Art of War Read online

  Art of War

  Edited by Petros Triantafyllou

  An Anthology for Charity:

  All proceeds from Art of War will go to MSF (Doctors Without Borders)

  © 2018

  http://booknest.eu/

  Cover art by John Antony di Giovanni

  Cover design by Shawn T. King

  Interior art by Jason Deem (Print version contains 40 B&W original art pieces.)

  Editorial assistance by Tim Marquitz

  Created in Greece

  Worldwide Rights

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any form, including digital, electronic, or mechanical, to include photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the author, except for brief quotes used in reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Foreword – Brian D. Anderson

  The Breaking of the Sky- Ed McDonald

  The Last Arrow- Mitchell Hogan

  Dear Menelaus - Laura M. Hughes

  Warborn - C.T. Phipps

  The Greatest Battle - John Gwynne

  This War of Ours - Timandra Whitecastle

  Shadows in the Mist - Sue Tingey

  The Art: Post War - RJ Barker

  The Fox and the Bowman - Sebastien de Castell

  Arrow’s Wrath - Charles F. Bond

  Hard Lessons - Michael R. Miller

  A Battle for Elucame: Leah – R.B. Watkinson

  The Revolution Changed Everyone - D. Thourson Palmer

  Misplaced Heroism - Andrew Rowe

  Violet - Mazarkis Williams

  The Two Faces of War - Rob J. Hayes

  Grannit – J.P. AShman

  Asalantir Forever - Steven Poore

  Tower of the Last - Steven Kelliher

  The Waving of the Flag - Thomas R. Gaskin

  The Art of War - Brian Staveley

  Hero of the Day - Nathan T. Boyce

  Sacred Semantics - Nicholas Eames

  The War God's Axe - Anne Nicholls

  The Feather and the Paw - Benedict Patrick

  Until the Light had Faded – Graham Austin-King

  Under the Queen’s Throne - Ed Greenwood

  Good Steel - Zachary Barnes

  The Cost of Power - Ulff Lehmann

  The Undying Lands – Michael R. Fletcher’s Doppels

  The Fall of Tereen - Anna Smith-Spark

  Valkyrie Rain - Dyrk Ashton

  Chattels - Stan Nicholls

  The Storm - Miles Cameron

  Shortblade – Brandon Draga

  Rendered Chaos - D. M. Murray

  The Best and Bravest - M.L. Spencer

  Exibition - Ben Galley

  Flesh and Coin - Anna Stephens

  The Hero of Aral Pass - Mark Lawrence

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword

  “I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded, who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.” - William Tecumseh Sherman

  When I was asked to write this foreword, I was unsure how I should approach it. Or even if I were qualified to make the attempt. Many a great mind has written on this subject. From revered generals to spiritual leaders, war is a preoccupation of the human condition that has been explored in tremendous depth. Given this, I was more than a bit intimidated by the prospect of throwing my own two cents in. I am no general, nor a spiritual leader, and I have never considered myself among the great intellects of the world. But wars are not fought by great intellects. They are fought by soldiers. Men and women no different than myself. So rather than give in to self-doubt, I thought I would simply go talk to some soldiers. It felt like the right place to start.

  I knew that my own perceptions of war had very little, if anything, to do with reality. After all, I’ve never been a soldier; never been close to a war in any significant way. And yet most of my books depict massive battles, where good and evil collide to determine the fate of the world. I practically sing songs of its righteousness and virtue. I use the most sinister and violent aspects of our nature to paint a picture of valor, bravery, and kinship. Even though I know that war is among the most reprehensible acts perpetrated by humankind, I have yet to find a better way to illustrate who and what we are as a species. Even never having been near one, its horrors are as familiar as they are terrifying. I shudder at the thought of sending our young to their deaths and yet am utterly transfixed by tales of bloody conflict and heroism. I curse as fools those who claim war to be glorious or say that it is a necessary and unavoidable evil. And yet I cannot tear my eyes away from the images splayed across my television screen. The more I thought on this, the more I felt as if I were a true hypocrite, hating war yet unable to stop writing about it.

  It wasn’t until I went on one of my visits to the VFW that I understood, at least in a small way, what was behind my fascination, and why I was right to use war and its horrors to display laudable and even beautiful images of humanity. For those of you who do not know, VFW stands for Veterans of Foreign Wars. Though a private club, it welcomes the public to visit, vets and non-vets alike. I’ve been going there for some time, favoring the company of older people with milder temperaments who are not prone to getting into bar brawls. When you walk through the door, it’s not much to look at. Just a bar, a pool room, and a small hall where they hold the occasional minor event (dances, karaoke, and whatnot). The casual observer would see little more than a bar full of crusty old men speaking to one another in slurred voices over mugs of cheap beer. But I assure you that it is much more than that. In a very real way, these crusty old men are what gives war its virtue, if any is to be found.

