in its sheath and his axe was where he could easily bring it to hand should he need it.

  Two sentries stood up on the palisade, their spear points looking nasty as a wolf’s teeth. They saw Oban approaching and before he was within twenty paces the gate opened before him. It had been a year since he’d been here, and a lot could happen in a year, but clearly they remembered him. It was times like this he was glad of his reputation. Sometimes it made his life easier.

  Sometimes it didn’t.

  Inside those wooden walls you wouldn’t have known Harrowgard was a town on the frontier, a town under the constant, baleful eye of the Khurtas. There weren’t too many smiling faces, that’s for sure, but people still went about their business as normal; an old woman washing clothes, children playing in the dirt, a smith hammering out a horseshoe, the sound of it rising high over the town like a funeral bell.

  Despite the safety of the walls Oban felt uncomfortable, even here, even in this sorry excuse for. . . what did they call it? Civilisation?

  They could keep it as far as he was concerned. He far preferred open country, walking the secret paths few men trod. This place, with its walls and its wooden shacks, felt cloying, strangling him, holding him in as though he were chained in a cell.

  It was for that reason Oban didn’t tarry. He had a job to do, and do it he would. . . as quick as he was bloody well able.

  There was a wood hut at the end of the row and though it bore no sign nor name of any kind, Oban knew it to be the alehouse. It also passed for an inn, though the rooms were nothing more than straw beds in an adjoining stable. He had to watch his back in here, and not just because his quarry’s trail led right to the door. A year or so before, Oban had seen a man slit from ear to ear over a game of dice and it wouldn’t do to lower his guard, not now, not when he was so close to ending this sorry affair.

  The door opened with a squeak and Oban walked in. Some faces looked up, seeing him there in his furs, looking like one of a thousand mountain men who passed by this way. A couple even recognised him for who he was but no one took much notice.

  No one but the man he’d come to find.

  He was easily recognisable, sitting in the corner far from the light. Had any other man come searching they might not have spotted him there in the dark, but Oban knew exactly what he was looking for. The man looked up when Halfwyrd walked in. Only half a look, mind, only the briefest glance, but it was obvious he knew who had come for him. He wore black, a cloak over his shoulder, his lean face tilted down, his eyes in shadow. As Oban walked toward him he knew there’d be weapons beneath the table he sat behind, a weapon in his cloak, at his belt. . . hells, even in his boots most likely.

  Oban sat on a stool opposite the man, with nothing but a simple oak table between them. He could have tried to take him by surprise, could have tried shooting an arrow from across the room, but Oban was one of the Wardens. It was his job to keep the King’s Peace, not start fights in alehouses where some unlucky bugger might get cut or killed.

  Besides, Oban was nothing if not fair. He always liked to give a man a chance to come peaceful-like. Even if that man was a dark and dangerous bastard.

  ‘You know me, Rook?’ Oban asked, using the old northern name for the Lord of Crows’ Dead Priests.

  ‘The name’s Pike,’ said the man, without looking up, his face still in darkness. ‘And I’m guessing you’re the one’s been dogging my trail since west of Valdor.’

  ‘That I am. You almost lost me a time or two, as well. That’s not an easy feat for any man. But you ain’t any man, are you, Pike?’

  ‘You know what I am, Warden.’

  Oban knew, all right. He was one of the Dead Priests who followed the Lord of Crows, the Old God of the dead. They were an ancient order, older even than the Wardens, and when
the peasants and serfs of the Free States didn’t feel they’d been served the King’s Justice it was the Rooks they turned to.

  ‘I know what you are. I know you killed a district sheriff south of Fallow Rock, and you’ll have to answer for it.’

  Pike looked up then, showing his face and the eyes set in it. They were old eyes. Eyes that had witnessed a long life, full of hardship. Eyes steeped in wisdom and hard-won knowledge. Oban would have liked to talk long and late with a man behind eyes like that, but talking wasn’t his purpose here.

  ‘Aye, that I did,’ said Pike, nodding his agreement. ‘And that I will. What say you let me finish my ale before we head for the road?’

  Oban glanced down at the half-empty tankard in front of Pike, then nodded.

  ‘I don’t see the harm in it.’

  Pike nodded his thanks and took a drink.

  ‘You know why I killed him, Warden?’ he said as he placed his tankard back on the oak table.

  Oban knew, all right. He’d asked around. He knew the tales. . . and believed them too.

  ‘Because that sheriff raped a girl,’ Oban replied. ‘Because he left her with child and wouldn’t pay no bastard’s sum. Because she killed herself rather than raise the child alone and in disgrace.’

  ‘No,’ said Pike, his expression grim, his eyes looking into Oban as though they could read his heart. ‘I killed him because you and yours stood by and did nothing.’

  ‘Weren’t nothing we could do,’ Oban replied, quick on the defensive. ‘Her word against his was no proof.’

  Pike stared, and in that moment the two of them knew that was nothing of an answer. In his heart Oban knew the girl’s claim to be true, and he felt the shame of it in his gut.

  ‘Is that what you call the King’s Justice?’ Pike asked.

  ‘It’s as good a justice as anyone can hope for.’