Uncrushed, Rob reached the high ground where the Count had pitched his pavilion. When the Augenfelsen contingent arrived at yesterday’s dusk, this whole stretch of riverbank was all green grass as tall as Rob’s head. Their monsters had chomped it low and trampled the remnants into the yellow mud.
Rob’s head swam from unfamiliar exertion and the concentrated reek of dinosaur piss and farts. That was familiar, surely, but he wasn’t accustomed to forcibly pumping his head full of it like this.
Hapless arming-squires grunted to boost the Count of the Eye Cliffs’ steel-cased bulk into the saddle. Though the cerulean-dappled scarlet duckbill bull squatted in the muck, it was a nearly two-meter climb.
The Count rode a long-crested sackbut—or Parasaurolophus, as The Book of True Names had it. Like most hadrosaurs, it usually walked on its huge hind legs, and dropped to all fours to gallop. It had a great triangle of a head, with a broad, toothed beak and a backward-arcing tubular crest. The crest gave its voice a range and striking tones like the slide-operated brass musical instrument called a sackbut, thus the name.
With a great groan of effort, the Count flung his leg over. Middle-aged at eighty, his lordship tended to spend far more time straddling a banquet stool than a war-mount. It showed in the way his chins overflowed onto his breast-and-back without apparent intervention of a neck. Unlike their lesser brethren who rode warhorses, dinosaur knights didn’t need to keep themselves in trim. Their real weapon was their mount.
Snorting from both ends, the sackbut heaved himself to his feet. A rain-soaked cloth caparison clung to his sides, molding the pebbly scales beneath. Rob counted it a blessing that clouds and downpour muted both the dinosaur’s hide and the Count’s armor, enameled all over in swirls of blue and gold and green—a pattern that the Anglysh, usually without affection, called “paisley.” Unlike most dinosaur knights, the Count had neither picked nor bred his mount to sport his heraldic colors. They clashed something dreadful.
Rob sucked in a deep breath through his mouth. As dinosaur master it was his job to keep his lord’s monsters fit, trained, and ready for war. But it was also his duty to advise his employer on how best to use his eye-poppingly expensive dinosaurs in battle. Duty to his craft now summoned Rob to do just that, and he wasn’t happy about it.
He’d have been tending the Count’s sackbut this very instant had his employer not curtly ordered Rob and his lowborn dinosaur grooms to clear out and leave final preparations to the squires. In their wisdom, the Creators had seen fit to endow the nobles who ruled Nuevaropa with courage and strength instead of wit. Or even sense.
“My lord!” Rob shouted. He clutched at a stirrup. Then he danced back with a nimbleness that belied his thick body and short legs as the Count slashed at his face with a riding crop.
“Shit-eating peasant! You dare manhandle me?”
“Please, Graf!” Rob shouted, ignoring what he deemed an unproductive question whose answer his employer wouldn’t like anyway. “Let me try my plan while there’s still time.”
“Plan? To rob me and my knights of glory, you mean? I spit on your dishonorable schemes!” And he did. The gob caught Rob full on the cheek. “My knights will scatter these brutes like the overgrown fatties they are.”
“But your splendid dinosaurs, lord!” Rob cried, hopping from foot to foot in agitation. “They’ll impale themselves on those monsters’ horns!”
Slamming shut the visor of his fatty-snout bascinet—which Rob found oddly appropriate—the Count waved a steel gauntlet at his herald, who blew advance on his trumpet. Rob winced. The herald couldn’t hit his notes any better than the Count’s mercenary crossbowmen could hit the White River archers.
Rob sprang back to avoid getting stepped on as the Count spurred his sackbut forward. His knights sent their beasts lurching at a two-legged trot down the gentle slope to the water.
“You’ll just disorder your knights when you ride down your own crossbows, you stupid son of a bitch!” Rob shouted after his employer. Whom he was sure couldn’t actually hear him. Fairly.
We don’t just call them ‘bucketheads,’ he thought, wiping spit and snot from his face, because they go into battle wearing pails.