  With a plan in mind, or at least a vague idea where I would start, I jumped in the car and headed off. They know me pretty well there and were more than happy to give a “youngster” such as myself the skinny on war and what it was all about. In truth, I think they were excited that someone else beside the other vets wanted to hear their stories. These men have been going to the VFW for years; long enough to have told every story they know a hundred times over. A fresh set of ears was obviously welcome.

  So, after buying several rounds and listening attentively for hours, I discovered a common thread woven into each story. But it was not what I expected. It seemed that regardless of the war in which they fought, none of them spoke a single word about the fighting itself. Very little suggested they were speaking about their time in the service. Except for the mention of officers and technical terms only a soldier would use, they could have been telling me about their time at college or a trip with friends. I heard about bar brawls, loose women, pranks they played, the trouble they found themselves in, even being arrested. But the words enemy, firefight, bombs, and combat never came up. What did this have to do with war? I wondered. Maybe they would come to it eventually. But they didn’t. After the first try, I went home quite discouraged. I still had the option of watching a documentary or two and then faking my way through it, as if I knew what the hell I was talking about. But I shoved this a
side and marshaled my determination. I had resolved to give this my best, and I intended to do precisely that. Perhaps I was approaching this from the wrong angle. I hadn’t wanted to lead them in a specific direction, thinking spontaneity would be better, more genuine. But I had either been wide of the mark or hadn’t given them enough time to arrive at that point. After all, they had decades of tales to tell, and I had only given it one day.

  On the second trip, I was still reluctant to lead them where I thought I needed them to go. Don’t get me wrong; I was thoroughly entertained. The stories they told were interesting, deeply personal, and often side-splittingly hilarious. And with men ranging in age from 55-95, I could have spent weeks, possibly months, and still not heard them all. But I didn’t have that long. My deadline was fast approaching. So finally, I was forced to press the issue.

  Initially, I had assumed that they were avoiding telling me about the actual fighting because the memories were too painful. And in many cases this assumption was proven accurate. However, there were a few who seemed unbothered and were willing to describe their combat experiences. But the stories were unvaryingly bland and lacked any flavor or depth. The vets appeared disinterested, and sounded as if they were reading from a dry textbook. And oddly, they didn’t understand why I would care about it in the first place. After all, everyone knew about the fighting. Only they knew what happened in the in-between moments, when the bloodshed ceased and the bombs stopped falling.

  I had hoped to hear of strategy and heroism, the adrenaline-fueled rage of battle, where the average soldier finds courage he never knew he possessed. Instead, I was regaled with accounts of frivolity and almost juvenile mischief-making. What little I had heard of battle I could have read from any book on the subject. No closer to my objective, I went home, again on the verge of giving up. It had seemed like a good idea at the time to use veterans as a resource. But maybe I should just go with my other idea and watch some documentaries or read a few books by famous generals. But that didn’t feel right either.

  On a whim, I read one of my early works, flipping forward until I reached one of the battle scenes. It was the first book I had written, and the prose left much to be desired. But it wasn’t that which struck me. As the scene progressed, I came to realize what I had missed. I’d thought I had left the VFW empty-handed, when in fact they had given me everything I needed to understand why I, along with many other writers, use war as a vehicle to explain human nature in its entirety.

  Soldiers don’t concern themselves with geopolitics. They serve. They fight. For their country, true. But for the soldier standing beside them as well. In many cases they fought for their friends more than they fought for their country. Each story about some local girl they met or bar fights they were in was another layer to be revealed. Each word I was hearing was a slice of humanity in its purest form.

  Taken individually, in the grand scheme of things, nothing they had said was of any particular significance – amusing anecdotes at best. Yet when patched together, even sitting at that greasy bar, drinking that cheap beer, I began to see a wealth I would have missed had I not taken on this assignment. It encouraged me to delve deeper. So, I spent several more days listening with renewed vigor and excitement. But this time, I didn’t ask them a thing. I simply listened to these men interact with each other. There was a bond between them that I imagine could be only formed through a mutual experience like war and service. I found myself feeling a stab of regret for not having served; unable to truly join in.

  Still, I felt privileged to get to know them and that they were comfortable in my company. Whereas before they had been just a bunch of nice old men, they became much more to me. So, I went home and began to write. Well, I confess that I deleted the first draft and started over. My initial attempt had focused on the generals and their strategies. I proposed that good leaders send their soldiers into battle with a heavy heart, understanding that some must be sacrificed to ensure others would survive…blah, blah, blah. That’s what I get for trying to be clever. I end up sounding pretentious and ignorant. I had forgotten one of the rules for good writing: Write what you know. I had learned about soldiers from soldiers. I would stick to that. Anyone with even a mild sense of human emotion can extrapolate depth and suffering from the burden of command and inject it into a fictional character. But only I was lucky enough to have heard the stories these men had recounted for me. I had a completely new perspective from which to write. And I would use it.

