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  Blackguards

  Tales of Assassins, Mercenaries, and Rogues

  Edited by J.M. Martin

  © 2015

  Cover Art by Arman Akopian

  Cover Design by Shawn T. King

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Worldwide Rights

  Created in the United States of America

  Published – Ragnarok Publications | www.ragnarokpub.com

  Editor-In-Chief: Tim Marquitz | Creative Director: J.M. Martin

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Foreword – Glen Cook

  Introduction – J.M. Martin

  Mainon – Jean Rabe

  Irindai – Bradley P. Beaulieu

  The Subtler Art – Cat Rambo

  Seeds – Carol Berg

  Jancy’s Justice – Kenny Soward

  Professional Integrity – Michael J. Sullivan

  Troll Trouble – Richard Lee Byers

  A Better Man – Paul S. Kemp

  First Kill – Django Wexler

  Manhunt – Mark Smylie

  Better to Live than to Die – John Gwynne

  The Secret – Mark Lawrence

  Friendship – Laura Resnick

  The Long Kiss – Clay Sanger

  The White Rose Thief – Shawn Speakman

  A Length of Cherrywood – Peter Orullian

  A Taste of Agony – Tim Marquitz

  What Gods Demand – James A. Moore

  Take You Home – David Dalglish

  Seeking the Shadow – Joseph R. Lallo

  Sun and Steel – Jon Sprunk

  The Betyár and the Magus – S.R. Cambridge

  A Kingdom and a Horse – Snorri Kristjansson

  Thieves at the Gate – James Enge

  His Kikuta Hands – Lian Hearn

  The Lord Collector – Anthony Ryan

  Scream – Anton Strout

  Roll Credits

  Acknowledgments

  Blackguards Blacklist

  Table of Contents

  To the End – Rob J. Hayes

  To Steal the Moon – Rebecca Lovatt

  The Muttwhelp – Edward M. Erdelac

  The Lonesome Dark – Anthony Lowe

  Comeuppance – Linda Robertson

  The Assassination of Poppy Smithswife – Sam Knight

  Telhinsol’s Shadow – S.M. White

  The Laughing Wind – Noah Heinrich

  Bloody Gratitude - Mike Theodorsson

  Gret – Brenda Carre

  Angel of Tears – Erik Scott de Bie

  DEDICATION

  Blackguards is dedicated to—and in memory of—the ‘big man,’ David Gemmell (1948 – 2006), who wrote in the Drenai novel, Waylander, about his tormented assassin: “There is evil in all of us, and it is the mark of a man how he defies the evil within.”

  FOREWORD

  “POORLY CALCULATED RANDOMISTICS”

  Glen Cook

  Wow! So there I was, all excited because Joe Martin asked me to do the introduction to an anthology of stories about lovable rascal anti-heroes. Or maybe lovable not so much. But…I'd never done anything like that before. People do not ask me to because folks who do know me believe that I don't take this writing business nearly serious enough, for their taste. Folks who don't know me but have heard a thing here and there generally own the notion that I am some kind of grumbling apostate who will not take literary posturing seriously.

  Well, yeah, that's me. They're right. None of it will make a lick of difference a thousand years from now. Or even a hundred.

  Oh. The black collywobbles almost got me there.

  But, dude! Here came a grand new adventure!

  Then, after several sweaty hours of stewing with no production, I began to sag and drift off toward the blue deeps.

  Point the First: My beloved mother-in-law passed, leaving ten thousand real world details to be handled, hammered, served, saved, disposed, all stuff that takes precedence over writing.

  Then the more critical Point the Second: What could I actually say, the quotidian demons conquered? I had no clue. Intros I recalled kind of stroked the reader (cynical Cook suspecting that he was the only reader on the planet who actually dipped into forewords, anyway, they not being the red meat a reader wanted to gnaw) but tended not to say anything useful.