Despite the urgency drumming his ribs from inside, Rob could only stand and watch the drama play out. Even rain-draggled, the feather crests, banners, and lurid caparisons of fifty dinosaur knights made a brave and gorgeous display.
The mercenary arbalesters had stopped shooting. To Rob their only sensible course now was to run away at speed. He knew, as dinosaur master and minstrel both, how little pay means to those too dead to spend it.
Instead, insanely, the rear ranks now battled outright with their fleeing fellows. The Brabanters were among the Empire’s ethnic odds and sods, swept together into a single Torre Menor, or Lesser Tower, that claimed to serve all their interests. Even at that it was inferior to the other Towers: the great families that ruled Nuevaropa and its five component Kingdoms. The Brabanters made up for insignificance with lapdog pugnacity. Which won them a name as right pricks.
The White River archers had stopped loosing too. Their monsters now stood just out of crossbow range. Evidently Karyl was content to observe events.
These happened quickly. At last the Brabanters got their minds right. They quit fighting each other and, as one, turned tail. To see bearing down on them the whole enormous weight of their own employers’ right wing.
As hadrosaurs squashed the mercenaries into screams and squelches and puffs of condensation, the Legion’s walking forts waded forward again. From their howdahs the hornbowmen and -women released a fresh smoke of arrows.
With a pulsing bass hum, the volley struck the Count’s dinosaur knights. Arrows bounced off knightly plate. But duckbills screamed as missiles stung thick hides. Rob guessed the archers had switched to iron broad-head arrows.
Already slowed by riding down the crossbowmen, the dinosaur knights lost all momentum in a chaos of thrashing tails and rearing bodies. Wounded monsters bugled and fluted, drowning the shrieks of riders pitched from saddles and smashed underfoot.
Rob held up his right fist to salute the Count, a single digit upraised. It was, he told himself, an ancient sign, and holy to his patron goddess, Maris, after all.
Then he turned and scuttled east. His employer was a spent quarrel. Now he’d carry out his plan himself.
The Dinosaur Lords is available from Tor: http://us.macmillan.com/thedinosaurlords/victormilan [GdM]
An Interview With
Peter Orullian
TOM SMITH
[GdM] What is your opinion on the grimdark sub-genre, and do you see the growing of a grimdark sub-genre as a positive or negative for fantasy as a whole?
[PO] I spent many years reading nothing but horror. I has a darkness inside me. So, the degree that grimdark is about dark themes in fantasy fiction, I’m a fan.
I had an interesting conversation with Steve Erickson recently on the topic of grimdark. He summed it up this way: Grimdark is about nihilism. In other words, right action is either futile or impossible; and, as Liz Bourke said, has the effect of absolving the protagonists, as well as the reader, from moral responsibility. I think there’s something to that. On the other hand, you might get as many definitions for grimdark as writers and readers you ask to tell you what it is. I hate to revert to the old you-know-it-when-you-see-it reply, but there’s something to that, too.
All that said, I think we’ve had elements of grimdark for quite some time. I mean, Glen Cook. It’s fashionable to say, “Oh, grimdark is a response to all that 80’s fantasy with chosen ones and quests and blah, blah.” But I think that’s horseshit. Again, things grim have been around a good long time—Thomas Covenant. And there’s some fantastic current fiction—call it neoclassical if you need a name—that’s building on traditions of decades past: think Sanderson.
As to positive or negative? Like I said, I love dark stuff. So, if grimdark as a term becomes a way-finder for readers to fantasy that
trades on darkness, then sweet.
[GdM] Are there any grimdark authors whose work intrigues you or that you really enjoy?
[PO] Moorcock. Cook. Martin. Abercrombie. Lawrence. I also love Erickson, though he might fight me about whether he writes grimdark. Regardless, everyone should read Steve—he’s that good.
[GdM] What character(s) have you written that you would consider the most grimdark?
