Shattered Shields

by Jennifer Brozek

  Lord Fall? He was no lord; he was barely a squire.

  “Barely a squire,” Esker continued, echoing Luden’s thought, “but he took command when Madrelar and Pastak died, and led the charge that broke us out.”

  “And it was treachery?”

  “Yes.”

  Ganarrion chewed his mustache for a long moment, staring at Luden then nodded. “Thank you, Esker.” He gave a short bow. “Lord Fall, with your permission, I will relieve you of command. You and your mount are both in need of a surgeon’s care, and I have need of those of your troop who are still fit to fight. Will you release them to me?”

  Luden bowed in his turn; his vision darkened as he pushed himself erect again. “Certainly, Lord Ganarrion. As you wish.” Then the dark closed in.

  * * *

  He woke in a tent with lamps already lit. When he tried to move, he could scarcely shift one limb, and he hurt all over. The memory of Immer’s letter came first, and for one terrifying moment he thought he lay bound, already on his way to the dungeons of Cortes Immer. Then he heard voices he knew—Sofi Ganarrion, Count Vladi, Esker. The events of the day reappeared in memory, hazy as if seen through smoke.

  “It’s unusual, certainly,” Count Vladi was saying. “But I remember a certain young squire dancing with death when I was a captain in Kostandan. . . .”

  Ganarrion grunted. “I was young and foolish then.”

  “And brave and more capable than anyone expected. This lad was not foolish, for what other choices did he have? We shall have much to tell Duke Fall when we return.”

  * * *

  Luden stood before the Duke of Fall, when he was again fit to ride and fight. Behind him were the men of Ganarrion’s company; Sofi Ganarrion stood on his sword-side and his own father on his heart-side.

  “Victory is sweet,” the old man said, “but honor is bread and meat to the soul. Those who have both, even once in their lives, are fortunate beyond all riches. You won your spurs, Luden; I cannot give them to you. Let us say I found something of mine that I am too old to use, that might be of service to you.”

  He opened the box on the table between them and turned it around to show Luden. The spurs within were old, the straps burnished with wear. Luden’s breath caught. The duke’s own spurs? He didn’t deserve—

  “Men died, my lord,” is what came out of his mouth before he could stop it. “Life was enough reward.”

  Duke Fall nodded. “You are right, nephew. And it is as much for your understanding as for your courage that these spurs are now yours. We will speak more later; for now, let your sponsors perform their duties.”

  His father and Sofi Ganarrion stepped forward, each taking a spur, then knelt beside him, fastening them to his boots.

  BIOGRAPHIES

  JENNIFER BROZEK is an award-winning editor, game designer, and author. Winner of the Australian Shadows Award for best edited publication, Jennifer has edited twelve anthologies with more on the way. Author of In a Gilded Light, The Lady of Seeking in the City of Waiting, Industry Talk, and the Karen Wilson Chronicles, she has more than fifty published short stories.

  Jennifer also is a freelance author for numerous RPG companies. Winner of both the Origins and the ENnie awards, her contributions to RPG sourcebooks and fiction include Dragonlance™, BattleTech™, and Shadowrun™. Jennifer is also the author of the YA BattleTech™ novel, The Nellus Academy Incident.

  When she is not writing her heart out, she is gallivanting around the Pacific Northwest in its wonderfully mercurial weather. Jennifer is an active member of SFWA, HWA, and IAMTW. Read more about her at www.jenniferbrozek.com or follow her on Twitter at @JenniferBrozek.

  BRYAN THOMAS SCHMIDT is an author and editor of adult and children’s speculative fiction. His debut novel, The Worker Prince, received Honorable Mention on Barnes & Noble Book Club’s Year’s Best Science Fiction Releases for 2011. His short stories have appeared in magazines, anthologies and online. In addition to Shattered Shields, he edited the anthologies Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6, Beyond The Sun, and Raygun Chronicles: Space Opera For a New Age. He hosts #sffwrtcht (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writer’s Chat) on Twitter as @BryanThomasS. His forthcoming anthologies from Baen include Mission: Tomorrow (2015) and Galactic Games (2016).

  ROBIN WAYNE BAILEY is the author of numerous novels, including the bestselling Dragonkin series, the Frost saga, Shadowdance, and the Fritz Leiber–inspired Swords Against the Shadowland. He’s written over one hundred short stories, many of which are included in his two collections, Turn Left to Tomorrow and The Fantastikon: Tales of Wonder. He is a former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and was a 2008 Nebula Award nominee. He lives in Kansas City, Missouri. His story for us is from his Frost universe.