  Too, I came to the task proudly wearing a major lower working class anti-intellectual, anti-academic bias. I loved a rousing good story but those guys (the gender neutral third person collective that my wife so loathes from the wait staff at any restaurant where said staff does not pretend to be French), the ones who talked about writing, were just older versions of the kids in high school who inflated the curve and were too athletically challenged to walk and chew gum. Not that they would be caught with a stick anywhere but up their butts.

  Even today my cape is a conviction that most people who find a place in literary academia do so in order to get out of having to go to work for a living.

  (You chance on me in person sometime, and care, ask how my best friend from college and I brewed up a huge ration of bullshit to wow his thesis committee by proposing that Don Quixote's horse, Rosinante, gained the name because Cervantes may have shared his cell with a Catalonian for a while.)

  I wander. I ramble. I become self-indulgent and do not address the topic at hand. I am near mad in my lack of focus because while I was traveling I reread two R. A. Lafferty books, neither of which honored in the least the conventions of plot that constrain the rest of us. I need to get a hand on the tiller and steer a straighter course.

  So after one try at begging off the job I promised I would take an honest shot at introducing this collection, which looks like is going to be kick-ass, just based on the track records of those guilty of contributing to it.

  During my beg off phase I proposed that maybe Cook wasn't the guy with the chops to engage the intellect of that unusual reader who does take a moment to peruse the foreword. I protested that I am not clear on what an anti-hero is, outside what the dictionary says. My own world view divides people into us guys and them guys, with most everyone steadfastly occupying the moral low ground. Them guys are bad guys because they won't do what us guys want them to do. Which means that, for me, good and bad are extremely dependent upon where I am standing. I am always the good guy and hero in my own saga. Every anti-hero is exactly that in his.

  Joe begged me to give it a real try. You might surprise yourself, he said.

  That has proven to be true, but perhaps not with a positive spin.

  I began by brooding (an excellent, if brief, means of escaping the uncomfortable real world consequences of the passing of my mother-in-law: hope you and Romy are enjoying that better place, Peg) not so much on anti-heroes and anti-heroism but on what makes for interesting characters in shorter fictions. What made a memorable person who never existed outside the imagination of a pervert like me?

  And it did seem that the most memorable creatures were less than shining good when you got up close enough to smell them. They gained shining status like a patina of time.

  Think Arthur, the once and future king. He has warts all over him when you get up close. He had a son with his sister, not commonly accepted heroic behavior…though maybe it started out being fun. Later he had a war with that son. And his golden circle of Camelot guys were mostly not such squeaky clean actors, either. Old Art couldn't keep his wife from cheating with some of them. The Knights of the Round were pretty much all anti-heroic in some way.

  Flaws. Some of them huge. I began reflecting on characters who touched me when I was younger, Fafhrd an
d Mouser, Elric and Hawkmoon, Conan the Barbarian (R. E. Howard's Conan), and so many others. They all had something in common: they were flawed. Even damaged. Definitely somewhat less than ideal human beings. They all had, to say the least, shadows at the edges of their dubious characters. In our oh so politically correct and sensitivity-burdened 21st Century North America every last one of them would be locked up and the keys chucked into the Crack of Doom, with one key ring to bind them. They committed murders, thievery, shoplifting, pickpocketry, smuggling, counterfeiting, tax evasion, even pederasty. And yet they were what we all wanted to be when we grew up. They were interesting. Their bad behavior and ability to get away with it, most of the time, made them interesting.

  Of course, it helped that their antagonists were more wicked and distasteful than they were. Usually.

  Still more thinking (brain cramps threatened) led me to conclude that it is all about character. Interesting people doing interesting things, though an excellent character can carry a feeble plot by making you care about him. And people battling the darkness within them while coping with the enemy without are more interesting than those who line up bad guys and cut them down only because they own the mickle-sharp scythe of moral superiority.

  Thus do I find most Batman iterations more interesting than the various versions of Superman. Batman is a homicidal psychopath savagely struggling to keep his mania under control. He goes into battle as much to save himself as he does to save the world.

  (Aside, I do feel that if Batman had let the evil run free at certain critical moments, Joker and other serial escapees from Arkham would not have placed nearly so much stress on him, and Gotham could have saved billions in reconstruction costs.)