[PO] Jastail J’Vache in my Vault of Heaven series is one. I recently wrote a short story for the Blackguards anthology featuring this character. Some of the reviews have lumped Lawrence’s story and mine together as the two worst. Why? Because they weren’t grim characters with a heart of gold. It’s a grimdark anthology for the most part, and yet some of the readers don’t seem to want truly grim. Oh well. I don’t mind being lumped in with Lawrence.
[GdM] When you find any time to read, which writers do you typically turn to?
[PO] I’ve said it before, but I’m a huge Dan Simmons fan. I think he’s top drawer. I’m also a huge Stephen King fan. In the fantasy genre, there are too many to name…
[GdM] You’ve enjoyed a friendship with fantasy legend Terry Brooks. Has Terry had any influence on your work? And if so, in what way?
[PO] Mostly by way of introducing me to the genre. I don’t think I write like Terry. I’m certainly darker in tone, anyway. But I owe the man a debt of gratitude for opening a gate I’m happy I walked through.
And for what it’s worth, I think Terry’s underrated. Oh, he’s written like 35 New York Times bestsellers, so it’s maybe a hard argument to make. But in the ‘inner circle’ of fantasy discussion, you almost never hear Terry mentioned. I find that interesting. And sad.
[GdM] What is your opinion on self-publishing and small press vs. big press?
[PO] I’ve no time for the debate. Seems silly to me. Do both. Not sure why anyone is convinced a single way is right.
[GdM] You are also a musician, can you briefly explain how music influences your writing?
[PO] In. Every. Way. Possible. I mean, on one level, I’ve created an entire magic system based on music. I actually began with something I call a governing dynamic, which in my world is called Resonance. It’s a unifying principle that underlies (at this point) five magic systems. So, when a reader sees various cultures doing magic in different ways, they also can point to Resonance as the principle that makes it work—kind of like mechanical laws, e.g. gravity, magnetism. And then on top of Resonance, I built a magic system with music.
Beyond that, it’s a relevant part of the cultures I write about, the same way others may pivot on commerce or politics. Not all cultures, mind you, but more than other writers probably do. Seemed natural to me, since in our own world music is such a passion point for so many.
Then—I’ve been told, anyway—my writing itself tends to have a kind of musical or lyrical quality. That’s the most satisfying compliment I think I get from readers.
I don’t listen to music while I write though. Music demands my attention. It’s not a background thing.
[GdM] You have a unique creation mythology in The Unremembered, what inspired you in the creation of it?
[PO] Can’t say, really. Just kind of happened. I suspect it’s a product of my study of religion, countless books I’ve read, a bit of what I learned in college, and an overactive imagination. I mean, the notion of Resonance I mentioned above is partly premised on quantum entanglement. And that underlies some of the creation mythology. So, yay science.
Peter Orullian will be providing a grimdark short story titled A Fair Man featuring Mikel Richerds in his The Vault of Heaven series for GdM #6, due out 1 January 2016.[GdM]
The Right Hand Of Decay
DAVID ANNANDALE
They were building the mound when she arrived on the battlefield. The corpses were piled higher than the trees that girded the plain below Barragano, but there were many more yet to be gathered. The executions had not started yet. All in good time.
It was midday, but overcast, clouds hanging low and so dark that they bathed the land in a hard twilight. Smoke rose from campfires and from inside the walls of Barragano. The stench of blood, thick and pungent as grief, rolled in waves over the field. The Grey Queen breathed in the smell and contemplated the growing mound. She must not take the loss for granted. The sacrifices must be noted and given meaning.
She was conscious of how rote the ritual was becoming for her. Make note of that too, she thought. Watch yourself. This should not be easy.
And it was not. But perhaps not as hard as it should be. More and more, not hard enough at all.
She had ridden alone to Barragano. Leaving her mount in the forest, she crossed the plain on foot, taking in the measure of the defeat. Most of the corpses in the field had been dragged there before being added to the mound. The deaths had occurred in the near approach to the walls of Barragano. The fortified city sat on a basalt plateau with sheer cliffs to the north, south, and east. Down the steep westward slope, a single road twisted through jagged outcroppings. It was a slow route for any army leaving the city. For an attacking force, it was a death trap, and the only choice. Barragano had never been taken.