  To my own credit, the way I had described in my books the hardships of warfare and its implications for an impact on life and civilization had been accurate. And I had even hit the nail on the head when it came to the camaraderie among those who had been through combat together. But now I could delve deeper into the heart of war. I could show things in a way that previously would not have occurred to me. Where before it was shine without substance, now I could create a greater degree of realism.

  As fantasy authors, we imagine worlds that cannot possibly exist. We write books meant to transport the reader from the mundane into the fantastical. And yet we build our stories on a foundation of what we know firsthand, things that exist as a reality in our own dangerous and often confusing world. We try to explain the human condition in a way that provides our audience with the full scope of experiences and emotions. War accomplishes this as does nothing else. Our earliest tales are about conflict. We have been simultaneously fascinated and repulsed for as long as humankind has had the means to pass along knowledge from one generation to the next.

  As much as we desire the end of all war, there is no denying that it is stitched inseparably into the fabric of who we are. And were there to be an end, I believe the tales would continue to thrive and retain their allure.

  As I was concluding this foreword, I realized that there was one element I had neglected to mention: the reason for this anthology being put together in the first place. Through it all, the aftermath of battle is often forgotten. The victory is won, the enemy defeated, and all rejoice. Cue the music. But it doesn’t end there in the real world.

  Real war creates poverty, hunger, and disease on a massive scale. Ravaged towns and shattered lives are left in its wake. When this humanitarian crisis arises, who is there to care for those who have had everything stripped away? It is the doctors, the nurses, the volunteers willing to risk their lives to lend a hand. They walk bravely into the heart of danger bearing no weapon or any protection to speak of. And why? Because they know that they are needed.

  Learning that Doctors Without Borders would be the beneficiary of the anthology filled me with a sense of pride. That as much as anything was worth the hours spent laboring over this piece. I was already aware of this organization and knew a bit about what they did through friends who had participated. But I took some time and looked into it a bit more. These men and women are simply amazing. They sacrifice their time and put their skills to use in places I would be terrified to even think about going. I am honored to be a part of this, and hope that my meager contribution in some way inspires whoever reads this to learn more about what they can do to help.

  Brian D. Anderson

  Art of War

  The Breaking of the Sky

  Ed McDonald

  This story takes place in the same world as The Raven’s Mark series, and is set long before the events of the first book. No prior knowledge of Blackwing is required.

  It wasn’t reaching the war-torn border-town that bothered me. It was the box.

  The saying went that only three kinds of people hired on with a Blackwing captain: the stupid, the greedy, and the desperate.

  Mama Gil was greedy enough. The rings squeezed onto her bloodless fingers were artless chunks of tarnished gold, her riding gear silk instead of leather, and her horse had probably once almost won a big race. At a distance, she might have been a lady rather than a groom, but up close you saw that, for all her glitz, there was no substance to her. Just a tacky woman that stank of horse shit as she tried
to continue her perpetually second-place existence.

  Peralli was desperate enough. The magistrate had been set to stretch his neck on account of what he’d done to them dogs, and the law normally said you could do whatever the fuck you want with a dog, so whatever he’d done with them it had to be pretty fucking bad. I didn’t like Peralli, but he was a mean bastard, stewed with spite and baked full of kill, and when we’d got into a scrap with the drudge, I’d run and hid behind him all the same.

  That meant I was probably the stupid one. I had no idea why she’d taken me. I weren’t a true fighter, didn’t work the horses well, neither. Flotsam, tossed into her stream and swept along with the flow.

  “What do you think’s in the box?” Mama Gil asked. Seated beside me on the wagon’s driving platform, she was painting her lips with something sticky and purple. Some high-ranking noble had got his face boxed by a prince and suddenly the fashion was to mask it up like he did. I was country-born. Never understood fashion.

  “Best not to ask,” Peralli said, walking alongside. His voice rustled. Dry leaves, silk on silk. An unkind voice. A killing voice. “Best not to think, even. Let her keep it to herself.” Peralli scared me.

  “What do you think?” Mama Gil asked.

  “Diamonds maybe?” I suggested. It was a stupid suggestion. Couldn’t envisage anyone bringing wealth out here into the war zone. I’d never seen diamonds, but they was more costly than gold, and there was no sense in paying gold for something small. Whatever was in that box, it was big. Big, and locked down on the wagon in an iron sarcophagus, chains binding it down. The wagon was drawn by eight horses, shire breeds from the western states. Biggest damn horses you could ever lay eyes on. The cargo was only six by four by five, pig iron, rough cast, but even if it had been solid, that didn’t explain why the horses struggled to get it moving. Like it was heavier than lead. Much, much heavier. And it wasn’t that they weren’t eager. No sooner than Mama Gil got them hitched, they started straining away. Like they knew something about it and wanted gone.