  We do become fascinated by evil, even infatuated with evil. Why do women chase after and even marry life-serving killer convicts? And are we not unfathomably infatuated with evils already overcome? There are about six genuine Nazis remaining alive in the whole wide world yet still we dote on conspiracy stories which allow us to splash a swastika across a book cover.

  But maybe we do that knowing that it is only a story now. We can get a little thrill without having to truly dread a horror already put down. We can have fun, knowing that a particular evil can no longer strike back. Boogerman stories for grownups.

  The triumph over evil achieved, we can even make that evil the hero in its own song, as Norman Spinrad did in THE IRON DREAM, where Adolf Hitler immigrates to America and becomes a famous science fiction writer.

  The small evils in us all, and our endless contests with and sometimes surrenders to them, are what define us as people. The quirks of the characters we conjure in the minds of our readers (always, really, more part of who they secretly are than part of us who give them their shadows) help make them worth accompanying on their adventures. The anti-hero would be that character with a little extra, special quirkage that makes you think, "Oh, that rogue Mouser. I wish I could be like him. What's he gonna do next?"

  Glen Cook

  October, 2014

  INTRODUCTION

  J.M. Martin

  In sixth grade I read The Hobbit as a class assignment. I was 11 years old and a whole world had opened up to me. Thinking about Bilbo Baggins, he was an interesting fellow, sure, but he really captured my imagination as soon as the grey wizard labeled him a thief. Soon after that he acquired the One Ring, outfoxed Gollum, and became a truly canny little twit. It wasn’t just the ring, but also the magical, orc-sensing blade called Sting that transformed Bilbo from a mere sneaky hobbit to a bona fide blackguard.

  Blackguard, by the way, is actually pronounced ‘blaggard,’ as in haggard. The term seemingly originated from scullions and kitchen-knaves, in particular those in courtly caravans who were in charge of the pots, pans, utensils, and the conveyance of coal. They were called as such for often being a sullied and rag-tag assembly in comparison to the livery of the guard at the head of the convoy. They have been defined as ‘the lowest menials in a royal or noble household,’ and the works of one Ben Jonson in Love Restored (dated 1612), declares:

  “In all great houses, but particularly in the royal residences, there were a number of mean and dirty dependents, whose office it was to attend the wood-yard and sculleries. Of these the most forlorn wretches seem to have been selected to carry coals to the kitchens and halls…and to this smutty regiment who rode in the carts with the pots and kettles, which, with every other article of furniture, were then moved from palace to palace, [and] the people, in derision, gave [them] the name of black guards, a term since become sufficiently familiar, and never properly explained.”

  Even more interesting to note is the French word ‘blague,’ which today means more of a prank or joke but, in 18th century France, meant “to lie,” more or less, a ‘blageur’ being someone who speaks pretentiously. Therefore one could extrapolate that a ‘blaggard’—also ‘blagger’ in some texts—is a ‘rag-tag deceiver with grandiloquent habits.’ Some learned men might debate that this extrapolation is a bit of a stretch, but it certainly seems to fit the bill as far as I’m concerned.

  So Bilbo Baggins could be pinned as a blackguard of sorts, but a well-meaning one on an estimable quest, rather unlike the goals and general misconduct of a true blackguard; that is to say those encompassing the rank and file not only of thieves but all manner of mercenaries from hucksters and devil-may-care cheats to narcissistic cutthroats and rapacious slave traders that populate the emerging fantasy subgenre called ‘grimdark,’ an amalgam of the adventure novel in gritty attire, cloaked in fool’s motley, vitriol, and the picaresque.