And the Grey Queen’s army had never been defeated. She had not felt the need to take on Lord Harrad before. But he had forced her hand by sending large raiding parties her over her borders. So she had ordered her forces to topple the seat of his power. They had failed. So she had come to do what was necessary.
A command tent was set up midway through the field. The mound stood between it and the road to the fortress. The Grey Queen entered. Two of her generals, Temis and Gascon, were waiting for her. They were both wounded. Temis had a head wound. Blood soaked her cloth bandage and streaked down the right side of her face. Gascon’s left arm hung limp. The arrow that had pierced it through the elbow had been broken at either end, but not removed. There was no point in doing so.
They bowed. She nodded, then said, ‘Tell me.’
‘We were defeated by the land,’ Temis said. ‘It was impossible to move troops up faster than Harrad could take them down.’
‘Our siege engines were burning before they were a third of the way toward the gate,’ Gascon added.
‘Was the enemy reinforced?’ She hadn’t seen any of Harrad’s banners in the field.
‘No,’ said Temis. ‘The Barragano contingent was more than enough.’
The Grey Queen sighed. The hope had been to force Harrad to recall his divisions, ending his incursions. Most of the raids were occurring within a day’s march of here, but they were spread out. She wanted the lord’s army concentrated, arriving in a single force to combat the threat to the seat of power. A single battle would have ended Harrad’s threat. As bloody as that struggle would have been, it would have been preferable to the alternative she now faced.
Really? Would you really have preferred not to be involved? The voice, venomous and eager, was her own.
Yes, she answered herself. She was unsure if she made the assertion out of desire or an eroding sense of obligation.
‘Then he has left us with little choice,’ the Grey Queen said. ‘You’ve arranged a parlay?’
Gascon nodded. ‘We have. He has agreed to meet you at the base of the slope.’
‘Good. I will attempt to reason with him.’
‘If he fails to listen, we will not fail you,’ said Temis.
‘I know you won’t.’ She smiled. ‘And you have my thanks for the sacrifice you will make.’ She heard the solemnity in her tone. That was good.
But her smile. Had it been mournful? She worried it had been eager.
Soon, said the hungry voice.
* * *
Harrad strode down the final stretch of the road to the base of the plateau. Just past the final bend, his squad of archers stopped and took aim. Beyond where the Grey Queen waited, her own archers were in position. If one ruler was killed, the other would not draw another breath. The precaution was hardly necessary. The Grey Quee
n’s reputation for honour in negotiations was beyond reproach. And Harrad had no intention of triumphing through assassination.
He evaluated his opponent as he crossed the patch of rocky ground towards her. She wore no armour except for a gauntlet on her right arm. Her robes, true to her name, were grey, but he was surprised to see the material. There was nothing royal about it. The robes were linen, as if she were wearing a shroud. She bore no crown. Instead, her robes had a hood, which she had put back. Her gauntlet, Harrad now saw, had no joints. It appeared to be carved from granite and held together by metal bands. It must have been very heavy and allowed no movement of the fingers. It looked like a brutal sculpture.
He had trouble guessing her age. She was older than his forty, of that he was sure. She had been on her throne when he was born, and how long before that, he didn’t know. Her hair was the colour of iron. Her face was lined with experience. But her posture was as straight as his. And when he was close enough to see her eyes, they burned with both the judgement of age and the energy of a young conqueror.
‘Your troops fought well,’ Harrad began. It was true. This had been the first time he had seen the Grey Queen’s army for himself. The ferocity of their siege had surprised him. It confirmed the truth of the reports, coming back from his expeditionary commanders, that victory over the small town garrisons was possible only through overwhelming numbers. The campaign was still in its early days, and the siege of Barragano was the first major encounter between the powers. His victory was decisive, but there had been moments when it had seemed the flood of soldiers streaming up the road would exhaust his arsenal. It had been like attacking the tide.
Grimdark Magazine Issue #5 mobi Page 6