  ANNIE BELLET is the author of the Pyrrh Considerable Crimes Division and the Gryphonpike Chronicles series. She holds a BA in English and a BA in Medieval Studies and thus can speak a smattering of useful languages such as Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Welsh. Her short fiction is available in over two dozen magazines, collections, and anthologies. Her interests besides writing include rock climbing, reading, horseback riding, video games, comic books, tabletop RPGs and many other nerdy pursuits. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and a very demanding Bengal cat.

  GLEN COOK was born in New York City, lived in southern Indiana as a small child, then grew up in Northern California. After high school he served in the U.S. Navy and attended the University of Missouri. He worked for General Motors for thirty-three years, retiring some years ago. He started writing short stories in seventh grade, had several published in a high school literary magazine. He began writing with malicious intent to publish in 1968, eventually producing fifty-one books and a number of short fiction pieces.

  He met his wife of forty-three years while attending the Clarion Writers Workshop in 1970. He has three sons (army officer, architect, orchestral musician) and numerous grandchildren, all of whom but one are female. He is best known for his Black Company series, which has appeared in twenty-plus languages worldwide. His latest work is Working God’s Mischief, fourth in the Instrumentalities of the Night series. His story for us is a Black Company tale.

  LARRY CORREIA is the New York Times bestselling author of the Monster Hunter International series, the Audie Award–winning Grimnoir Chronicles trilogy, and the Dead Six military thrillers for Baen Books, as well as several novellas and novels set in the Iron Kingdoms for Privateer Press’s Warmachine game. A former accountant, firearms instructor, machine-gun dealer, and military contractor, Larry is now a full-time author and lives in the mountains of northern Utah with his wife and children. “Keeper of Names” is the first story from the setting that will be featured in an upcoming epic fantasy series from Baen Books by Larry Correia.

  DAVID FARLAND is a New York Times bestselling author with over fifty novel-length works to his credit. His latest novel, Nightingale, won the International Book Award for Best Young Adult Novel, the Next Gen Award, the Global E-Book Award, and the Hollywood Book Festival Award for Best Novel of the Year. Dave is currently finishing the last book in his popular Runelords series, and there will be no sequels. But this tale is set hundreds of years before the tales told in the Runelords, and is part of a prequel series. Enjoy!

  NANCY FULDA is a Hugo and Nebula Nominee, a Phobos Award winner, and a Vera Hinckley Mayhew Award recipient. She is the first (and so far only) female recipient of the Jim Baen Memorial Award. She has been a featured writer at Apex Online, a guest on the Writing Excuses podcast, and is a regular attendee of the Villa Diodati Writers’ Workshop. Visit her website at www.nancyfulda.com.

  JOHN R. FULTZ lives in the North Bay area of California but is originally from Kentucky. His Books of the Shaper trilogy includes Seven Princes, Seven Kings, and Seven Sorcerers, available everywhere from Orbit Books. His short story collection, The Revelations of Zang, features the adventures of Artifice the Quill and Taizo of Narr. John’s work has appeared i
n Weird Tales, Black Gate, Space & Time, Lightspeed, and the anthologies Way of the Wizard, Cthulhu’s Reign, Other Worlds Than These, The Book of Cthulhu II, and Deepest, Darkest Eden: New Tales of Hyperborea. He keeps a virtual sanctuary at www.johnrfultz.com.

  DAVE GROSS is the author of more than ten novels in settings from the Forgotten Realms to Pathfinder Tales to the Iron Kingdoms and various points in between. His short fiction has appeared in many anthologies, including Shotguns v. Cthulhu and Tales of the Far West. A former English teacher and magazine editor, he has dabbled in technical writing and computer game design. He now devotes his time to prose fiction. He lives in Alberta, Canada, with his fabulous wife and their above-average dog and cats. You can keep tabs on him at www.bydavegross.com.

  JOHN HELFERS is an author and editor currently living in Green Bay, Wisconsin. In sixteen years working at Tekno Books, he co-edited twenty short story anthologies and oversaw the production of more than one hundred volumes in all genres. He has also edited more than forty novels. He’s also published more than forty-five short stories in anthologies such as If I Were an Evil Overlord, Time Twisters, and Places to Be, People to Kill.

  In addition, his fiction has appeared in game books, novels, and on websites for the Dragonlance™, Transformers™, BattleTech™ and Shadowrun™ universes, including the third novel in the first authorized trilogy based on The Twilight Zone™ television series, the YA novel Tom Clancy’s Net Force Explorers™: Cloak and Dagger, and a history of the United States Navy.

  He also wrote three novels in the Room 59™ espionage series for Gold Eagle/Worldwide Publishing and has written novels in their Deathlands™ and Mack Bolan/Executioner™ series. Currently he’s working on several tie-in and original projects in both the adult and YA genres, including overseeing the production of new novels in the Shadowrun™ game universe.