  Indeed, the seeds were planted and my imagination sprouted in early bloom. At a young age I became entranced by fantasy fiction, particularly to the rag-tag, outcast, grandiloquent, cunning blackguard. Tolkien’s hobbits, dwarfs, and wizards were just the beginning. Throughout my teens and twenties I devoured entire series of blaggardly anti-heroes. R.E. Howard’s Conan and Red Sonja. Michael Moorcock’s Elric and Moonglum. Fritz Lieber’s Fafhrd and Gray Mouser. Glen Cook’s The Black Company. Robert Lynn Asprin’s Thieves’ World. Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane the Mystic Swordsman. Bob Salvatore’s Drizzt Du’Orden. Robin Hobb’s FitzChivalry. David Gemmell’s Druss the Legend and Waylander. Stephen King’s The Dark Tower. And in my thirties I went on to discover such indisputable innovators of the anti-hero movement as Rafael Sabatini, Alexandre Dumas, even Gene Wolfe, and more recently the brilliant works of Scott Lynch’s Gentleman Bastard series and Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn titles.

  Blackguards: Tales of Assassins, Mercenaries, and Rogues is rooted in all of the above and more. I am so proud of this book with its 27 brilliant stories by the industry’s leaders in speculative fiction, with tales of ‘forlorn wretches’ and ‘smutty regiments,’ most set in their own proprietary worlds. This was my goal from the beginning, to gather a collection of proprietary works, and I started with some of my writer chums who I’d come to know through an online group I started in 2010 called ‘The Writers of the Storm.’ Among these, I hit up Django Wexler, Mark Lawrence, Jon Sprunk, Kenny Soward, John Gwynne, Tim Marquitz, and David Dalglish. I knew they would make a solid core to build from, and after greasing those knaves’ sweaty palms, the ripple effect took over. It’s a cool feeling, going from reading the works of Carol Berg and Paul Kemp and Richard Lee Byers to actually publishing them (I sometimes pinch myself), and I’m well pleased with the table of contents herein.

  But none of this could have happened without our Kickstarter benefactors. Blackguards was crowdfunded by 1,237 generous contributors (kickstarter.com, search: Blackguards) who invested their ducats and enabled us to pay the authors, artists, and printer, as well as produce some dandy add-ons like posters, magnet calendars, and collectible coins. It overfunded so far beyond the target goal—and my expectations—that I almost feel like a highwayman brigand myself. Like a blaggard!

  Hmm. In fact…I feel less a highwayman and more a grandiloquent guild captain! Aye, the godfather of 1,237 well-favored rogues
…you know, being that the rewards reaped by their deft and timely positionings are so damned bloody rich, after all. Why, upon possession of such goods I daresay those Kickstartians fancy themselves bona fide blue bloods, the very aristocracy of blackguards!

  And you, Reader, whether you backed the Kickstarter campaign or acquired this book afterward, I hope you savor this fat 750 page grimoire the authors, artists, and folks of Ragnarok have cobbled together. I daresay you will; after all, you, too, are a blackguard. You’ve swept up something and secreted it away, put it in a space you’ve kept alive from the very moment you first discovered fantasy fiction. What is it? Look. There is something you’ve got hidden away in your pocket! It’s your love for the rogue! And why shouldn’t you keep it? It’s yours. Your special sanctuary. And, therein, all your favorite dastards and ne’er-do-wells, mercenaries, thieves, and the like are indulging in their trade, taking what they will but also, in doing so, giving something back, deliberate or not.

  Adventure.

  Indeed, there’s a bit of Bilbo Baggins in each and every one of us.

  And that is an encouraging thought.

  J.M. Martin

  February, 2015

  Blackguards

  Tales of Assassins, Mercenaries, and Rogues

  Mainon

  Jean Rabe

  Jean Rabe is the author of 30 fantasy and adventure novels and more than 60 short stories. When she’s not writing, which isn’t often, she edits…two dozen anthologies and more than a hundred magazine issues. Her genre writing includes military, science-fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy, mystery, horror, and modern-day action. She lives in central Illinois near three train tracks that provide “music” to type by. Visit her website: www.jeanrabe.com.

  ~

  The roasted pike with green sorrel verjuice was amazing; Mainon held a piece on her tongue and relished the flavor. The scents from the other dishes arrayed on the table—artistically prepared marine and freshwater fish—competed for her attention. It had been quite some time since she’d dined in so lavish a place.