  He operates Stonehenge Art & Word, an editorial and literary fiction management company.

  SARAH A. HOYT was born in Portugal (where her birth family still lives) and English is her third language (second is French.) This possibly explains why she’s on the kill-list of most copy editors. To avoid them, she lives high and dry in Colorado with her husband, two sons and a variable clowder of cats, reading and writing, with an occasional leitmotif of pastel painting, sewing, or carpentry thrown in when someone complains she’s been at the keyboard too long.

  Her most recent books are A Few Good Men and Noah’s Boy from Baen Books, and upcoming Night Shifters, Through Fire, and Darkship Revenge, also from Baen Books, along with indie Witchfinder, a Regency fantasy.

  SEANAN MCGUIRE is the author of more than a dozen books, all published within the last five years, which may explain why some people believe that she does not actually sleep. Her work has been translated into several languages, and resulted in her receiving a record five Hugo Award nominations on the 2013 ballot. When not writing, Seanan spends her time reading, watching terrible horror movies and too much television, visiting Disney Parks, and rating haunted corn mazes. You can keep up with her at www.seananmcguire.com. Her story for us is an October Daye prequel story.

  ELIZABETH MOON has published twenty-six novels including Nebula Award–winner The Speed of Dark, over thirty short-fiction pieces in anthologies and magazines, and three short fiction collections, most recently Moon Flights. Her most recent novel is Crown of Renewal. When not writing, she may be found knitting socks, photographing wildlife and native plants, poking her friends with (blunted) swords, or singing in the choir. She likes horses, dark chocolate, topographic maps, and traveling by train. Her story for us is the latest Paksenarrion tale.

  CAT RAMBO lives, writes, and reads omnivorously in a candy-colored condo beside eagle-haunted Lake Sammamish in Redmond, Washington. Her short stories have appeared in such places as Asimov’s, Tor.com, and Clarkesworld, as well as in three collections. Her most recent book is Near + Far, from Hydra House Books. Among the awards she’s been shortlisted for are the Endeavour, World Fantasy, Locus, and Nebula. You can find more of her fiction and information about her online classes at www.kittywumpus.net.

  GRAY RINEHART fought rocket-propellant fires, refurbished space-launch facilities, commanded the Air Force’s largest satellite-tracking station, and did other interesting things during his rather odd US Air Force career. Now a contributing editor for Baen Books, his fiction has appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and elsewhere. Gray is also a singer/songwriter with one album, Truths and Lies and Make-Believe, of mostly science-fiction-and-fantasy-inspired songs. His alter ego is the Gray Man, one of several famed ghosts of South Carolina’s Grand Strand, and his website is www.graymanwrites.com.

  JAMES L. SUTTER is a co-creator of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and the Senior Editor for Paizo Publishing. He is the author of the novels Death’s Heretic and The Redemption Engine, the former of which was ranked #3 on Barnes and Noble’s list of the Best Fantasy Releases of 2011, and was a finalist for both the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel and a 2013 Origins Award.

  James has written numerous short stories for such publications as Escape Pod, Starship Sofa, Apex Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Geek Love, and the #1 Amazon bestseller Machine of Death. His anthology Before They Were Giants pairs the first published short stories of science fiction and fantasy luminaries with new interviews and writing advice from the authors themselves.

  In addition, he’s published a wealth of gaming material for both Dungeons & Dragons and the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. For more information, visit www.jameslsutter.com or follow him on Twitter at @jameslsutter.

  WENDY N. WAGNER’s short fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies and the anthologies Armored and The Way of the Wizard. Her first novel, Skinwalkers, is a Pathfinder Tales adventure. An avid gardener and fan of the sweet science, she lives with her family in Portland, Oregon. You can keep up with her at www.winniewoohoo.com.

  JOSEPH ZIEJA is a veteran officer of the United States Air Force who still works for The Man. Joe likes to fool himself into thinking he can have four careers at once; in addition to using Powerpoint presentations to strike fear in the hearts of terrorists, and pursuing his dream of writing, he is also a composer and voiceover artist with his own studio in Virginia. Someday he’ll learn that there are only so many hours in the day (and that terrorists aren’t actually afraid of Powerpoint), but for now you can find a complete list of his published works, which include pieces at Daily Science Fiction, Pill Hill Press, and others, at www.josephzieja.com. His music and voice studio can be found at www.renmanstudio.com.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  We’d like to thank Toni Weisskopf, Jim Minz, Laura Haywood-Cory, Tony Daniel, and everyone else at Baen Books for giving us this opportunity.

  Thank you to all the wonderful authors for trusting us with your stories.

  Thank you to Paul Goat Allen, whose post on the best military fantasy inspired the idea.